Cunizza da Romano

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Cunizza da Romano (born c. 1198) was an Italian noblewoman, the third daughter of Ezzelino II da Romano and Adelaide di Mangona, and sister to Ezzelino III and Alberico da Romano.

Cunizza married as a young girl Riccardo di San Bonifacio, lord of Verona, but eloped from him with the court poet Sordello, who took her to his paternal house. Later she married one Aimerio of the counts of Braganze.

She spent her last days in Florence, where Dante came to know her in person. She appears in the “Third Sphere” in his Paradiso (Canto IX, lines 13–65).^[1]

A fictionalised account of the courtship between Riccardo and Cunizza—one with quite a different outcome—forms the basis for Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, Oberto conte di San Bonifacio.^[2]

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