Francesco Cavalli

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(b Crema, 14 Feb 1602; d Venice, 14 Jan 1676). Italian composer. He received musical instruction from his father, G.B. Caletti, and probably sang in Crema Cathedral choir. In 1616 the governor, Federico Cavalli, persuaded Caletti to allow him to take Francesco to Venice, where the boy (who adopted his patron's name) joined the cappella of St Mark's as a soprano and later tenor. In 1630 Cavalli made an advantageous marriage with a Venetian widow, Maria Sozomeno, and in 1639 he was appointed second organist at St Mark's. He began his opera career at the Teatro San Cassiano and in the 1650s was also active in other Venetian theatres and other Italian cities.

In 1660-62 Cavalli was in Paris, where his celebratory opera, Ercole amante, was played to a less than appreciative audience; when he returned to Venice he vowed never to work for the theatre again. In the event he composed six more operas, but his life centred more on St Mark's and in 1668 he succeeded Rovetta as its maestro di cappella. His wife had died in 1652; they had no children.

The modest quantity of Cavalli's extant sacred music is probably only a small part of a continuous production throughout his career. Most of it follows in the tradition of large concerted works for St Mark's, best represented by the Gabrielis and Monteverdi. The Musiche sacrae (1656) includes a mass and Magnificat for double choir with instruments as well as several motets, and the Vesperi (1675) consists of three Vespers services in eight parts with continuo. A requiem and another Magnificat are among other sacred pieces published during Cavalli's lifetime. He also left secular arias and cantatas, but his most important works were the nearly 30 operas composed for Venetian theatres. They run from the tentative beginnings of public opera to the establishment of Venice as the chief centre of Italian opera, and offer the only continuous view of Venetian operatic style over two decades. Modern revivals, notably of Didone, Ormindo, Calisto and Egisto, have shown Cavalli to be the most important opera composer in the quarter-century after Monteverdi.

works:
Operas

• Gli amore d′Apollo e di Dafne (1640)
• Didone (1641)
• La virtù de′ strali d′Amore (1642): Egisto (1643)
• Ormindo (1644)
• Giasone (1649)
• Rosinda (165l)
• Calisto (1651-2)
• Eritrea (1652)
• Xerse (1654)
• Statira (1655-6)
• Erismena (1655-6)
• Ercole amante (1662)
• Scipione affricano (1664)
• 13 others

Secular vocal music

• arias, cantatas

Sacred music

• Mass (1656)
• Vespers, 3 settings (1675)
• 2 Magnificats (1650)
• Requiem
• psalms, hymns, antiphons
• 6 inst(s) works

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The Italian composer Pietro Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676), the most outstanding figure in Venetian opera of his day, ushered in the style known as bel canto.

In bel canto, melody is typified by smooth-flowing, sensuous lines, sequential patterns, a slowish tempo, and predominantly triple meter; harmony is unobtrusive, with occasional flashes of chromaticism; and an overall unity prevails, underlined by the character of the bass, which tends to that of the melody, with the former often imitating the latter or arranged in the form of an ostinato. The importance of melody results in few ensembles, choruses, or purely instrumental numbers; even the recitatives are lyrical and arioso-like compared with the rapid patter of seccorecitative favored in later baroque opera. Following in Claudio Monteverdi's footsteps, Pietro Francesco Cavalli fused music and drama, with musical and dramatic climaxes coinciding, whereas in most later baroque operas the emotional peaks were largely determined by the composer, not the librettist.

Cavalli was born in Crema on Feb. 14, 1602, the son of Gian Battista Caletti-Bruni, director of the cathedral choir. In his early teens he enjoyed the patronage of a Venetian nobleman, Federigo Cavalli, who took him to Venice in 1616. Later, in recognition of his patron's kindness and in accordance with a common practice of the time, he adopted the nobleman's name. In 1617 Cavalli joined the choir of St. Mark's Cathedral, Venice, under Monteverdi, whose pupil he became. Cavalli remained at St. Mark's for the rest of his life, becoming second organist in 1640, first organist in 1665, and maestro di cappellain 1668. He died in Venice on Jan. 14, 1676.

No music by Cavalli is known before his first opera, Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo (1639), produced when he was 37 years old. During the next 30 years he wrote 42 operas, of which 28 have survived, the last being Coriolano (1669). All but four of these were first performed in Venice, although many of them were revived elsewhere, notably L'Egisto (1643), Giasone (1649), II Ciro (1654), and L'Erismena (1655).

Cavalli's reputation was not confined to Italy, for as early as 1646 L'Egisto was performed in Paris, and in 1660 he was invited there for the wedding of Louis XIV, where he produced his Serse (first performed in Venice in 1654), with Jean Baptiste Lully providing the ballet music that was an indispensable part of any opera in France. Two years later Cavalli visited Paris again to supervise the performance of his opera Ercole amante, originally written for Louis XIV's wedding but not staged for that event; again Lully wrote the ballet music.

During his last 8 years Cavalli wrote no operas, only a Vespers for eight voices (1675), though it is likely that a Requiem, also for eight voices, and sung at his funeral, was composed about this time.

Further Reading

Information about Cavalli is available in Manfred F. Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era, from Monteverdi to Bach (1947); Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera (1947; 2d ed. 1965); and Simon T. Worsthorne, Venetian Opera in the Seventeenth Century (1954).

• Period: Baroque (1600-1749)
• Born: February 14, 1602 in Cremona, Italy
• Died: January 14, 1676 in Venice, Italy
• Genres: Opera

Biography

After Monteverdi's death, Francesco Cavalli became the leading opera composer in Venice. Tremendously popular during his lifetime, he was soon forgotten after his death, and his operas vanished from the stage until their resurrection toward the end of the twentieth century.

Cavalli's father, G.B. Caletti, was probably his first music teacher. Federico Cavalli, the Venetian governor of Crema whose name Cavalli eventually adopted, was taken with young Francesco's voice and brought him back to Venice with him at the end of his term. Cavalli entered the cappella of St. Mark's in Venice as a boy soprano in 1616. After his voice changed, he remained in the cappella as a tenor.

During Cavalli's first 25 years at St. Mark's, he sang under the direction of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), with whom he cultivated a relationship, and with he may have studied formally. His earliest known publication is a motet printed in Leonard Simonetti's Ghirlanda sacra, an anthology of motets by 26 composers.

Cavalli supplemented his income from St. Mark's by taking other positions in Venice, including that of organist at the church of Sts. Giovanni e Paolo. He also sang and played at numerous church festivals. His marriage (January 7, 1630) to Maria Sozomeno brought the composer a substantial dowry and some measure of financial independence.

Cavalli was appointed second organist at St. Marks in 1639; at approximately the same time, he invested in the Teatro San Cassiano (the first public opera house in Venice [built in 1637]), and began writing operas for that theater. This proved to be a sound financial venture for Cavalli, since he earned far more money writing for the theater than he did from his position at St. Mark's. By 1670, he had composed 41 stage works, most for the San Cassiano. Cavalli's Egisto (1643), Ormindo (1644), and Calisto were all especially successful productions; these, as well as others, have been revived in the twentieth century (often by Raymond Leppard, who greatly altered Cavalli's scores).

Cavalli visited Paris twice, and a modified version of his Serse (1654) was given there in 1660 as part of Louis XIV's wedding celebration. This represented a compromise, because the opera Cavalli had been commissioned to compose, Ercole amante (Hercules in love), was not completed in time for the performance. Finished in 1662, Ercole amante is notable among Cavalli's works for the use of orchestral strings to accompany recitative; earlier works had made use of basso continuo alone.

The most popular of Cavalli's operas was Giasone, composed in 1649; it is a perfect example of Cavalli's stark division between recitative and aria. In the perhaps inevitable comparison between Giasone and Cavalli's other operas with the works of Monteverdi, the younger composer's recitatives are less passionate, less probing into the psyche of the character, and lacking in the variety of Monteverdi's. However, Cavalli's arias are more developed than Monteverdi's. Strophic in format, Cavalli's arias are generally in triple meter and the words are set syllabically, except for occasional decorative melismas. In each opera, there is usually at least one lament, often employing a repeated, descending bass line and resembling a passacaglia.

It is in his sacred works that Cavalli most resembles Monteverdi; his earliest known sacred piece, Cantate Domino, could be mistaken for a work by the older master. The conservative nature of Cavalli's sacred works no doubt stems from his desire to maintain the musical tradition of St. Mark's, developed in previous decades by Gabrieli and Monteverdi. ~ John Palmer, All Music Guide

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