Francesca Caccini

Francesca Caccini was born in Florence on 18 September 1587. She was the daughter of Giulio Caccini, singer and composer in the service of the Medici, one of the inventors of the new style of accompanied song that would give birth to opera. Her mother, Lucia, was also a singer. Francesca grew up in a household devoted entirely to music: she learned singing, lute, harpsichord, harp and guitar, but also Latin, poetry and composition. Her contemporaries nicknamed her “la Cecchina”, “the little magpie”.

Florence was then the laboratory of opera. In 1600, for the wedding of Marie de’ Medici to King Henry IV of France, Euridice, one of the first operas, was performed there with contributions by her father. Still a child, Francesca sang with her family during the festivities. In 1604–05 the Caccini family travelled to France at Queen Marie’s invitation. King Henry IV was so charmed by Francesca’s voice that he declared her the best singer in France and wished to keep her at his court, but the Medici refused to let her go.

In 1607 she officially entered the service of the Medici court in Florence and that same year married the musician Giovanni Battista Signorini, with whom she had a daughter. She became one of the best-paid musicians at court — singer, instrumentalist, composer and teacher. She composed music for court festivities, ballets and entertainments, often in collaboration with the poet Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, great-nephew of the great Michelangelo.

In 1618 she published Il primo libro delle musiche, a collection of thirty-six songs for solo voice and basso continuo, sacred and secular, in Italian and Latin. It is one of the most important monody collections of its time. It includes highly expressive pieces such as Lasciatemi qui solo and Maria, dolce Maria, in which the voice is richly ornamented with runs demanding great virtuosity.

In 1625 she composed La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina for the visit to Florence of Prince Władysław of Poland. Based on Ariosto’s epic, the work tells how the knight Ruggiero is freed from the spells of the sorceress Alcina. It is the first known opera composed by a woman and one of the first Italian operas staged outside Italy: Władysław had it performed in Warsaw in 1628. The printed score has survived complete.

Widowed in 1626, she married in 1627 a wealthy nobleman of Lucca, Tommaso Raffaelli, and settled in that city, where she continued to compose and teach. When her second husband died in 1630 she gradually returned to the service of the Medici in Florence, teaching the princesses and young singers of the court. Her last documented trace dates from 1641; the exact date and place of her death are unknown.

Much of her output — several ballets, intermedi and court entertainments — is lost. Yet what remains reveals a first-rank composer, a master of the new dramatic style. Francesca Caccini was largely rediscovered in the late twentieth century thanks to the scholars and performers who brought women composers back to light. She is now recognised as a pioneer of opera.