CACCINI, Francesca

Francesca Caccini, also known as La Cecchina, was an Italian composer, singer, lutenist, poet, instrumentalist and music teacher of the early Baroque period. She was born in Florence on 18 September 1587 into the famous musical family of Giulio Caccini and grew up in the artistic world of the Medici court. From 1607 she worked for the Medici as a professional musician, where she became one of the most prominent women musicians of her time and, at the height of her career, one of the best-paid musicians at court. She was admired not only as a composer but also as a virtuoso singer and performer on instruments such as the lute, guitar, harp, keyboard and theorbo.

Caccini composed vocal music, chamber works, music for court entertainments and theatrical works. Most of her music has been lost, but two major works survive: Il primo libro delle musiche a una e due voci (1618), a collection of solo songs and duets, and La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (1625), her only surviving stage work. The Primo libro shows her mastery of early Baroque vocal writing, including monody, expressive declamation, ornamentation, madrigals, canzonettas, arias and sacred and secular songs.

Caccini is known to have contributed music to many court spectacles and theatrical works, including La mascherata delle ninfe di Senna (1611), La Tancia (1611), Il passatempo (1614), Il ballo delle Zingane (1615), La fiera (1619) and Il martiro di Sant’Agata (1622). RISM notes that most of her seventeen theatrical works were performed at court, but only a small part of her output survives today. Her work is important because it shows how women participated in the formation of early opera and Baroque vocal style at the highest professional lev