Francesca Caccini

[4] Caccini was born in Florence, and received a humanistic education (Latin, some Greek, as well as modern languages and literature, mathematics) in addition to early musical training with her father.

According to Liliana Panella, the first well-founded testimony of Francesca's singer's activity, together with her sister Settimia, at the Medici court, is 1602: in his diary Cesare Tinghi notes that on 3 April 1602 St. Nicholas church in Pisa, where the court moved every year during Lent, polychoral music was directed by "Giulio Romano [Giulio Caccini], having the wife (the second wife, Margherita) and the two daughters singing well".

By 1614 she was the court's most highly paid musician, in no small part because her musical virtuosity so well exemplified an idea of female excellence projected by Tuscany's de facto Regent, Grand-Duchess Christina of Lorraine.

[6] After Caccini's first husband (Giovanni Battista Signorini, with whom she had one daughter, Margherita, in 1622) died in December 1626, she quickly arranged to marry again in October 1627, this time to a music-loving nobleman in Lucca, Tommaso Raffaelli.

[9] Caccini is believed to have been a quick and prolific composer, equal in productivity to her court colleagues Jacopo Peri and Marco da Gagliano.

[10] In winter 1625 Caccini composed all the music for a 75-minute "comedy-ballet" entitled La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina which was performed for the visiting crown prince of Poland, Ladislaus Sigismondo (later Władysław IV).

Combining witty parodies of early opera's stock scenes and self-important characters with moments of surprising emotional intensity, the score shows that Caccini had mastered the full range of musico-theatrical devices in her time and that she had had a strong sense of large-scale musical design.