Anna Bon di Venezia (1738-c.1767)
- Sonata (V, si minore) 'Sei Sonate | Per il Cembalo | […] Ernestina
Augusta Sophie | Principessa | Di Sachsen Weimar etc:etc: | [...] in
età d'anni | dieci sette | Opera secunda' (1757)
Performers: Irene Hegen (cembalo)
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Italian composer and singer. Born as 'Anna Ioanna Lucia, filia
Hieronymus Boni et Rosa Ruinetti', she was the daughter of the
(Venetian?) scenographer and librettist Girolamo Bon and the Bolognese
singer Rosa Ruvinetti Bon. On March 8, 1743, at the age of four, she was
admitted to the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice as a student; that she
had a surname indicates that she was not a foundling as were most of the
Pietà wards, but a tuition-paying pupil (figlia de spesi). She studied
with the maestra di viola, Candida della Pietà (who herself had been
admitted into the coro in 1707). By 1756, Anna had rejoined her parents
in Bayreuth where they were in the service of Margrave Friedrich of
Brandenburg Kulmbach; she held the new post of 'chamber music virtuosa'
at the court, and dedicated her six op. 1 flute sonatas, published in
Nürnberg in 1756, to Friedrich. From the frontispiece we learn that she
composed them at the age of sixteen. In 1762, the family moved to the
Esterházy court at Eisenstadt, where Anna remained until at least 1765.
She dedicated the published set of six harpsichord sonatas, op. 2
(1757), to Ernestina Augusta Sophia, Princess of Saxe-Weimar, and the
set of six divertimenti (trio sonatas), op. 3 (1759), to Charles
Theodore, Elector of Bavaria. By 1767, Anna was living in
Hildburghausen, Thuringia, with her husband, a singer named Mongeri.
