‘Donna regale in auree scene t'apre il mondo in teatro': Maria Camilla Pallavicini Rospigliosi and Opera in Rome at the End of the Seventeenth Century
Résumé
In 1670, the marriage between Giovanni Battista Rospigliosi, nephew of Pope Clemente IX, and Maria Camilla Pallavicini, of Genoese origin, ratified the creation of a new dynasty: the house of Rospigliosi-Pallavicini. Both husband and wife were descended from non-Roman families; together they worked hard to consolidate their social advancement. Both were cultured, avid art collectors and music patrons; each cultivated individual interests and tastes. The Duchess Rospigliosi, in particular, made a name for herself at the beginning of the 1690s through the promotion of a series of operas in the theatre of the Palazzo al Quirinale, where the new family resided. This essay analyses various types of sources, such as chronicles, avvisi (manuscript newsletters), librettos, and celebratory poems related to these events, with two main goals: to reconstruct the network of literati, artists, and musicians who gravitated around the Rospigliosi, and to uncover the ways in which the Duchess successfully made herself visible on the Roman ‘stage’ at the end of the seventeenth century.
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