A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sessi, Marianne, and sisters
SESSI, MARIANNE, AND SISTERS.
Sessi is a name well known in the annals of modern music, and celebrated among the vocalists of Italy. Of five sisters of this name, Marianne Sessi was the oldest. She was engaged, in 1793, at the opera seria of Vienna, went in 1804 to Italy, and then for a longer period to London. In 1817 and 1818, she visited the north of Germany, Leipzic, Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg, etc., and went finally from Copenhagen to Stockholm, where she remained. The second of the sisters, Imperatrice Sessi, has acquired the greatest reputation of all. Her talent was cultivated in Vienna. In 1804 she went to Venice, where, during the carnival, she enjoyed the highest triumph. She enchanted the audience so much, that sonnets of all colours and shapes were thrown on the stage; her likeness was handed around among the spectators; a bouquet in a richly decorated golden vase was presented to her; and at the close she was crowned with a wreath of laurel. She died in October, 1808, in her twenty-eighth year, of consumption, at Florence, deeply mourned by all lovers of music. The talent of her younger sister, Anna Maria Sessi, developed itself early. She was born at Rome, in 1798, but came to Vienna in the first year of her existence, where she modelled her art after that of her sisters. In Florence she devoted herself still more thoroughly to the cultivation of her voice; and here laid the foundation of a true Italian singer. In 1813, she was married at Vienna; and on all her subsequent travels was welcomed everywhere as a rare phenomenon of song. It is said, that in the recitative she had no rival, even among the Italians.
The fourth and fifth of these sisters, Vittoria and Caroline, of whom the former was married in Vienna, and the latter in Naples, are less generally known. A cousin of the above-named sisters, Maria Theresa Sessi, was also noted for her talent in music.