Maria Margarethe Danziaus classic

Maria Margarethe Danzi-Marchand or Danzi, née Marchand (* 1768 in Frankfurt am Main or Mannheim; † 11 June 1800 in Munich) was a German soprano and composer.

Life

The place of birth is sometimes also given as Mannheim, since the parental family resided there from 1775 and was on a visiting tour of the theatre company in Frankfurt at the time of Margarethe’s birth. The information with the place of birth Munich in various encyclopaedias is incorrect.

Margarethe’s father Theobald Hilarius Marchand had been appointed the first director of the newly founded National Theatre in Mannheim by the Elector Karl Theodor. Her mother Magdalena Brochard was a theatre actress and ballet dancer and was engaged as a soubrette in her husband’s theatre company.

Marchand caused a sensation at a very young age as a piano virtuoso as well as a singer. In 1787, at the age of 12, she made her debut at the Mannheim Court Theatre in the title role of “Der Edelknabe” by Johann Jakob Engel. In Munich, Margarethe Danzi received music lessons from 1778 to 1782 from her future sister-in-law Franziska Lebrun. From 1782 to 1784 she was a pupil of Leopold Mozart in Salzburg. She was one of the few female composers of the time in which the musical role of women was mostly confined to singing. Marchand made her first appearances at the Munich Court Theatre (→Cuvilliés Theatre) as early as 1785 in supporting roles, before making her debut there as a court singer on 26 April 1786.

In 1790 she married the composer and Kapellmeister Franz Danzi, with whom she undertook major tours of Europe as prima donna of Domenico Guardasoni’s theatre company and gained international renown. From 1796 Margarethe also became a celebrated prima donna at the Munich Court Theatre. In the night from 10 to 11 June 1800, Margarethe Danzi died as a result of a lung disease.

While she was highly acclaimed as an opera singer with an extensive repertoire of roles, her compositions, like those of her sister-in-law Franziska Lebrun, found few publishers during her lifetime and were mostly not published until later.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarethe_Danzi