Francesca Caccini

Italian composer, singer, and teacher

• Born: September 18, 1587
• Birthplace: Florence (now in Italy)
• Died: After June, 1641
• Place of death: Unknown

Caccini was one of the most successful musicians of early seventeenth century Europe and the first woman to have composed an opera, one which became the first opera by any composer to be performed outside Italy.

Early Life

Francesca Caccini (frahn-CHAYS-kah kaht-CHEE-nee) was the eldest daughter of the great composer Giulio Caccini (c. 1545-1618), who is credited with writing the first operas. Francesca received a literary education at an early age and wrote poetry in Italian and Latin. Her childhood was ensconced in music, and she was given lessons in guitar, harp, keyboard, composition, and singing.

It is believed that at the age of thirteen, Caccini was a performer in the group known as donne di Giulio Romano—the ladies of Giulio Romano (Giulio Caccini). Her sister Settimia and her stepmother Margherita della Scala were also in the ensemble, which in 1600 performed in the first complete opera that survives intact, Euridice (parts of which were rewritten by Guilio Caccini), by Jacopo Peri. That same year, the singers performed in Giulio’s Il rapimento di Cefalo. The group dominated chamber music activities at the Medici court in the early years of the seventeenth century. They were replaced in 1611 by a group apparently headed by Caccini known as la sig. a Francesca e le sue figliuole (Francesca and her pupils), which performed regularly at court until the late 1620’s.

Caccini’s talent was recognized by many when she was still very young. Queen Marie de Médicis of France and her husband, King Henry IV, offered Caccini a position at the French court in 1604-1605, and in 1606, Princess Margherita della Somaglia-Peretti likewise offered her a salaried post, but she took neither position.

Life’s Work

In 1607, Caccini made her compositional debut with La stiava , a carnival entertainment that was well received and described as una musica stupenda, a marvelous music. That same year, upon the order of Grand Duchess Christine of Lorraine, Caccini accepted a post with the Medici court. In addition to serving as a composer, her duties included singing at liturgical services, specifically the Offices during Holy Week. This was unusual during a time when women were usually barred from church singing. (At one point, she and her sister were invited soloists at the Cathedral of Pisa.) She also sang at receptions and taught singing, instrumental performance, and composition to the princesses, ladies-in-waiting, and younger female attendants. She was appreciated for her skills and by 1620 was the highest paid musician in Medici service. She would work for the Medici family until 1627 and again from 1633 to 1637.

Caccini wrote or contributed to at least thirteen court entertainments—shows with singing and dance—including poet Ottavio Rinuccini’s La mascherata delle ninfe di Senna (1611) and Jacopo Cicognini’s Il martiro di S Agata (1622). One of Caccini’s most famous works was her sole surviving opera, the first extant opera by a woman composer, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (the freeing of Ruggiero from the island of Alcina), billed as a ballet but actually an opera, complete with prologue, recitatives, arias, choruses, and instrumental ritornellos. The work was commissioned in 1625 by Florence’s regent archduchess Maria Magdalena of Austria in honor of a visit by the Polish prince Władysław (who became King Władysław IV Vasa in 1632). The prince enjoyed the work immensely and, consequently, it was performed at the court of Poland three years later, thus becoming the first Italian opera—by a woman or a man—performed outside Italy. Moreover, in 1626, Władysław commissioned two new operas from Caccini: one about Saint Sigismund and the other on a subject of her choice.

La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina is unique among contemporary works. Gender plays a significant role in the actual music. For instance, gender is depicted with tonal keys. Alcina and her ladies-in-waiting sing in keys with flats, and Ruggiero and other men sing in keys with sharps. The androgynous sorcerer figure, Melissa, sings in the key of C major, which has no sharps or flats.

First, women and men are portrayed as experiencing the action from different points of view, while juxtapositions of gender-identified key areas are frequent and striking enough to create a musical subtext exploring the relationship between social status and cross-gender behavior. Second, Caccini’s intense, chromatic setting of Alcina’s long complaint to the unfaithful Ruggiero gradually dissolves the union between poetic and musical form as the woman retreats from the treachery behind Ruggiero’s courtly promises. This formal disjunction combines with Alcina’s retreat to the furthest reaches of the flat keys to create a haunting image of an abandoned woman whose grief turns to unreconciled anger. Lingering memory of this scene undermines the moralizing at the conclusion of the opera and challenges the stereotypical treatment of the lamenting woman in most early opera.

In 1618, Caccini published Il primo libro delle musiche , a book of thirty-two solo songs and four duets for soprano and bass (it is possible the bass parts were written for her husband). This volume, which has pedagogical characteristics, is one of the largest and most diverse collections of early monody, which was a new style of musical texture, one innovated by her father, Giulio. Monody emphasizes a solo line with chordal accompaniment. This style was extremely significant since it distinguished music of Caccini’s era from that of the Renaissance.

Caccini was among the first musicians to go on tour, something that would become common for professionals in later times. She performed in Rome in 1616; toured Genoa, Savona, and Milan in 1617; and performed in Rome again in the winter of 1623-1624. She was accompanied by others from Florence, including her husband, who was a singer.

Caccini had married years before, in November, 1607, after she initially assumed her post with the Medici. Her husband, Giovanni Battista Signorini, was a court singer, and, like Caccini, he was working for the grand duchess and for the grand duke Cosimo II de’ Medici. He had little wealth, but with Caccini’s dowry of 1,000 scudi, he bought two neighboring houses in the via Valfonda in 1610. They lived there until his death in 1626. Margherita (born 1622) was their only child, and she would become a nun and an active singer.

A year after Signorini’s death, Caccini left Florence, married an aristocrat and amateur singer of Lucca, Tomaso Raffaelli, and entered into the service of a wealthy banker. In 1628, she had a son, Tomaso. Her second husband died in 1630, leaving her wealthy. She was quarantined for three years in Lucca because of the plague, but in 1633 returned to Florence to serve the Medici. There, she sang chamber music with her daughter, taught nuns singing, and composed for the court. She left the Medicis for a second time in 1641 and may have died in 1645, since this was the year her son’s guardianship was issued to his uncle Girolamo Raffaelli. She is entombed with her father, her sister, and an otherwise unidentified person named Dianora.

Significance

Caccini was one of the most successful female musicians, composers, and music teachers of the early seventeenth century. She composed the first extant opera by a woman, the first opera by a woman or a man to be performed outside Italy. She went on tour before doing so was commonplace.

Her compositions are more abundant than those of her female contemporaries, and her works were composed over a longer period of time. She was a leader in presenting and composing monody, a new style of music innovated by her father that would be dominant throughout the era.

Bibliography

Bowers, Jane, and Judith Tick, eds. Women Making Music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Contains a chapter on the emergence of women composers in Italy, 1566-1700, that places Caccini in cultural context among her female peers.

Cusick, Susan G.“’Who Is This Woman… ?’: Self-Presentation, Imitatio Virginis, and Compositional Voice in Francesca Caccini’s Primo libro of 1618.” Il saggiatore musicale 5, no. 1 (1998): 5-41. An interpretation of Caccini’s 1618 music book and its symbolism.

Kirkendale, Warren. The Court Musicians in Florence During the Principate of the Medici: With a Reconstruction of the Artistic Establishment. Firenze, Italy: Olschki, 1993. Discusses the lives and activities of the salaried musicians of the Medici grand dukes and duchesses, including Caccini’s.

Pendle, Karin. Women and Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Contains a section on the Caccini women, specifically Francesca.

Silbert, Doris. “Francesca Caccini, Called La Ceccinna.” Musical Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1946): 50-62. Details on Caccini’s life with examples of her music. Includes translated primary sources.