(b Lucca, 29 Oct 1550; d Florence, ?1597). Italian poet and playwright. A noblewoman and cousin of the poet Giovanni Guidiccioni, she was at the Medici court in Florence from 1588. For Il ballo del gran duca (performed in 1589) she wrote poetry to Cavalieri’s pre-existing music. Her three pastoral plays, La disperazione di Fileno, Il satiro (both performed in 1590) and Il giuoco della cieca (an adaptation of Act 3 scene ii of Guarini’s Il pastor fido, performed in 1595), all now lost, were set by Cavalieri and are the earliest known melodrammi, prefiguring Rinuccini’s Dafne of 1598. Vittoria Archilei sang in La disperazione di Fileno (a list of interlocutors is given in Solerti, 1902). Guidiccioni Lucchesini and Cavalieri also produced Tasso’s Aminta for performance by the ladies of the Florentine court during Carnival in 1590. Some of Guidiccioni’s poetry has been published (ed. L. Bergalli, Venice, 1726).
GroveO (‘Cavalieri, Emilio de’; H.W. Hitchcock)
PirrottaDO
SolertiMBD
A. Solerti: ‘Laura Guidiccioni Lucchesini ed Emilio de’ Cavalieri’, RMI, ix (1902), 797–829
C. Palisca: ‘Musical Asides in the Diplomatic Correspondence of Emilio de’ Cavalieri’, MQ, xlix (1963), 339–55
A.M. Nagler: Theatre Festivals of the Medici 1539–1637 (New Haven and London, 1964)
W. Kirkendale: ‘Emilio de’ Cavalieri, a Roman Gentleman in a Florentine Court’, Quadrivium, xii/2 (1971), 9–21
W. Kirkendale: L’aria di Fiorenza, id est Il ballo del gran duca (Florence, 1972)
W. Kirkendale: ‘L’opera in musica prima del Peri: le pastorali perdute di Laura Guidiccioni ed Emilio de’ Cavalieri’, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del ’500, ed. N. Pirrotta (Florence, 1983), 365–95
J.W. Hill: ‘O che nuovo miracolo!: a New Hypothesis about the Aria di Fiorenza’, In cantu et in sermone: for Nino Pirrotta, ed. F. Della Seta and F. Piperno (Florence, 1989), 283–322
W. Kirkendale: The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici with a Reconstruction of the Artistic Establishment (Florence, 1993)
ANNE MacNEIL