The Politics of Florentine Opera: Listening for Diplomatic Dissent in Francesco Cavalli’s L’Ipermestra (1658)
Dr. Mary Quinn
Thursday, February 20, 2025 | 02:00 pm
Latin American and Iberian Institute (801 Yale Blvd NE)
801 Yale Blvd NE (campus building #165)
About:
This talk will reveal how a Cavalli opera was used as diplomacy and as deception. Outwardly, its performance celebrated the birth of a Spanish prince, but its music, libretto, and staging question Spanish power and instead assert the value of Tuscany and its Medici rulers in the global arena.
LIGHT RECEPTION TO FOLLOW.
Mary Quinn is the author of two scholarly monographs, a co-edited special double journal issue, and a range of articles and essays. Her second monograph, Sense and Spectacle in the Age of Philip IV: Performing Empire in Word, Music, and Image (Amsterdam UP, 2024) studies how an array of people across the globe took advantage of public celebrations to question the Spanish empire’s policies in surprising ways. She is co-editor of the interdisciplinary volume Aural Culture and Poetics in the Early Modern Hispanic World: Sound, Rhythm and Music (2023) and is currently writing a book about Don Quijote for Cambridge University Press.
Notes:
This event is free and open to the public.
