Francesca Caccini

Francesca Caccini
(b Florence, 18 Sept 1587; d after June 1641). Italian composer and singer, elder daughter of (1) Giulio Caccini.

She was the first woman known to have composed opera and probably the most prolific woman composer of her time.

As the daughter, sister, wife and mother of singers, Francesca Caccini was immersed in the musical culture of her time from earliest childhood. In addition to training in singing, guitar, harp and keyboard playing, and composition, she must have received a literary education, for she is known to have written poetry in Italian and Latin. Along with her sister (3) Settimia and her stepmother Margherita della Scala, she is assumed to have been one of the ‘donne di Giulio Romano’ (Giulio Caccini) who performed in Jacopo Peri’s L’Euridice and her father’s Il rapimento di Cefalo in 1600 and who dominated the official chamber music of the Medici court in the first decade of the 17th century. After 1611 this ensemble was replaced by a group described in court diaries as ‘la sig.a Francesca e le sue figliuole’ (Francesca and her pupils), who regularly performed chamber music for women’s voices until the late 1620s.