Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Electress of Saxony

Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Electress of Saxony

Gerhard Allroggen

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.17776
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

(b Munich, July 18, 1724; d Dresden, April 23, 1780). German princess, composer, singer and patron. The
eldest daughter of the Elector Karl Albert of Bavaria (later Emperor Karl VII) and of Archduchess Maria
Amalia of Austria, she received her first musical training in Munich from Giovanni Ferrandini and
Giovanni Porta. After her marriage in 1747 to Friedrich Christian, later Elector of Saxony, she continued
her studies in Dresden with Nicola Porpora and J.A. Hasse. With the Seven Years War and the death of the
elector in 1763 the cultural life at the Dresden court declined. Her lively exchange of letters with Frederick
the Great of Prussia from 1763 to 1779 bears witness to her increasing sense of personal and artistic
isolation; the musical ideals she had grown up with as a pupil and devotee of Hasse and a correspondent of
Pietro Metastasio lost their validity, and new music, in particular the new Neapolitan operatic style, found
no favour with her.

Maria Antonia Walpurgis was also a patron of the painter Raphael Mengs, the composers Hasse, Porpora
and J.G. Naumann and the singers Regina Mingotti and Gertrud Mara (the latter making her début in Maria
Antonia’s Talestri in 1767), and was herself an active participant in the arts. She frequently performed at
court as a singer or keyboard player; Burney warmly praised her singing. She took leading roles in court
performances of her own operas – Il trionfo della fedeltà (summer 1754, Dresden) and Talestri, regina delle
amazzoni (6 February 1760, Munich, Nymphenburg) – both to her own texts. They were published by
Breitkopf, performed in other European capitals and translated into several languages. Their texts are
clearly modelled on Metastasio (who made alterations to Trionfo), and their music on Hasse, who may have
had a hand in the composition of Trionfo. The published score of Trionfo included her self-portrait,
engraved by Giuseppe Canale, on the title-page. Many other compositions in manuscript in Dresden bear
her name, but cannot be authenticated; in many cases her name merely indicates ownership. Among the
compositions attributed to her are arias, a pastorale, intermezzos, meditations and motets. She wrote the
texts of Hasse’s oratorio La conversione di Sant’Agostino and several cantatas, and her poems were set to
music by Hasse, Naumann, G.B. Ferrandini and Gennaro Manna, among others. Antonio Eximeno’s
Dell’origine e delle regole della musica (Rome, 1774) was dedicated to her and included her portrait. A
manuscript thematic catalogue of her library (compiled c1750–90) is in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Munich.

Bibliography
BurneyGN

EitnerQ

GerberL

LipowskyBL
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Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Electress of Saxony

J.-D.-E. Preuss, ed.: Correspondance de Frédéric avec l’Electrice Marie-Antonie de Saxe, Oeuvres de Frédéric le
Grand, 24 (Berlin, 1854)

J. Petzholdt: ‘Biographisch-litterarische Mittheilungen über Maria Antonia Walpurgis von Sachsen’, Neuer Anzeiger
für Bibliographie und Bibliothekwissenschaft (1856), 336, 367 [incl. list of her works and those dedicated to her]

C. von Weber: Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Churfürstin zu Sachsen (Dresden, 1857) [incl. list of works, writings and
paintings]

M. Fürstenau: ‘Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Kurfurstin von Sachsen: eine biographische Skizze’, MMg, 11 (1879), 167–81

W. Lippert, ed.: Kaiserin Maria Theresia und Kurfürstin Maria Antonia von Sachsen: Briefwechsel 1747–1772 (Leipzig,
1908)

H. Drewes: Maria Antonia Walpurgis als Komponistin (Leipzig, 1934) [incl. list of MSS in Dresden]

A. Yorke-Long: Music at Court: Four Eighteenth Century Studies (London, 1954), 73–93

M.N. Massaro: ‘Il ballo pantomimo al Teatro Nuovo di Padova (1751–1830)’, AcM, 57 (1985), 215–75, esp. 245

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