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CACCINI,
Francesca,
1587-1640
La
liberazione di Ruggiero dall’Isola
di Alcina. Firenze 1625
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Musica
Drammatica, 4. Florence, 1998. 24
x 34 cm, viii, 131 pp. Line-cut of
Florence, 1625 edition (full score).
Comic opera in four scences, credited
as being the first Italian opera
performed outside of Italy. Wrappers.
SOLD OUT
"La
liberazione
di Ruggiero fits into the Tuscan
court’s long-term
pattern of representing powerful
women. Its setting at Villa
Imperiale,
its nearly all-female cast, and
its plot focus on the contest
between
two women over the sexual and
political destiny of a young man
all
invited its first audience to
imagine they were being given a
glimpse
of the gynecentric, feminizing
world they feared.
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It
invited them to confront and
resolve
their anxieties about local
women’s sexual and political
power in an
entertaining way, by inviting
them to suspend temporarily the
boundary
separating representation and
reality, in the very space most
associated with that power. It
invited them, too, to a
resolution in
which they could imagine
themselves liberated from
effeminacy (or from
unreasonable gynephobia) through
the agency of an unnaturally
powerful
but benevolent female, the
sorceress Melissa". (Suzanne G.
Cusick)
distributed by:
OMI
- Old Manuscripts &
Incunabula
PO Box 6019 FDR Station
New York NY 10150
tel/fax
212/
758-1946
www.omifacsimiles.com
immels@earthlink.net
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