Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music, and Defiance in Seventeenth-Century Italy

by Craig A. Monson and Annabeth Albert

When eight-year-old Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana (1590-1662) entered one of the preeminent convents in Bologna in 1598, she had no idea what cloistered life had in store for her. Thanks to clandestine instruction from a local maestro di cappella --and despite the church hierarchy's vehement opposition to all convent music--Vizzana became the star of the convent, composing works so thoroughly modern and expressive that a recent critic described them as...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226535193
• ISBN13: 9780226535197
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.9"