Caterina Cavalieri News
Austrian opera soprano (1755-1801)
Commemorations 2025 (Birth: Caterina Cavalieri)
- soprano
- opera
- Archduchy of Austria
- opera singer, composer
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2024-03-29
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2023-10-16 13:50:53
Short Notes I, October 2023
[…] the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, son of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara. After the cardinal’s death, Marenzio found employment with Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII, and later, with Ferdinando I de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. We can assume that while in Florence, he met the three Florentine composers whose lives we had followed closely in our recent posts – Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri, and Emilio de' Cavalieri, but while he inhabited the same intellectual circles as the three, Marenzio never got interested in their ideas about monody and opera. He did, nevertheless, write music for two out of six intermedi to the play La Pellegrina, composed for the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinando to Christina of Lorraine in 1589 (Cavalieri oversaw the production and composed one of the intermedi, Caccini composed another one, Peri was both composer and a singer). […]
2023-10-02 15:27:29
Giulio Caccini, 2023
[…] goes even further into Italian history and away from music. One note: if the name of Antinori sounds familiar to wine lovers, it’s not by chance – Bernardino’s family has been making wines since 1385. These days Antinori produce some of the best Chiantis and Super-Tuscans in Italy. Other episodes are not as gruesome but still attest to Caccini’s character. Two more talented composers worked at the court at the same time, Emilio de' Cavalieri and Jacopo Peri. In 1600, the wedding of Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici was a very important event. Cavalieri, who oversaw all major festivities of the house of Medici, was expected to direct this one as well. The conniving Caccini had him denied the position, and while Cavalieri did write some of the music, it was Caccini who managed the staging (we described this event here). The disappointed Cavalieri left Florence […]
2023-09-11 13:54:48
From Renaissance to Baroque. 2023
This Week in Classical Music: September 11, 2023. Transitions. For the last four weeks, we were preoccupied with two Florentine composers, Emilio de' Cavalieri and Jacopo Peri. In a way, this is unusual, as neither of them was what we would call “great,” as were, for example, Tomás Luis de Victoria, just two years older than Cavalieri, or Giovanni Gabrieli, born sometime between Cavalieri and Peri. But somehow the Florentines became instrumental in furthering one of the great shifts in classical music, from polyphony to monody of the early Baroque. This is a fascinating topic in itself: How could the relatively simplistic works of Cavalieri and Peri replace the grand and sophisticated music of the High Renaissance? How could such stunning works as Victoria’s Funeral Mass or Gabrieli’s In Ecclesiis fall out of favor while the first rather clumsy attempts at opera became all the rage? As far as we can […]
2023-09-04 14:58:48
Jacopo Peri, part II, 2023
[…] intellectuals and composers. Jacopo Peri was one of the first to put these ideas into practice, creating Dafne and Euridice, the first two operas in history. The librettos to the operas were written by another member of the Camerata, the poet Ottavia Rinuccini. Euridice was performed in October of 1600 in the Palazzo Pitti during the celebrations of the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV, King of France. Peri’s rivals, composers Caccini and Cavalieri, also took part in the production: the jealous Caccini rewrote the parts sung by his musicians, and Cavalieri staged the opera’s production (that was not enough for Cavalieri: he expected to be put in charge of all the festivities, which didn’t happen; disappointed, he left Florence for good. We recently mentioned this episode while writing about Cavalieri). In the 1600s, while residing in Florence and continuing to compose for the Medici court, Peri […]
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