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During the 1660s, Aurelia would lose two of her closest associates: her husband and Anne of Austria. Having gone on tour to Italy following the apparent success of her first publication, she returned to Paris in 1660 after learning of Bianchi’s sudden death. For her second publication, I rifiuti di Pindo (The Trash of Pindus, 1666), she no longer went by his name but assumed her stage name, Aurelia Fedeli. This book reproduces some of the first book’s poetry along with new verse, much of it again poesie per musica. It was in this year that she lost her patron, Anne; perhaps she published her second book in an effort to assure continued patronage from King Louis XIV. The wide dissemination of her publications attests to their success: poesie per musica from both books were soon set by such major composers as Francesco Cavalli, Carlo Pallavicino, and Agostino Steffani, as well as Domenico Rena, Marco Marazzoli, Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei, Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani, Giovanni Carlo Rossi, and Alessandro Melani.
Aurelia’s need for support after having lost both husband and patron apparently prompted her request that her son come from Mantua along with his family to join her and the other Italian actors in Paris. A welcome figure in the Comédie Italienne, Marc’ Antonio Romagnesi was immediately put to work; according to Ange Lolli, one of the long-time Italian comedians active in Paris, Romagnesi could devise and compose one play per week for the troupe as well as play the part of Cintio. Following in his mother’s footsteps, his skills onstage also lent themselves to poetry and song. His 1673 publication, Poesie liriche—an astounding collection of poetry numbering over five-hundred pages—testifies to his talents as a poet and as a musician with many poems, like his mother’s, per musica. His move to Paris offered mother and son several opportunities to perform together until her retirement from the stage at 70.
In 1683, Aurelia and her colleagues were accorded French nationality by King Louis XIV, by virtue of their residence in Paris for over twenty years. Her naturalization papers gallicized her legal name to read Brigide Fidelle, thereby confirming her given name, Brigida, and her original family name, Fedeli. She signed as Brigida Fedeli on her own pension payments, but when collecting her widow’s pension, she used Aurelia Brigida Bianchi, combining her stage name, her given name, and her late husband’s last name.
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