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The Politics of Princely Entertainment

Music and Spectacle in the Lives of Lorenzo Onofrio and Maria Mancini Colonna

Valeria De Lucca (Lecturer in Music, Lecturer in Music, University of Southampton)

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Hardback

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English
Oxford University Press Inc
09 June 2020
Throughout early modern Europe, patronage became a means for the dominant classes to highlight their wealth, intellectual finesse, and cultural and political agendas, particularly within the court and religious institutions. Musical events like operas and carnival parades were an especially essential component of this patronage. However, the ways in which music patronage changed during the second half of the seventeenth century have largely remained underexplored. At the time, profound social and cultural transformations influenced the production and consumption of music in radical and permanent ways, not least through the influence of the Colonna family - Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna and his wife Maria Mancini. Two of the most active patrons of seventeenth-century Italy, they were particularly active in the musical life of Rome. Through their sponsorship of an unprecedented number of operas, serenatas, and oratorios, they supported the careers of the most prominent composers, librettists, and musicians of the period.

A new exploration of this period of music patronage, The Politics of Princely Entertainment follows Lorenzo Onofrio and Maria beyond the borders of Rome and through their far-reaching personal and institutional travels - to Venice, Naples, and the Kingdom of Aragon. Author Valeria De Lucca traces the journeys of not only scores and librettos, but also the singers, composers, and librettists whose art reached these distant corners of Europe through the Colonna family's patronage activities. The Politics of Princely Entertainment is a welcome addition to scholarly understanding of music patronage beyond traditional boundaries of gender, geography, and institutions.

By:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 157mm,  Width: 236mm,  Spine: 25mm
Weight:   1g
ISBN:   9780190631130
ISBN 10:   0190631139
Pages:   408
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Valeria De Lucca is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Southampton. Her research engages with the social and political implications of production, staging and circulation of opera and musical theater, with a particular emphasis on women patrons and on the lives and careers of female singers in early modern Italy.

Reviews for The Politics of Princely Entertainment: Music and Spectacle in the Lives of Lorenzo Onofrio and Maria Mancini Colonna

This veritable tour-de-force will surely become the standard study of the patronage of theater in seventeenth-century Rome. Meticulously researched, and richly illustrated, The Politics of Princely Entertainment brings to life all the allure and fascination surrounding one of Italy's most (in)famous power couples, Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna and Maria Mancini Colonna, and the musical culture they fostered. * Beth L. Glixon, co-author of Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice * The Politics of Princely Entertainment is a magisterial investigation of the culture of opera, oratorio, and cantata in the mid-17th century. Through a bounty of mostly first-hand documents, Valeria De Lucca gives us a tour of the lives of a couple of aristocrats of the highest rank who were deeply involved in the cultivation of music across Rome, Venice, Spain, and Naples. A splendid accomplishment. * Lorenzo Bianconi, University of Bologna *


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