Giuseppe Maria Boschi

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Giuseppe Maria Boschi (active 1698–1744) was an Italian singer who performed bass parts, a range we would call a high baritone today. He is best known for his work with the composer George Frideric Handel in Italy and London.

In the early 1700s he sang in Casale Monferrato, Vicenza, Ferrara, Vienna, Bologna and Venice, where he created the role of Pallas in Handel’s Agrippina (1709–1710 Carnevale). He made his London debut in 1710, and after 1711 returned to northern Italy to perform in Venice, Verona, Bologna and Genoa. From 1717 to 1720 he worked mainly in Dresden. From 1720 to 1728 he was with Handel’s Royal Academy of Music in London, singing in all 32 operas produced there—seven by Bononcini, seven by Ariosti, and thirteen by Handel. He then returned to Venice.

Boschi’s voice sat high in the baritone range, and he was especially good at energetic “rage arias” with Handel’s brisk counterpoint. He created several notable roles: Achilla in Giulio Cesare, Garibaldo in Rodelinda, Lotario in Flavio, and Araspe in Tolomeo, often playing rulers or villains.

In 1698 he married the contralto Francesca Vanini-Boschi.