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Personalities | Giulio Rospigliosi (Pope Clement IX) | Early & Middle Baroque | Opera

1600–69, Italian

Priest and librettist Giulio Rospigliosi served the opera-loving Barberini pope Urban VIII. Urban’s family gave Rospigliosi a magnificent setting for his libretto for Il Sant’Alessio (1632) by Stefano Landi, which was performed at the opening of the opera house in the Barberini palace in 1632. Three more libretti in the next decade included Rossi’s Il palazzo incantato. Rospigliosi borrowed from commedia dell’arte to make his comic characters more lifelike and produced the first thoroughly comic opera libretto for Chi suffre, speri (‘Who Suffers May Hope’, 1639) with music by Domenico Mazzocchi and Marco Marazzoli. Rospigliosi continued with libretti for two comic operas by Antonio Maria Abbatini: Dal male il bene (‘Good from Bad’, 1653) and La Baltesara (‘The Girl from Balthesar’, 1668). The latter was performed two years after Rospigliosi was elected pope, as Clement IX.

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

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