Giovanni Francesco Busenello

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Gian Francesco Busenello (1598–1659) was born in Venice into a wealthy and influential patrician family. He studied law with Paolo Sarpi (see below) and philosophy with Cesare Cremonini. After receiving his doctorate in law in 1619, he took up a career in the [Venetian] magistracy and became a celebrated advocate. He devoted his leisure to literature, the preferred diversion of Venetian high society in that epoch, producing an abundant and diverse oeuvre: poems, idylls, and melodramas.

Ambitious, worldly, slightly cynical, Busenello swiftly made a place for himself among the beaux esprits of his day. He assiduously fequented Venetian literary circles, notably the Socratic assemblies at the Casa Morosini where [the great Venetian advocate] Paolo Sarpi, who loved to surround himself with the intellectual elite, set the tone.

Busenello also became a member of the very aristocratic and libertine Accademia degli Incogniti founded by Francesco Loredano, and one finds in his works—from his obscene verses to the sulphurous [libretto for Claudio Monteverdi ’s] L’Incoronazione di Poppea (the Coronation of Poppea)—the very particular spirit which animated that group.

[Busenello wrote only five libretti in all; that for Monteverdi’s Poppea and four for Monteverdi’s pupil and sucessor Francesco Cavalli, but music survives for only three. He died in 1659.

For an admirable survey of his work and his significance in the history of opera, please see the chapter on Busenello in Patrick J. Smith’s classic study of opera libretti The Tenth Muse.]

The brief biography of Busenello above [with a few clarifying additions in brackets] was translated from the French, where it appears in more ample form the website [[1]] hosted by "HORVALLIS, art historian and critic."