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.
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.