(It.: ‘first lady’).
The leading female role in an opera, often though not always a soprano; by extension, the leading female singer on the roster of an opera company (although a prima donna role could be played by a castrato); later, a vain, capricious person. The term seems to derive from Italian commedia dell’arte, where members of the company fitted into set categories, such as ‘first lover’ (‘moroso’), second comic servant (‘zanne’) etc. A Venetian salary list of a commedia company from the second half of the 17th century lists a ‘Prima Donna’, ‘Seconda Donna’ and ‘Terza Donna’, receiving respectively 300, 160 and 70 ducats (N. Mangini: I teatri di Venezia, 1974, p.71). In contrast to the commedia, Italian opera from the middle of the 17th century had large casts that did not follow so rigid a pattern. Discussions of status turned on whether a role was a prima parte. For example, the virtuosa Vincenza Giulia Masotti insisted in her 1669 contract with the impresario Marco Faustini that she see the operas she was to sing in ahead of time in order to ensure that she had been assigned the prime parti.
The establishment of the term ‘prima donna’ in opera came largely with the rise of opera seria, in which a smaller cast of more regular constitution generally included two women, both with substantial parts but one as a rule more prominent. In 1679, Alessandro Stradella was able to describe the ‘exquisite’ opera company in Genoa in terms of fixed roles that reflect the earlier commedia parts: a prima donna and seconda donna along with two castratos (called ‘primo soprano’ and ‘secondo soprano’), a contralto, tenor and bass, as well as a buffo (a male comic role) and vecchia (a male singer playing an old woman) (C. Gianturco: Alessandro Stradella, 1639–1682: his Life and Music, 1994, p.286). In 1738, a possible cast list for an opera company in Palermo written up by the impresario Luca Casimiro degli Albizzi looks strikingly similar: it included a prima donna (contralto), seconda donna (soprano) and four male voices (two sopranos, one contralto, one tenor) for the seria roles and one woman and one man for the buffo roles (W. Holmes: Opera Observed: Views of a Florentine Impresario in the Early Eighteenth Century, 1993, p.100).
In the early 18th century, the term expanded to mean not just the role but also the singer who performed such roles. Faustina Bordoni, for example, is identified as a prima donna. The self-important and temperamental behaviour of many leading female singers led further to the association of this term with those character traits. Caricatures and satires of such singers began to appear in the early 18th century, although the terminology was still not universal. Benedetto Marcello’s Il teatro alla moda (c1720) retains the older terms of Musico and Virtuosa for the male castrato and female leading singers, except in the advice, referring to roles, that ‘the prima donna should not pay the least bit of attention to the seconda, nor should the seconda to the terza, and so forth’. Gottlieb Stephanie’s satirical libretto Der Schauspieldirektor set by Mozart in 1786 uses an equivalent German phrase, ‘erste Sängerin’. When conflicts arose as to which donna was prima, managerial ingenuity devised such expressions as ‘altra prima donna’, ‘prima donna assoluta’, and even ‘prima donna assoluta e sola’. In some cases prima donnas made it a point of status to be difficult. For example, into the contracts of Adelina Patti (1843–1919) at the height of her career went not only the stipulation that her name appear on posters in letters at least one-third larger than those used for other singers’ names, but also a clause excusing her from attending rehearsals.
Today the term is no longer exclusively associated with leading roles but may be used of any leading woman singer. It has also entered the general vocabulary as an expression for anyone (not necessarily a singer) who carries on in an outrageously egotistical manner.
G. Valle: Cenni teorico-pratici sulle aziende teatrali (Milan, 1823), 25–45
H. Sutherland Edwards: The Prima Donna: her History and Surroundings from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1888/R)
C. Clément: L’Opéra, ou la défaite des femmes (Paris, 1978; Eng. trans., 1988)
K. Honolka: Die grossen Primadonnen (Wilhelmshaven, 1982)
R. Christiansen: Prima Donna: a History (London, 1984/R)
S. Durante: ‘Il cantante: Aspetti e problemi della professione’, SOI, iv (1987), 349–415
ELLEN T. HARRIS