Résumé - Oeuvres - Choix bibliographique

The only child of Giacomo Padoani and Diana Paresco, Antonia Padoani, born c. 1640, studied music and letters in Venice. In 1654 Padoani wrote to the Duke of Mantua, Carlo II Gonzaga, to report on the progress his daughter made in her lessons with the maestro di cappella of the Basilica of San Marco, Francesco Cavalli. Her father identified her there as a singer, a claim she later corroborated in the dedication to her first collection of vocal music, Produzioni armoniche. In the same year, he considered a match for his daughter with the illustrious guitarist Francesco Corbetta. Corbetta's praise of the French court to the young Antonia may have inspired her admiration for Louis XIV, which she described in the same dedication as dating from her childhood. The union between Corbetta and Antonia did not take place, however. Instead her interests turned toward a Venetian nobleman: in 1659 she married Lorenzo Bembo (1637-1703), a descendent of the patrician family's best-known member, Pietro Bembo. Three children issued from their marriage: Diana (1663-1729), Andrea (1665-1710), and Giacomo (1666-1741). Soon after the birth of the latter, Lorenzo joined several nobles conscripted into the War of Candia at Crete. Left with little means to support the family, Antonia suffered years of deprivation. Upon his return in 1669, the marriage quickly disintegrated. In 1672, she charged him with physical brutality, infidelity, stealing her belongings, and negligence; he denied the accusations and she lost the case. Five years after the failed suit she escaped to Paris, in all likelihood with Corbetta's assistance, where she remained for the rest of her life. Her departure was carefully planned. She took some of her belongings to the homes of various acquaintances in the city, including the renowned luthier Domenico Selles, but left her most valuable possessions out of Lorenzo's reach at the convent of San Bernardo on Murano, where she entrusted her daughter to the abbess; her sons presumably remained with their father. In the dedication to Produzioni armoniche, she explains that King Louis XIV, after having heard her sing, took mercy on her predicament and offered her shelter near the church of Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle. She stated that it was within this semi-cloistered community, the Petite Union Chrétienne des Dames de Saint-Chaumond, that she composed her music.
In each of her manuscripts, Bembo made explicit her gratitude for the support of the French royal family. Produzioni armoniche, dedicated to Louis XIV, also includes Italian arias for him, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, Monsieur, and Monseigneur. In her subsequent works, she turned from such predominantly solo vocal textures toward writing for larger ensembles. In 1704, she composed two large-scale pieces in celebration of the birth of the Duke of Brittany in a manuscript dedicated to Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy. The highpoint of Bembo's creative output in 1707 was the composition of a full-scale Italian opera, and of a grand motet. The composer's set of penitential psalms marks her final effort; its prefatory material likens the travails of its dedicatee, King Louis XIV, now in the last years of his reign, to those of the psalmist King David.
Bembo's compositions reveal independent creative skill, a successful mixture of French and Italian styles, and the influence of various artists. In addition to having inherited the Venetian musical language passed down from Monteverdi via Cavalli (Produzioni, opera), she drew on several Parisian sources. Her settings of amorous Italian verse feature poetry produced in Paris by the resident comedians of the Hôtel de Bourgogne: Brigida Fedeli and, apparently, her son Marc'Antonio Romagnesi. Her motets adhere to the tradition established by Lully, Charpentier, and Delalande. Based on French texts paraphrased by Elisabeth-Sophie Chéron, the seven penitential psalms testify to the practice of devotional music-making in the urban salons.
Because of Bembo's precarious circumstances in Paris, she may have asked people around her not to reveal her whereabouts; and beyond the six manuscripts that she gave to the royal family, no document with her name on it has yet surfaced in France. She was entirely forgotten after her death, until Y. Rokseth wrote an article about her music in 1937. In 1992, the discovery of letters between Bembo and the abbess San Bernardo di Murano led to a better understanding of Bembo's life and music.

OEUVRES
- vers 1697-1701 : Produzioni armoniche (F-Pn Rés. Vm1/117) -- Éd. partielle Claire Fontijn: «Per il Natale», Arkansas, ClarNan Editions, 1999; «Tota pulcra es», Bryn Mawr, Hildegard Publishing Company, 1998; «Amor mio», Hildegard Publishing Company, 1998; «Ha, que l'absence est un cruel martire», Bryn Mawr; Hildegard Publishing Company, 1998. Éd. partielle par John Glenn Paton, «In amor ci vuol ardir», Van Nuys, Alfred, 1994 -- «Lamento della Vergine», in CD Donne barocche, Roberta Invernizzi with Bizzarrie Armoniche, Opus 111, 2001; «Anima perfida», «Passan veloci l'hore», «M'ingannasti in verità», in CD La Vendetta, Roberta Invernizzi with Bizzarrie Armoniche, ORF, 2004.
- 1704 : Te Deum (F-Pn Rés. Vm1/112) -- Éd. Conrad Misch, Kassel, Furore Verlag, 2003.
- 1704 : Divertimento, inédit (F-Pn Rés. Vm1/113).
- 1707 : L'Ercole amante, inédit (F-Pn Rés. Vm4/9-10).
- vers 1707 : Te Deum (F-Pn Rés. Vm1/114) -- Éd. Wolfgang Fürlinger, Altötting, Coppenrath, 1999.
- vers 1707 : Exaudiat (F-Pn Rés. Vm1/115) -- Éd. Conrad Misch, Kassel, Furore Verlag, 2003.
- vers 1710 : Les sept Pseaumes de David (F-Pn Rés. Vm1/116) -- Éd. Conrad Misch, Furore Verlag, 2003 -- Psaumes 6, 101, 129, 142, in CD The Seven Psalms of David, Volume I, La Donna Musicale, 2004; Psaumes 31, 37, 50, in CD The Seven Psalms of David, Volume II, La Donna Musicale, 2005.
- Correspondance:
- Lettres conservées à Venise, Archivio di Stato (I-VAS), Corporazioni religiose, San Bernardo di Murano, b. 18 -- publiées dans Claire Fontijn, Desperate Measures..., voir infra.

CHOIX BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE
- Fontijn, Claire, Desperate Measures: The Life and Music of Antonia Padoani Bembo, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Fontijn, Claire, «Baroque Women: Antonia Bembo», Goldberg Early Music Magazine 6, 1999, p.110-113; www.goldbergweb.com.
- Fontijn, Claire, «In Honour of the Duchess of Burgundy: Antonia Bembo's Compositions for Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy», Cahiers de l'Institut de Recherches et d'Histoire Musicale des États de Savoie, 3, 1995, p.45-89.
- Laini, Marinella, «La musica di Antonia Bembo: un significativo apporto femminile alle relazioni musicali tra Venezia e Parigi», Studi musicali, 25, 1996, p.225-281.
- Rokseth, Yvonne, «Antonia Bembo, Composer to Louis XIV», Musical Quarterly, 23, 1937, p.147-169.

Claire Fontijn, 2006.