BarbaraStrozzi

1619–⁠37Giulio Strozzi’s house

Giulio, born in Venice in 1583, wrote verse, prose and opera libretti and had worked with Monteverdi. By 1634 Barbara was singing in his house, and Francesco Cavalli, one of the leading Venetian composers, taught her; in 1651 she called him her “courteous teacher” from childhood. In 1635 and 1636 Nicolò Fontei published two books of Bizzarrie poetiche for one to three voices, mostly to texts by Giulio. He dedicated the first to Giovanni Paolo Widmann, a Carinthian merchant living in Venice, and wrote that he had composed the songs chiefly to please “the most gentle and most accomplished young woman, Signora Barbara”, “almost a tenth sister” to the Muses.

The Genoese poet Gian Vincenzo Imperiale, another Incognito, noted in his travel journal for 1 November 1635 that he had heard Barbara sing at her father’s house; all esteemed her “one of the Muses of Parnassus”. He returned a few days later and wrote of the evening: “I do not know which was greater, the pleasure received from the music or that felt from the discourses.”

1637–⁠44The Unisoni and the Widmann family

In 1637 Giulio founded a formal academy, the Accademia degli Unisoni, with several Incogniti among its members. Accounts of its meetings were printed as Le veglie de’ signori Unisoni (1638) and dedicated to “Signora Barbara Strozzi”, who performed with other musicians and acted as mistress of ceremonies at some debates. She delivered the discourses written by Matteo Dandolo and Giovanni Francesco Loredan for the Contesa del canto e delle lagrime (1638), on whether song or tears did more to stir love. In the printed text she told the academicians that they would not have honoured her with their presence “if I had invited you to see me weep, not to hear me sing”. Satires aimed at the Unisoni mocked Giulio’s poetry and Barbara’s reputation as a courtesan. No record shows her on an opera stage, although the first Venetian opera houses opened in these years and Giulio was involved in them from 1639 at the latest.

Bernardo Strozzi, a Genoese painter active in Venice from the early 1630s and no relation of the family, painted a young woman musician who is generally identified as Barbara; a copy was made in 1639. He also painted Giulio and Monteverdi.

By 1640 Barbara was close to Widmann, a friend of her father who had admired her singing since 1634. Widmann was married. Their son Giulio Pietro was baptised on 6 February 1641, less than a month after the first performance of La finta pazza, a drama by Giulio Strozzi dedicated to Widmann, with music by Francesco Sacrati. Glixon considers Widmann probably the father of three more children: Isabella Aquilina, baptised on 18 March 1642; Lauretta, born on 10 December 1643; and Massimo. In December 1642 Barbara lent Widmann 2,000 ducats.

1644–⁠64Eight books

Barbara was twenty-five when her Il primo libro de’ madrigali for two to five voices was printed by Alessandro Vincenti in 1644, a few months after Lauretta’s birth. Giulio wrote every text. The book was dedicated to Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. In the dedication Barbara called it “the first work, which as a woman I send into the light too boldly”, and asked that it rest “under an oak of gold” safe from “the thunderbolts of readied slander”. Monteverdi had died the year before. Glixon suggests the book may have been meant as a tribute to him; Barbara knew him but never called him her teacher.

In 1650 Giulio made a will describing himself as without means. The house where he lived was rented by Barbara, and he trusted her to make the customary charitable gifts on his behalf, as she would do willingly, “remembering what I have done for her in bringing her up and setting her on the path of virtue”.

The second book, Cantate, ariette e duetti (Gardano, 1651), was dedicated to the Emperor Ferdinand III and opened with a piece for his marriage to Eleonora Gonzaga. Its dedication, dated 1 June 1651, names Cavalli. The book contained the first of her many laments, on the execution of the Marquis of Cinq-⁠Mars, a favourite of Louis XIII who had joined a plot against Richelieu. Only two of its texts were by Giulio. He died on 31 March 1652.

Her third book (1654) carried the dedication Ignotae deae, to an unknown goddess. A fourth, which according to her letter of 10 November 1655 was to be finished that year and dedicated to Carlo II, Duke of Mantua, is lost. The fifth, Sacri musicali affetti (1655), is a book of devotional pieces for solo voice dedicated to Anna de’ Medici, Archduchess of Austria; only its Salve regina sets a liturgical text, and Glixon notes the intimate tone of its Latin dedication. In 1656 Barbara’s two daughters entered the convent of the Santo Sepolcro, and her motet Quis dabit mihi, for alto, tenor and bass, was printed in Bartolomeo Marcesso’s anthology Sacra corona.

The sixth book, Ariette a voce sola (1657), was dedicated to Prince Francesco Carafa, who had already heard several of its pieces. The seventh, Diporti di Euterpe (1659), went to Nicolò Sagredo, procurator of San Marco and ambassador extraordinary to Pope Alexander VII, whom she addressed as her “tutelary god”; he was the only Venetian dedicatee of her books. Her eighth, Arie (1664), was dedicated to Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick-⁠Lüneburg, who visited Venice that year, and opens with a poem by Giuseppe Artale in praise of her.

1665–⁠77Padua

The last mention of new music is a letter of 30 May 1665 about pieces she had composed for the Duke of Mantua. Very little is known of her musical activity in her last decade. She died in Padua on 11 November 1677 after three months of illness and was buried in the church of the Eremitani.