Florence, 6 Oct 1591 - Florence, 1660

Soprano and composer, younger daughter of Giulio Caccini.
According to Severo Bonini, she established ‘an immortal reputation’, having ‘mastered to perfection the art of singing’.
She was taught to sing and compose by her father, and by 1600 was performing at the Florentine court.
Although not mentioned by name, she and her elder sister Francesca are undoubtedly the ‘figliuole’ of Giulio Caccini who sang in Il rapimento di Cefalo in October 1600 for the marriage of Maria de’ Medici and Henri IV of France.
Four years later, at the invitation of Maria de’ Medici, the Caccini family spent six months in Paris, performing at the courts of Modena and Turin en route.
It was once thought that Settimia went to Mantua in 1608 to sing in Monteverdi’s L’Arianna but it is now known that the singer was another Florentine woman.
In 1609 she married Alessandro Ghivizzani; both remained in Medici service until the following year.
In October 1611 they left Florence without permission for Lucca, where in 1613 they were recruited by Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, and Settimia soon became one of the highest-paid musicians at the Mantuan court.
The couple returned to Lucca in 1620 after her dismissal from Mantua, and in 1622 they settled in Parma, where Settimia sang Dido in an intermedio and Aurora in Mercurio e Marte (1628), both by Monteverdi.
After the death of her husband she returned to Florence.
She is listed on the Medici payroll in December 1636, and a few months later sang in Giovanni Carlo Coppola’s Le nozze degli dei.
Of her own compositions only eight songs are extant of which three appear also anonymously, or attributed to ‘Parma’ or ‘Ghivizzani’.

Bibliography:

S. Bonini: Discorsi e regole sovra la musica et il contrappunto (Salt Lake City, 1979)
I. Mamczarz: Le Théâtre Farnese de Parme et le drame musical italien (1618–1732): étude d’un lieu théâtral, des représentations, des formes: drame pastoral, intermèdes, opéra-tournoi, drame musical (Florence, 1988)
S. Parisi: Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627: an Archival Study (U. of Illinois, 1989)
W. Kirkendale: The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici (Florence, 1993)
S. Parisi: ‘Musicians at the Court of Mantua During Monteverdi’s Time: Evidence from the Payrolls’, Musicologia humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. S. Gmeinwieser, D. Hiley and J. Riedlbauer (Florence, 1994)
T. Carter: ‘Intriguing Laments: Sigismondo d’India, Claudio Monteverdi, and Dido alla Parmigiana (1628)’ (1996)
Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Author:

Susan Parisi