Francesca Caccini
(1587-c.1630)

CAROLYN RANEY

Francesca Caccini of Florence was the composer of the first Italian opera to be given outside Italy. She was also the chief musical ornament (and highest paid composer) at the Court of Tuscany under three Grand Dukes: Ferdinando I, Cosimo II, and Ferdinando II. When the consort of family singers organized by her father visited France in 1604, Henry IV said, “She is the best singer ever heard in France.” He asked the Grand Duke to let her enter the service of the French court, but Ferdinando I would not let her go.

Monteverdi heard her play three different instruments and sing, “all very well,” in 1610, when he visited her father, Giulio Romano Caccini. Giulio, a member of the Florentine Camerata, and Jacopo Peri are generally credited with devising the first opera. Peri sang in Francesca’s opera performances as time went on. The poet Chiabrera reported her as “a marvel” when he heard her in 1615. Even long after her death, Pietro della Valle wrote that he had heard Francesca in his youth and that she had been admired for many years for her composing, her singing, and her poetry in both Latin and Tuscan.

It was as a composer, however, that Francesca was most valued at court. During her late teens, she began composing major “entertainments” with Michelangelo Buonaroti the Younger (grandnephew of the artist) as lyricist. She continued to sing in public until her success as a singing teacher produced a whole school of disciples whom she trained for private performances for the ailing Cosimo II, for special services for the court during sacred festivals, and for public performances in opera. Francesca was married in 1607 to another singer of the Camerata, Giovanni Battista Signorini. Their daughter Marguerita, born in 1621, was also a singer. At an early age she entered the Convent of San Girolamo in Florence.

Francesca Caccini’s major compositions include five operas, which she called “ballettos,” written with official court dramatists, and a large volume of sacred and secular songs, set to her own poetry. Only one opera, La liberazione di Ruggiero d’al isola d’Alcina of 1625, and her Primo Libro of 1618 have survived.

The question of ornamentation of solo songs and arias has long been a controversial subject. In general, Francesca Caccini the singer has made sure that posterity would use the ornamentation that Francesca Caccini the composer wanted in her works. She notated the ornaments in all her published works exactly as they appear here, including the final trillo, which was printed only when and if she wanted it in the cadence.

Il primo libro, a collection of short vocal works for one or two voices with basso continuo, includes nineteen sacred solos, thirteen secular solo songs, and four duets for soprano and bass. The songs are indexed by the composer according to the first line and also by the form of the poems, most of which she wrote herself. “Laudate Dominum” is based on the current Latin version of Psalm 150. It appears as follows in the King James version of the Bible.

Francesca designates this work as a mottetto, a sacred Latin text set to music in sections. She usually inserts an alleluia between the sections and always adds one as an extended coda. The irregular phrase lengths in this song are characteristic of Francesca’s style in general and are particularly appropriate to the irregularity of the psalm lines.

Placed as she was between the words of modality and functional tonality, Caccini had an unusual tonal sense and an individual style. She employed curved melody lines with double peaks, strong wallcing-bass lines (Il Primo Libro contains six examples of melodies written above a romanesca bass), displaced rhythmic accents, unprepared dissonances, extensive melodic and rhythmic variations, musical word-painting and other special emotional or descriptive effects, and a tonal momentum even with modal material. The melodic variations exploit the brilliance and warmth of the center of the human voice, in large and small melismas using changing rhythmic groupings.

“Maria, dolce Maria” is described in Il Primo Libro as a madrigale. The Italian madrigali of 1600 were composed of poetic lines of eleven syllables and seven syllables, variously arranged for six lines but always ending in a rhyming couplet: abc abc dd. The composer changes harmony under such expressive words as “dolce” and “serena” and introduces gentle turns in the melody itself as the words “soave” and “celeste” are sung. And since Francesca herself was famous for her “ravishing roulades,” she has written a long melisma for the words “canto” and “alma.” The entire song seems to express her joy and serenity on contemplating the character of Mary, mother of Jesus.

The instrumentation for the ritornello of “Aria of the Shepherd” originally included three recorders, two tenor and one alto. Printed instructions indicate that the ritornello is to be played as an introduction and again at the end of the strophe. The aria itself was accompanied by a keyboard instrument, probably a gravicembalo, a wing-shaped harpsichord. Francesca wrote the opera for the state visit of the Prince of Poland, “Ladisloa Sigismondo” (later King Ladislaus IV), to Florence in 1625. This aria was not mentioned in reports of the first performance, although it is included in the index of the 1625 edition and in a Polish publication that appeared after a production in Warsaw in 1628. That performance was the first of an Italian opera outside Italy. The text of the aria can be translated as follows:

My heart used to burn for the prettiest and most beautiful earthly star that today obscures the golden rays of Phoebus. Love used to laugh, longing to report on my torment.

But having been sneered at, deeply repentant, your piety healed my breast. Therefore I keep faith with whoever does not believe that Love is the only God of every delight.

In other words, the shepherd is beyond the temptation of Love. The hero, Ruggiero, envies him!

Although the two strophes of the song show the same harmonic plan, each presentation varies subtly in melody, rhythmic pattern, and especially in the placement of the trillo. This particular excerpt shows fewer melismas than do the other arias of the opera, in keeping with the simple character of the shepherd himself.

Further Reading

Raney, Carolyn. “Francesca Caccini, Musician to the Medici, and her Primo Libro.” Ph. D. diss., New York University, 1971.

Laudate Dominum, from Il Primo Libro

Francesca Caccini, transcribed by Carolyn Raney

Maria, dolce Maria, from Il Primo Libra

Francesca Caccini, transcribed by Carolyn Raney

Aria of the Shepherd

Francesca Caccini

From La Liberazione di Ruggiero, edited by Doris Silbert; Smith College Archives. Reprinted by permission of The Trustees of Smith College.