(ANSA) – ROME, SEPTEMBER 24 – Choir singer, doctor and chronicler: these are the three parallel lives of Francesco Massonetti in Rome between the mid-seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth century told in the handwritten autobiography edited by Giancarlo Rostirolla published for the first time from Ibimus, the Institute of Musical Bibliography. The precious diary, an unprecedented cross-section of everyday life in the city, was kept in the Central National Library, in viale di Castro Pretorio, where it will be presented on 25 September at 11 am, on the occasion of the European Heritage Days.
Say Music, medicine, court chronicles at the time of Arcangelo Corelli. The Roman Diary of GA Francesco Massonetti (1659-1729) ‘, in addition to the curator, will speak Salvatore de Salvo Fattor president of Ibimus, and Flora Parisi, director of the State Medical Library.
Massonetti’s testimony came to light in 2007 thanks to the study of researchers Livia Martinoli Santini and Candida Santoro. “The importance of the autobiographical writing – says Rostirolla – lies above all in the musical context that characterizes the first decades of life of the character in question. The breaking latest news concerning the period of his scholastic and professional training represents perhaps the most significant testimony that musical historiography knows. on the social context and on the ways in which a musically gifted young man, especially in singing, was initiated into the profession of music. But even more curious are the biographical details referring to a specific training and career perspective, which is that of the world of so-called ‘white voices’ and castrati “.
Massonetti, immortalized by Pier Leone Ghezzi in one of his famous caricatures, was also a surgeon and for many years worked in the hospital of Santo Spirito in Saxia following important personalities in the sector. Finally, a large part of the volume is dedicated to his activity as a chronicler or diarist of the great historical and liturgical events connected with the papal court of Rome. (HANDLE).
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