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Ridolfo Campeggi

Ridolfo Campeggi
Born1565
Bologna, Papal States
Died28 June 1624(1624-06-28) (aged 58–59)
Bologna, Papal States
Resting placeChiesa della Santissima Annunziata (Bologna)
Occupations
  • Poet
  • Intellectual
SpousePentesilea Cattanei
Writing career
Pen nameRugginoso
LanguageItalian
Period
Genres
Literary movement
Notable worksLe Lagrime di Maria Vergine

Count Ridolfo Campeggi (1565 – 28 June 1624) was an Italian nobleman, Marinist poet, librettist, and playwright.

Biography

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Ridolfo Campeggi was born in Bologna, the scion of a noble family.[1] He was a member of the prestigious Accademia dei Gelati, assuming the pseudonym of Rugginoso (the "rusty" or "stained" one).[1] He headed the Academy in 1598 and 1614.[1] His pastoral play Il Filarmindo was performed in 1605, at the Casa Zoppio in Bologna where the accademia had its own private theatre. Filarmindo was a popular work in its day and brought Campeggi his first success.[2]

Campeggi wrote the libretto of Girolamo Giacobbi's Andromeda, the first opera to be performed in Bologna (1610).[3] He wrote also the interludes of L’Aurora disingannata, set to music by Giacobbi, and the musical drama Il Reno sacrificante (1617).[1]

Besides musical dramas, Campeggi wrote plays and lyric and sacred poetry. His tragedy Tancredi (1614), based on the tale of Tancred and Ghismonda (Decameron IV, 1) had a notable success.[1] Following the lead of Federico Asinari and Pomponio Torelli, Campeggi tried to elevate Italian tragedy to the plane of Seneca and ancient Greek theatre.[4] A translation in Bolognese dialect of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger's La Tancia has been attributed to him.[3] Also worthy of mention is the one hundred octaves poem L’Italia consolata [Italy comforted], composed by Campeggi in the occasion of the wedding between Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy and Christine of France.[1]

Campeggi was highly praised by Marino, who, in a letter to Claudio Achillini published in the preface of his poetry collection La Sampogna, called him “one of the freest quills that soar in our days in the Italian ether” (una delle più franche penne, che oggidì volino per lo cielo italiano).[5] He was a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti of Venice and of the Accademia degli Umoristi of Rome.[1] His correspondence with some of the most important Italian men of letters of the day has been only recently discovered in the Fondo Malvezzi-Campeggi.[6] Campeggi's most important work is his sixteen-cantos poem Le Lagrime di Maria Vergine (1617), one of the most popular religious epics of the day.[7] Subsequent editions of the poem appeared in 1618 (Cochi) and 1643.

Campeggi died in Bologna on 28 June 1624 and was buried in the church of the Annunziata.[1]

Works

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Mutini 1974.
  2. ^ Pietropaolo, Domenico; Parker, Mary Ann (2011). The Baroque Libretto: Italian Operas and Oratorios in the Thomas Fisher Library at the University of Toronto. University of Toronto Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-1442641631.
  3. ^ a b Chiarelli 2002.
  4. ^ Herrick, Marvin Theodore (1965). Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance. University of Illinois Press. p. 194.
  5. ^ Marino, Giambattista (1993). La Sampogna. Fondazione Pietro Bembo. pp. 26–27. ISBN 9788877466846.
  6. ^ Fogagnolo 1996, p. 637.
  7. ^ Cox, Virginia (2020). "Re-Thinking Counter-Reformation Literature". Innovation in the Italian Counter-Reformation. University of Delaware Press: 15–55. doi:10.2307/j.ctv15d81vf.6.

Bibliography

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