Barbara Strozzi

Barbara Strozzi was one of the first women to sustain a career as a composer, and her emotionally charged works, especially the cantatas, have the variety and intensity of operatic scenes. Born in Venice in 1619, she was known as the “adoptive daughter” of the Venetian poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi, but was probably his illegitimate child. He encouraged her talents, and she studied composition with Venice’s great opera composer Cavalli and sang at the evening gatherings of Venice’s elite academies. Between 1644 and her death in 1677 she published eight volumes of vocal music, mostly arias and cantatas for solo voice (usually soprano); a single volume of sacred motets appeared in 1655. Probably written for herself, the music takes a virtuoso approach to word setting: “Lagrime Mie” (Op.7, 1659) is a tour de force of grief, with its opening wail of pain one of the most memorable in all of 17th-century song.