Francesca Caccini Book | Suzanne G Cusick sku-46927444

In Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court, Suzanne G Cusick examines the composer's thirty-year career at the Medici court. A contemporary of Shakespeare and Monteverdi and a colleague of Galileo and Artemisia Gentileschi, Caccini performed and composed music for more than a dozen court theatricals. She is remembered today as the first woman to have composed opera.

Cusick offers a first account of how Caccini built a fully professional musical career when virtually no other women could achieve comparable success. She argues that Caccini's talents served the political agenda of Grand Duchess Christine de Lorraine, Tuscany's de facto regent from 1606 to 1636.

Drawing on Classical and feminist theory, Cusick examines how Caccini's music sustained the court culture that enabled Christine's power and supported the sexual and political aims of its women. The book also considers music making as a way power circulated in early modern Italy. This paperback is listed as Musical Instruction under sku-46927444.