A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Benini, Signora

by Julian Marshall

BENINI, Signora, an Italian prima donna, singing at Naples with her husband in 1784. They came to London in 1787, and sustained the first parts in comic opera. Benini had a voice of exquisite sweetness, and finished taste and neatness, but too little power for a large theatre. Though generally confined to opera buffa, yet her appearance and style seemed much more adapted to the opera seria, for which she had sufficient feeling and expression, as she showed in her excellent performance of Jephtha's daughter. During an illness of Mara, she filled with great sweetness, and much more appropriate figure and manner, her part in Tarchi's 'Virginia.' She had not indeed the gaiety of countenance nor the vivacity requisite for a prima buffa, and, though a singer of considerable merit, had to give way when Storace appeared. Of her subsequent life nothing is known.

[ J. M. ]