The Music of Barbara Strozzi & Francesca Caccini

with lute solos by Gianoncelli and Piccinini

Elissa Edwards, Soprano

Richard Kolb, Archlute & Theorbo

Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi were two of the most remarkable women in seventeenth-century Europe, not just because of their achievements as composers, but also because they successfully engaged in a field normally reserved exclusively for men. In the culture of their time any publicly displayed intellectual achievement by women was commonly viewed as a dangerous subversion of social order, yet both Caccini and Strozzi managed to establish themselves as well respected composers with careers comparable to those of many famous male contemporaries.