Emilio de’ Cavalieri: innovator of musical theater

Life

His entire creative trajectory, from training to full maturity, unfolded consistently within the period of Mannerism, but his work was fundamental to the experimentations that gave rise to the Baroque.

Emilio de’ Cavalieri was born in Rome in 1550 into a noble family: his father Tommaso was a friend of Michelangelo. After his early training, he lived for a long time in Florence at the court of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, the future Grand Duke of Tuscany. There, in 1588, he obtained the post of music master in the Basilica.

He frequented the Camerata de’ Bardi, the academy that theorized the birth of theater in music. To him we owe oratorios, madrigals, and lamentations, in addition to an intense activity as an organist, singing teacher, dancer, and choreographer. In 1589 he was responsible for the music of the Intermedi della Pellegrina, composed for the wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici, directing the performance and contributing to the music of the sixth intermedio.

He collaborated with Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini, laying the foundations for recitar cantando and melodrama. Returning to Rome, he was appointed director of music by Grand Duke Ferdinando. There he organized the Oratorio del Crocifisso and in 1600 presented his most famous work, the Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo, considered a milestone of musical theater.

He died in Rome in 1602, leaving an artistic heritage that influenced the birth of opera and representational sacred music of the seventeenth century.

Works

L’Ascensione del Nostro Salvatore (ante 1588); Godi turba immortale, madrigal and Canzone a ballo from La Pellegrina (1589, ed. Venice 1591); Il Satiro and La disperazione di Fileno (Florence, 1590, texts by Laura Guidiccioni); Il giuoco della cieca (Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 1595, texts by Guidiccioni and Guarini); Lamentationes Hieremiae Prophetae (1599, responsories for 1–5 voices); Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo (Rome, Oratorio dei Filippini, 1600); Dialogo di Giunone e Minerva (Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, 1600, music lost).