Francesca Caccini: Composer to the Medicis

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Francesca Caccini (1587-c.1641) is one of the forgotten women of classical music. She was an exceptional singer and instrumentalist, but above all, an immensely talented composer. Working full time at the Medici court from the age of 20, Caccini became one of its best paid employees. Many of her compositions have been lost, but her only surviving stage work, La liberazione di Ruggiero, is considered to be the oldest opera by a woman composer.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out more about this great and neglected composer from biographer Dr. Anna Beer and Deborah Roberts, Artistic Director of the Brighton Early Music Festival.

The podcast features excerpts of Caccini's music from Ars Lyrica Houston's programme, Italian Sirens, recorded in Zilkha Hall, Hobby Centre for the Performing Arts, Houston, Texas on 12 November 2017 with Sydney Anderson (soprano), Cecilia Duarte (mezzo-soprano) and Matthew Dirst (Artistic Director). Audio courtesy of Ars Lyrica Houston.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	La schata mi guissenne el tio,
0:19.0	El vino,
0:24.0	y el gran imelón,
0:32.0	su viso.
0:43.0	Pranchesca Cacini is one of the forgotten women of classical music.
0:47.0	She was a singer and instrumentalist, excelling at the lute, the theorbo,
0:52.0	the hopsy chord, the guitar and the harp, and a bobble, an immensely talented composer.
0:58.0	Before she reached her 15th birthday, Cacina had performed before many of Europe's most important families.
1:04.0	From the age of 20 she worked full-time as a musician at the medit she caught.
1:09.0	She was become one of its best-paid employees.
1:12.0	If you don't know her name, it will be, well, in part, because many of her works have not survived.
1:19.0	Although she did create one surviving opera, the first by a woman, when opera was only just coming into being as a form.
1:26.0	In her lifetime, her work was described as una muzica stupenda,
1:32.0	and Christopher Obronzini wrote that her music transformed human beings into gods.
1:39.0	To discuss the life and work of Francesca Cacini, I'm joined by Deborah Roberts,
1:45.0	artistic director of the Brighton Early Music Festival, who has staged Cacini's opera,
1:50.0	and this year made a film of it, which will be released in the summer,
1:53.0	and Dr. Annabeeer, fellow of Kellogg College Oxford, and the author of Sounds and Sweetheirs,
2:00.0	the forgotten women of classical music.
2:03.0	Dr. Beers' new book on the forgotten women of English literature, Eve Bytes Back, will be released in October.
2:18.0	Dr. Beers, thank you so much for making time to talk to me here at Kellogg College,
2:24.0	and we're going to be talking about Francesca Cacini.
	...

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