Dorothea Maunsell

Dorothea Maunsell (born c. 1750), who became Dorothea Kingsman after being Dorothea Tenducci, was an Irish singer at the centre of a scandal after she married (and later divorced) an Italian castrato opera singer named Giusto Fernando Tenducci. She had children with her second husband.

Life Maunsell was born in Dublin in about 1750. Her parents were Dorothy and Thomas Maunsell. and owned land in Waterford and Limerick. Maunsell was brought up in Molesworth Street in Dublin. She had seven siblings; “all the brothers did well and her sisters all married well - and then there was Dorothea”.

Much of the detail of Maunsell’s life comes from a publication titled "The True and Genuine Narrative of Mr and Mrs Tenducci: in a Letter to a Friend at Bath" which was published in 1768. According to this source, she took music lessons from Tenducci.

Death and legacy Maunsell moved to Kingsclere, Hampshire with her second husband and had four children with him there. She died aged 63 in Grosvenor Place, London and was buried at St George Hanover Square 21 February 1814. In 2012 Helen Berry wrote a fictionalised biography of her life in "The Castrato and his Wife".