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Part 1 of this article appeared in the March 2021 issue of Soundboard (vol. 47, no. 1).
Following in the footsteps of her illustrious father, Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), Emilia Giuliani-Guglielmi established herself as a virtuosic guitarist and composer. There has been mystery surrounding her birth and the identity of her mother. Detailed research by Michael Lorenz shows Emilia was born in Vienna, Austria, on April 23, 1813, and reveals her mother to be Anna Wiesenberger. Though not his legal wife, Mauro was in a committed relationship with Wiesenberger in Vienna and the couple bore three children. Wiesenberger died in 1817 at age 34. Documents presented by Lorenz show Mauro declared his paternity and offered to legally adopt his children after their mother's death. Instead, an orphanage and various persons were named as guardians.1
Information about Emilia's education and training is not readily available, but one can contemplate the possible role Mauro had in Emilia's young life. It is impressive to consider that she made her concert debut in duet with her father in 1828, when she was 15, at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, Italy. A review of the performance in the Giornale del Regno delle Due Sicilie on February 13, 1828, stated: "the guitar pieces executed by him and by one of his daughters named Emilia...pleased so much, that he and this young lady, for whom we have great hopes, were repeatedly applauded, and ultimately [given a curtain call] by the public." In October of the same year, Emilia gave a solo performance between acts of an opera with the same journal reporting that she showed herself to be "not only a worthy disciple but also an emulator of her father."2
An announcement in the Giornale delle Due Sicilie, mourning Mauro's death, cites Emilia's musical promise as a comforting force upon the passing of the great musician: "On the morning of the 8th of this month [May 1829] Mauro Giuliani, the famous guitarist, died in this capital... He has left us a daughter of tender age, who shows herself to be the inheritor of his uncommon ability-a circumstance which alone can mitigate the sadness of this loss."3
Emilia performed in cities such as Vienna, Pest (Budapest), Naples, and Florence, where in 1839 she played...