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A virtuoso Venetian chamber musician, harpsichordist, singer, and composer, Anna Bon enjoyed an uncommonly successful career for a woman at the time. She came from a musical and artistic family: her father was a highly respected painter, stage designer, and perhaps librettist, and her mother was a singer with an international career. The details of Anna’s childhood are unclear, but she likely received an education at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice as a tuition-paying pupil, while her parents travelled and worked in prestigious cities and courts across Europe, including the court of Frederick the Great.
By 1755, the entire Bon family was working in the court of Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth and his wife Wilhelmine (Frederick the Great’s sister). There, Anna composed her three opus numbers, publishing the third one in 1759, just after Wilhelmine’s death and the resulting decline of musical life in Bayreuth. She later worked at the Esterházy court, and by 1767 she was living in Hildburghausen with her husband Mongeri, a singer. Although Anna herself did not play flute, her Bayreuth patrons had been accomplished flautists. Among her few extant works, therefore, the ones for flute are especially significant, exemplifying the virtuosity and elegance of the instrument. – Andrea Stewart |
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