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References

* Colleen Reardon (reardonc@uci.edu) is Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on musical culture in Siena during the early modern period. She is the author of Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 15751700 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), Agostino Agazzari and Music at Siena Cathedral, 15971641 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), and numerous articles. In 201112, she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to pursue research in Italy for her forthcoming book, A “Sociable Moment”: Opera Patronage and Performance in Siena, 16691704.

[1] Archivio di Stato, Siena (I-Sas), Pieve di S. Giovanni 131, unn. fol.: “A dì 19 agosto (1649). Sigismondo Desiderio Maria figlio del Signor Augusto del già Signor Flavio Chigi e della Signora Francesco del già Signor Bennardino Piccolomini sua consorte fu battezzato da me Pompilio Aluigi. Compare fu il Signor Francesco del già Signor Mario Cerretani; nato questa mattina a hore 10.”

[2] The literature on Fabio Chigi is vast; for an overview of his life with a bibliography organized by subject, see Mario Rosa and Tomaso Montanari, Enciclopedia dei Papi (2000), s.v. “Alessandro VII” (accessed 9 June 2011), http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/alessandro-vii_(Enciclopedia-dei-Papi)/. For a more recent article on Fabio Chigi’s diplomatic career, see Irene Fosi, “‘Continuo con la solita cieca obbedienza’: governo e diplomazia nella carriera di Fabio Chigi (1629–1650),” in Alessandro VII Chigi (1599–1667): Il papa senese di Roma moderna, ed. Alessandro Angelini, Monika Butzek, and Bernardina Sani (Siena: Protagon Editori Toscani, 2000), 96–100. Fabio’s brother Augusto left little mark beyond his children. Augusto’s first wife, Olimpia Della Ciaia, died in 1640 either giving birth to their fifth child or shortly afterward. Augusto wed Francesca Piccolomini in 1641; she bore three children before her husband’s premature death in 1651. Sigismondo was the only child of this second marriage to survive into adulthood.

[3] Dirk Sacré and Luigi Monga, “The Iter Roma in Galliam ac Reditus (1664): A Poem by Sigismondo Chigi (1649–1678)?” Humanistica Lovaniensia: Journal of Neo-Latin Studies 53 (2004): 324–25, offer an overview of Sigismondo’s short life and the secondary literature on the cardinal.

[4] Sacré and Monga, “The Iter Roma in Galliam ac Reditus,” 328.

[5] Jean Lionnet, “Les Événements musicaux de la légation du Cardinal Flavio Chigi en France, été 1664,” Studi musicali 25, nos. 1–2 (1996): 128; Sacré and Monga, “The Iter Roma in Galliam ac Reditus,” 326.

[6] See Vincenzo Golzio, Documenti artistici sul Seicento nell’Archivio Chigi (Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 1939), 226–27, 239–43, 247–53, 373–76; Renato Lefevre, “Accademici romani del ‘600: Gli ‘Sfaccendati,'” Studi romani 8 (1960): 154–65; 288–301; Robert Lamar Weaver, “Materiali per le biografie dei fratelli Melani,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 12, no. 2 (1977): 273–74; Jean Lionnet, “Les Activités musicales de Flavio Chigi, cardinal neveu d’Alexandre VII,” Studi musicali 9, no. 2 (1980): 287–302; Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, “Production, Consumption, and Political Function of Seventeenth-Century Opera,” Early Music History 4 (1984): 251–53; Frank A. D’Accone, The History of a Baroque Opera: Alessandro Scarlatti’s Gli equivoci nel sembiante (New York: Pendragon Press, 1985), 20–22, 104–5, 117–18, 374; D’Accone, “Cardinal Chigi and Music Redux,” in Music Observed: Studies in Memory of William C. Holmes, ed. Colleen Reardon and Susan Parisi (Warren, Mich.: Harmonie Park Press, 2004), 65–100. Flavio might have also had dealings with Alessandro Stradella; see Carolyn Gianturco, Stradella “uomo di gran grido” (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2007), 40–41, 315–16.

[7] The posthumous inventory of the contents of Sigismondo’s residence is in Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (I-Rvat), Archivio Chigi 750; the harpsichords are listed on pp. 20 and 79. The purchase of one of the harpsichords is recorded in I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 41, p. 24 left. Expenses for tuning a harpsichord can be found in I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 761, fol. 77r. Lelio Colista was in the employ of Flavio Chigi; see D’Accone, “Cardinal Chigi and Music Redux,” 67.

[8] For the painting of Orpheus and Eurydice, see I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 750, p. 27. Sigismondo purchased Mei’s work in 1676 (see I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 41, p. 110 left) and had it in his possession at his death (I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 750, p. 23). I have not been able to identify any possible candidates among Mei’s works that correspond to this description. Representations of music making were, however, not uncommon among Sienese artists of the time; see Felicia Rotundo, “La rappresentazione della musica nella pittura senese del Seicento,” in Lo stile della trasgressione: Arte, architettura e musica nell’età barocca a Siena e nella sua provincia, ed. Felicia Rotundo (Siena: Nuova Immagine Editrice, 2008), 13–29.

[9] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 761, fol. 4r: “A dì 9 gennaro 1669 per ligatura e coperta di carta pecora numero tre libri in quarto reale rigati quali erano musice diverse, scudi [?] 1.5.” My thanks to Thomas Schmidt-Beste and to Jane Bernstein, who kindly informed me that quarto reale was a slightly larger than normal paper size in the early modern period.

[10] Colleen Reardon, “The 1669 Sienese Production of Cesti’s L’Argia,” in Music Observed, 417–28.

[11] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 41, pp. 120 left, 121 left, 132 right are entries showing expenses for copying operas; payments for the box at the Tordinona can be found in the same source on pp. 108 left and 140 left as well as in I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 753, unn. fol. dated March 20, 1671.

[12] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 231, fols. 5r, 90r–v, 91r–v, 111r–112r, 173r. It is still unclear whether Sigismondo ever traveled to Venice to experience the opera season himself. The “Cardinal Chigi” documented in Venice in April and May 1673 in the Massi correspondence—see Vassilis Vavoulis, “Nel theatro di tutta l’Europa”: Venetian-Hanoverian Patronage in 17th-Century Europe (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2010), 262–73—was not Sigismondo, but Flavio. This is made clear in a letter from Leonardo Marsili, a relative of the Chigi, who was accompanying Sigismondo to Ferrara. Sigismondo and his entourage left Rome on May 9, 1673, and by May 19 they only just arrived at Magione near Lake Trasimeno. At Magione, Marsili wrote to Flavio Chigi, acknowledging the receipt of his letter dated from Venice on May 6. See I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 739, unn. fol. and Archivio Chigi 33, fol. 300r.

[13] Janet Southorn, Power and Display in the Seventeenth Century: The Arts and their Patrons in Modena and Ferrara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 128. Several compositions were dedicated to Cardinal Sigismondo Chigi during his legation, including the oratorio L’Oloferne with music by Alessandro Melani, performed in Ferrara during Christmas 1675, and Le stelle combattute dagli elementi. Torneo rapresentato in Ferrara da diversi cavalieri per ossequiare il merito infinito dell’Emin.mo e Rev.mo Prencipe il Sig. Cardinale Sigismondo Chigi loro dignissimo legato (Ferrara: Heredi di Giulio Bulzoni Giglio, 1676). Sigismondo was also one of two dedicatees of a 1676 libretto issued for a Roman performance of another oratorio by Melani entitled Il giudizio di Salomone; see Weaver, “Materiali per le biografie dei fratelli Melani,” 277, 278–79.

[14] For a brief introduction to the Chigi family’s influence on opera in Siena and an analysis of one opera sponsored by the family for production in a convent, see Reardon, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 123–53. A history of opera in Siena during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is the subject of my forthcoming book, A “Sociable Moment”: Opera Patronage and Performance in Siena, 1669–1704.

[15] For the most recent overview of Masotti’s life, see Sergio Monaldini, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 71 (2008), s.v. “Masotti, Giulia,” (accessed June 9, 2011), http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/vincenza-giulia-masotti_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. The contributions of Beth L. Glixon, “Giulia Masotti, Venice, and the Rise of the Prima Donna,” Valeria De Lucca, “The Power of the Prima Donna: Giulia Masotti’s Repertory of Choice,” and Janet K. Page, “Sirens on the Danube: Giulia Masotti and Women Singers at the Imperial Court,” all in this issue of the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, greatly enrich our knowledge of the singer’s career and influence.

[16] Alessandro Ademollo describes the famous entertainment in I teatri di Roma nel secolo decimosettimo (Rome: L. Pasqualucci, 1888), 106–8. In November of 1668, Carlo Fontana published a booklet entitled Risposta del signor Carlo Fontana alla lettera dell’illustriss. sig. Ottavio Castiglione that included engravings of the scenic apparatus and some description of the music. On page 21 of the booklet, Fontana notes that Giulia Masotti sang a beautiful recitative, interrupted by a double echo. This work, on a text by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni, was separate from the large serenata performed that evening. I am grateful both to Beth Glixon, who shared this notice with me, and to the late Jean Lionnet, who furnished Beth with the information on the Fontana publication. It should be noted that Masotti’s talent was no secret in Rome. She sang at a private concert there as early as 1662, when a Medici agent heard and praised her performance; see Beth Glixon, “Giulia Masotti, Venice, and the Rise of the Prima Donna,” par. 2.1.

[17] See Jonathan E. Glixon and Beth L. Glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 211, and Beth L. Glixon, “Giulia Masotti, Venice, and the Rise of the Prima Donna,” pars. 3.12, 4.2, 5.4. The Colonna probably served as interlocutors during Masotti’s negotiations with Venetian impresarios for Carnival season of 1663–64. Valeria De Lucca, “‘Dalle sponde del Tebro alle rive dell’Adria’: Maria Mancini and Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna’s Patronage of Music and Theater between Rome and Venice (1659–1675)” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2009), 71–73, 130–31, 134–46, looks at Masotti’s relationship with the Colonna, a topic that also informs her article The Power of the Prima Donna.”

[18] See Page, “Sirens on the Danube,” par. 5.5, for the document recording that Masotti was fifty years old at her death on June 26, 1701. Her date of birth must have therefore fallen sometime in late 1650 or early 1651, making her only a year or two younger than Sigismondo.

[19] For Suor Maria Pulcheria’s letter, see Reardon, Holy Concord, 125–6. For Masotti’s last known letter to the cardinal, see MC 44. This document is dated “24 Mo 1673.” Although the month could be read as either “marzo” or “maggio,” the preponderance of evidence suggests that “May” is a more logical choice. Sigismondo’s official appointment as papal legate came only in April 1673, and he did not leave Rome for Ferrara until May 9, 1673 (see ref. 12). Sigismondo began his duties as legate on May 28, 1673; see Antonio Frizzi, Memorie per la storia di Ferrara, tomo quinto (Ferrara: Giuseppe Rinaldi, 1809), 129.

[20] See Page, “Sirens on the Danube,” Chapter 2. From Venice to Vienna: Giulia Enters Imperial Service.

[21] Masotti corresponded directly with Maria Virginia Borghese after Sigismondo’s death; see below.

[22] Eleanor Selfridge-Field, A New Chronology of Venetian Opera and Related Genres, 1660–1760 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 93–94, 96.

[23] Selfridge-Field, New Chronology, 102, 103–4.

[24] Selfridge-Field, New Chronology, 105–6, dates the opera’s premiere to December 26, 1671. Masotti names the opera in MC 33 and notes that the “princes” of Brunswick, the dedicatees of the libretto, came to a rehearsal of the opera on December 19 of that year (MC 34). See Vavoulis, “Nel theatro di tutta Europa,” xxv-xxxii.

[25] Selfridge-Field, New Chronology, 107–8, 110.

[26] My thanks to Beth Glixon, who informed me that Masotti did not take part in the production of L’Orfeo at S. Salvatore.

[27] See her “Giulia Masotti, Venice, and the Rise of the Prima Donna.”

[28] See Valeria De Lucca, “The Power of the Prima Donna,” Chapter 6. The Libretto, for an investigation of what Masotti might have meant by this remark.

[29] Reardon, Holy Concord, 125–6; Reardon, “The 1669 Sienese Production of Cesti’s L’Argia,” 419. A letter from late April 1669, at the end of Masotti’s Sienese sojourn, provides more proof of the singer’s good rapport with the extended Chigi family. Virginia Chigi Piccolomini entrusted “Signora Giulia” with the mission of taking her diamond-encrusted orologio (either a watch or clock) to Rome so that her half-brother Sigismondo could have it repaired. See I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 3888, fol. 33r.

[30] Masotti informed Sigismondo of the “favor” shown to her by the Dolfini, the Cornaro, the Contarini (MC 8), Cardinal Caraffa (MC 15), and the Pallavicino (MC 43), just to cite a few examples. In MC 24, Giulia notes that her return to Rome (and her patron) was delayed because “these gentlemen” wanted her to stay with them.

[31] The 1666–67 Venetian opera season had featured two alternating operas based on the life of Sejanus, the powerful and ambitious prefect of the praetorian guard who wished to succeed Tiberius as emperor of Rome: La prosperità d’Elio Seiano and La caduta d’Elio Seiano, both on libretti by Nicolò Minato with music by Antonio Sartorio (see Selfridge-Field, New Chronology, 90–91). Maria Mancini and Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna attended several performances of these operas while in Venice, and in 1676 Colonna had the first of the two operas staged at his palace in Rome; see De Lucca, “‘Dalle sponde del Tebro,'” 125. The Chigi collection includes a manuscript score of the first opera (I-Rvat Chigi Q.V.63) copied in the early 1670s.

[32] See Alberto Cametti, Il teatro di Tordinona poi di Apollo, 2 vols. (Tivoli: Aldo Chicca, 1938), 2: 330–34. My thanks to Beth Glixon and to Valeria De Lucca for their insight on this matter.

[33] The opera was Il Tirinto on a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. See Gino Roncaglia, “‘Il Tirinto’ di B. Pasquini e i suoi intermezzi,” Rassegna musicale 4 (1931): 331–9 and Renato Lefevre, “Il Tirinto di Bernardo Pasquini all’Ariccia (1672),” Lunario romano 15 (1985): 237–68 For more on the Chigi academy, see Lefevre, “Gli ‘Sfaccendati,'” 154–65; 288–301. Giovanni Filippo Apolloni provided the libretto for this opera. De Lucca notes Masotti’s “strong interest” in Apolloni in “‘Dalle sponde del Tebro,'” 143. She explores the subject in greater depth in her article, “The Power of the Prima Donna,” Chapter 6. The Libretto.

[34] De Lucca discusses Masotti’s requests to the cardinal for the libretto to Apolloni’s Alcasta (MC 31, 32) in “The Power of the Prima Donna,” pars. 6.9–6.14. For the subsequent history of Alcasta, see De Lucca, “L’Alcasta and the Emergence of Collective Patronage in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Rome,” Journal of Musicology 28, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 195–230.

[35] The line “Orazio sol contra Toscana tutta” is found in Petrarch’s Trionfi; see Francesco Petrarca, Rime, trionfi e poesie latine, ed. Fernando Neri, Natolino Sapegno, and others (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1951), 565. Ariosto then cited it in one of his most celebrated works; see Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Emilio Bigi, 2 vols. (Milan: Rusconi, 1982), 1:753 (canto 18, 65). Bigi, the editor of this edition of Orlando furioso, notes that the phrase was “already proverbial” in Ariosto’s time; see 753n3. Masotti may have also been familiar with the opera performed in 1651 for one of her first patrons, the Princess of Butera (see Beth Glixon, “Giulia Masotti, Venice, and the Rise of the Prima Donna,” par. 2.1), the subject of which was reported as “Horatio sol contro Toscana tutta!” See Filippo Clementi, Il carnevale romano nelle cronache contemporanee (Rome: Tipografia Tiberina di F. Setth, 1899), 446, http://books.google.com/books?id=9nguAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Il+Carnevale+romano+nelle+cronache+contemporanee&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LVKEVL20BMX5yQTa8IGoCA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Il%20Carnevale%20romano%20nelle%20cronache%20contemporanee&f=false”. My thanks to the anonymous reader who suggested this possibility. In “The Power of the Prima Donna,” De Lucca cites a letter from November 17, 1668, demonstrating that it took the combined pressure from the Contestabile Colonna, Agostino Chigi, Maria Virginia Borghese, Filippo Giovanni Apolloni, and Flavio Chigi to induce Masotti to go to Venice to sing L’Argia.

[36] Beth and Jonathan Glixon examine the complex and difficult negotiations involving Masotti’s appearances in Venice during the years 1662–6 and how she exploited those processes to assure herself very high salaries; see Inventing the Business of Opera, 209–14. Beth Glixon expands this discussion in Beth Glixon, “Giulia Masotti, Venice, and the Rise of the Prima Donna.” See also De Lucca, “‘Dalle sponde del Tebro,'” 130–31.

[37] The Chigi had two houses in Rome. Mario rented the Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi in Piazza SS. Apostoli when his brother, Alessandro VII, called him and his family to Rome in 1656. Flavio Chigi purchased this palace for his own use in 1661–62. In 1660, Mario, his wife Berenice, their nephew Agostino, and his new bride Virginia Borghese had moved into the Palazzo Aldobrandini-Chigi at Piazza Colonna. Sigismondo probably joined the family in Rome about this time. See Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 300–4. In 1673, Flavio Chigi, Filippo Apolloni, and Carlo Fontani were all living at Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi in SS. Apostoli. During that same year, Agostino and Sigismondo “con famiglie molto ridotte” were residing at Palazzo Aldobrandini-Chigi at Piazza Colonna. I am most indebted to Valeria De Lucca, who sent me this information from the Stati d’anime she examined in Rome.

[38] For an overview of the life and works of Apolloni, see Giorgio Morelli, “L’Apolloni librettista di Cesti, Stradella, e Pasquini,” Chigiana 39, n.s., 19 (1982), 211–64. For more on Masotti’s habit of suggesting that impresarios program these works (sometimes to replace operas she did not like), see Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 239–40, and Reardon, “The 1669 Sienese Production of Cesti’s L’Argia,” 419.

[39] Maria Virginia apparently had a keen interest in music. Alexander Silbiger speculates that Agostino Chigi might have taken Giuseppe Piccini into his household to teach Virginia keyboard skills; see “Keyboard Music by Corelli’s Colleagues: Roman Composers in English Sources,” in Nuovissimi studi corelliani: Atti del terzo congresso internazionale (Fusignano, 4–7 settembre 1980), ed. Sergio Durante and Pierluigi Petrobelli (Florence: Olschki, 1982), 260. Although Claudio Annibaldi has posited that Prince Agostino hired Piccini to teach the couple’s many children—see his “Musical Autographs of Frescobaldi and His Entourage in Roman Sources,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 43, no. 3 (Autumn 1990), 419n64—this does not rule out the possibility that Virginia also received lessons. As we have seen, Virginia was involved in the negotiations surrounding Masotti’s appearance in Venice in 1668–69 (see ref. 35). She was also the dedicatee of the Ariccia opera L’Adalinda (Ronciglione, 1673) and of the Sienese revival of Scarlatti’s Gli equivoci nel sembiante (1680). One wonders what kind of opera patron she might have been had she not been continually pregnant. The Borghese princess maintained at least a sporadic correspondence with Masotti. She wrote the singer on December 6, 1670, rejoicing in Masotti’s arrival in Venice, counseling moderation in all her activities, and offering her help, if needed. See I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 175, a volume containing copies of letters Maria Virginia wrote to various correspondents.  The volume is neither foliated nor paginated.

[40] Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 239.

[41] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 175, unn. fol.: “Con quell’affetto col quale ho sempre considerato et amato la virtù e l’altre sue buone conditioni ho intesa da lei la sua dichiaratione al servitio della Maestà Cesarea e me ne rallegro seco perché con maggior quiete d’animo si approfitterà di quei vantaggi che se n’è ripromessa e che io le desidero e desiderandole sopra tutto in cotesto nuovo clima una perfetta sanità. Roma, 18 novembre 1673.”

[42] Page discusses Masotti’s marriage to the violinist Ignaz Leopold Kugler in “Sirens on the Danube,” par. 5.2.

[43] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 175, unn. fol.: “Queste sue nipoti allevate veramente secondo il costume di buone religiose. Elle quando saranno costà sene troverà servita con esattissima puntualità e mi promettono che le saranno obbedientissime, impareranno la lingua(?) tedesca e faranno tutto quello lei vorrà, non vedendo l’hora che possino abbracciarla. Mi dispiace che non ho alcun modo di poterle far portar io a Fiorenza perché colà non ci ho più amiche da poter confidar com’era la mia Signora Anna Maria Acciaioli, che hormai s’avvicina l’anno che andò in paradiso, e poi di presente ne anco haverei persona per farle accompagnare bisognandosi servirmi di tutte le mie perché così vuole lo stato della mia poco buona salute e l’imbarazzo della mia numerosa famiglia. Roma, 18 giugno 1689.”

[44] I would like to thank Valeria De Lucca, who generously shared with me passages from the avvisi di Roma of December 16 and 23, 1673, that mention the death of Masotti’s brother; see I-Rvat Barb. Lat. 6376, fols. 469v, 475r.

[45] The children’s names and dates of birth are listed in I-Rvat Fondo Chigi MS Rve (III), fols. 33r–37v. See also Ugo Frittelli, Albero genealogico della nobil famiglia Chigi, patrizia senese (Siena: Arti grafiche Lazzeri, 1922), table IV.

[46] See Reardon, Holy Concord, 129–32. The lists of the fifteen trips that the Chigi family made to Siena between 1672 and 1704 are recorded in I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 1809.

[47] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 175, unn. fol.: “Elle godono al presente una buona salute e sene stanno allegre perché alla fine sperano di vederla come già li ho assicurate. Dalle medesime ritrov[er]à ogni sodisfattione perché sono obbedienti.… Quanto alle bellezze, è certo che non sono belle niente e gliela dico giusta perché non s’habbi a credere che siano belle. Roma, 27 agosto 1689.” Maria Virginia Borghese’s cautionary note to Masotti concerning the girls’ lack of beauty is reminiscent of a passage from a letter Olimpia Chigi Gori wrote to her half-brother Sigismondo Chigi after hearing Masotti perform in Siena in 1668. Olimpia described the singer as “a very ugly young woman” (una gran brutta figliola). See Reardon, Holy Concord, 126.

[48] See Page, “Sirens on the Danube,” par. 5.5.

[49] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 175, unn. fol.: “Havevo già inteso dal principe mio la di lei resolutione di voler seco le nipoti che sono qui in S. Eufemia ma sento dal medesimo che non voglino venire sopra di che non dico cosa alcuna.… Mi è dispiaciuto assai di non poterla rivedere in Roma il che mi sarebbe stato grato assai, ma bisogna haver pazienza. Godo però che habbia la sua figlia così virtuosa ma non mi reca maraviglia perché sotto la sua direzione non poteva essere che tale. Roma, 22 settembre 1696.”

[50] There is also the possibility that the girls were the result of an affair with another of the Chigi men or with the Contestabile Colonna. See De Lucca, “‘Dalle sponde del Tebro,'” 146.

[51] Maria Virginia was probably referring to Masotti’s daughter Theresia, who had accompanied her mother to Rome and would have been thirteen in 1696. See Page, “Sirens on the Danube,” ref. 82.

[52] The more rounded, cursive style of the handwriting in this letter greatly resembles that found in Masotti’s missives to Sigismondo from 1668. In addition, this letter, like two others from that year, MC 1 and 5 (the first from June 1668 and the second from November 1668), was written from Ariccia. I wish to thank Nello Barbieri, whose detailed examination of Masotti’s handwriting led him to suggest the possibility that this letter belonged among the earliest ones in this particular correspondence.

[53] See, for example, Sara Mamone, Serenissimi fratelli, principi impresari: Notizie di spettacolo nei carteggi medicei (Florence: Le Lettere, 2003), letters 653, 695, 732, 733, 737, 739, 750, 760, 775, 779, 783, 784, 791, and 842.

[54] I-Rvat Archivio Chigi 33, fol. 302v: “Dal Signor Marchese Riccardi che passò qui lunedì e fu tenuto una mattina a pranzo da questo Eminentissimo fu parimente in discusso(?) della comedia affermato essere anco in Fiorenza percorsa la fama del recitativo così plausibile che si trovava arricchita L’Adalinda. Il Signor Cardinale Legato doppo che haveremo fatta studiare quattro giorni agli musici pensa farla cantare una sera per goderne più particolarmente.”

[55] D’Accone, “Cardinal Chigi and Music Redux,” 70–71.