Anna Bon

Born into a theatrical world, Anna Bon “di Venezia” (as she styled herself) was the daughter of the opera singer Rosa Ruvinetti and the librettist-scenographer Girolamo Bon. From 1743, she was a pupil at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, a charitable institution that had become, in all but name, a music conservatoire—famously associated with Vivaldi. Primarily for orphaned and abandoned girls, the Pietà also accepted paying students like Anna. In 1755, Bon was appointed “chamber music virtuosa” at Bayreuth, where Margrave Frederick and his wife Wilhelmine had created a mini-Versailles. Wilhelmine (sister of King Frederick the Great) was—like her music-loving brother—a flautist; Bon therefore composed many chamber works for the flute, in a graceful Rococo style. In 1762, Bon followed her parents to the Esterházy court at Eisenstadt, where she would have known Haydn; her mother, Rosa, sang in several of his operas. She married a singer named Mongeri in 1767, after which she disappears from the records.