The famous soprano Angelica Catalani (1780–1849) visited Copenhagen between December 1827 and April 1828. Her visit was a signifcant event in the musical life of the city, and she stayed in the collective memory of the city in various ways for years to come. A lithograph of her portrait was published, for instance, and references to her were made in newspapers. However, references to her would also sometimes appear in more performative ways—in parodies, for instance, and in performances by other singers of musical works that in the public mind were closely associated with her. In this essay, I explore how some resonances of Catalani’s visit may be detected in and around performances
by a young Danish virtuoso contralto, Ida Henriette d’Fonseca, whose debut at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen took place only a few days after Catalani’s arrival in the city. I also discuss the concept of “inter-vocality,” coined in 1987 by Paul Zumthor as a performative, voice- and body-centered analogy to the text-centered concept of “intertextuality.” I consider how this concept may be helpful in the analysis of the complexities of performative references, such as can be observed to be part of several of Fonseca’s roles at the Royal theater in the wake
of Catalani’s visit.