Maddalena Casulana was the first woman composer to publish works under her own name. She was probably born in Vicenza, circa 1535. She married a member of the Senese Casolani family, possibly in the early 1550s, and was very likely present during the siege of the city in 1554-1555 with her two young children. After living in Rome with her husband, an alchemist whom she accused of wasting the household’s money, she left him and moved to Veneto. In 1568, Casulana attempted to obtain backing from the Medicis to sue her husband for the return of her dowry.
Casulana published her first works in Venice: a handful of madrigals as part of anthologies in 1566 and 1567, followed by her Primo libro de’ madrigali a quattro voci in 1568. In the latter’s dedication, addressed to Isabella de Medici, she claimed to want to reveal to the world “the vain error of men, who believe themselves to be such masters of the gifts of intellect, that it seems to them impossible to share these gifts with women.” Two years later, she published her Secondo libro de’ madrigali a quattro voci, dedicated to Antonio Londonio, a major Milanese patron of music.
In Venice she associated with musician and actor Antonio Molino, teaching him counterpoint. Her career then expanded to the European stage: her music was performed in Munich in 1568; in 1571-1572 she undertook a residency at the court of Emperor Maximilan II in Vienna, and travelled to the court of France circa August 1572.
When Casulana reemerged in the early 1580s, she did so under the name Maddalena Mezari, the name of her second husband. He was most likely a man from Brescia whom she married in Vicenze in 1579. In 1583, Brescian printer Vincenzo Sabbio republished Casulana’s Primo libro de’ madrigali a quattro voci with backing from the Tini brothers, two booksellers who also hailed from Brescia and were active in Milan. As a singer and lutist, Casulana performed in a variety of places, including Perugia, the Accademia Olimpica in Vicenza, and Verona, where she spent some of 1583 as a guest of Leonardo Montanaro. While there, she associated with Veronese Count Mario Bevilacqua, to whom she dedicated her Primo libro de’ madrigali a cinque voci. Casulana published two collections of spiritual madrigals between 1586 and 1591, which have been lost. Those are the last known traces of her existence. A portrait of Casulana used to be part of the collection of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, housed at Innsbruck’s Ambras castle, but it has also been lost.

– Catherine Deutsch, professor at the Université de Lorraine –

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]


Dates: circa 1535 - circa 1590.
Active circa 1550 - 1590.