Word: faustina
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...time, Londoners were far more interested in the caperings of Handel's two leading prima donnas, Faustina and Cuzzoni, than in his music. Almost nightly at the opera house, heads were bashed, windows smashed. The cheers & jeers drowned out Handel's arias, while the two "fighting cats" scratched at each other's eyes and pulled at each other's hair...
...late the men of the Dom Miguel, Rosa Faustina, Salvador and Maria Manuel realized it. Weighed down in their heavy rubber boots, with the waves crashing over them, they tried to haul in their nets. But the nets wrapped themselves around the rudders. Men were swept overboard. The boats drifted about helplessly, within sight of shore. In hundreds of cottages along the coast, people cried out in distress. Women huddled in shawls ran down to the sea. Hours later, the first bodies were washed ashore...
...When Faustina Setti, 50-year-old frugal spinster, plunked down her savings (30,000 lire) on the promise that the poetess would find her a mate, Mona Leonarda proffered a glass of drugged wine, then felled the spinster with a hatchet, chopped her into nine pieces, and kept the change...
Then she fired up the stove, crammed Faustina into several kettles (with "my formula of 10 Ibs. of caustic soda, alum and resin") and boiled them 24 hours. From this she made soap and candles. She ground the bones into flour and made cookies for her other clients. In the same way she murdered a 53-year-old widow (3,000 lire), then a 60-year-old retired soprano, Virginia Cacioppo, said to have sung Butterfly once at La Scala. The diva yielded 50,000 lire and assorted diamonds and rubies, as well as soap and candles...