“San Bonifazio” in Lombardia: migrazioni testuali rospigliosiane alla fine del Seicento

During the 1638 Roman Carnival, at Palazzo della Cancelleria, Cardinal nepote Francesco Barberini sponsored the performance of “San Bonifazio”, a hagiographic opera composed by Virgilio Mazzocchi on a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi – alias the future Pope Clement IX. According to the available sources, before being apparently forgotten, the opera was staged again other at least three times. Although its text is transmitted by a considerable number of manuscript witnesses (only one copy of the score, at least twenty-four copies of the libretto), this melodramma has been deemed to be of a minor importance in the history of seventeenth-century opera.
An interesting aspect that has been addressed only incidentally is the circulation of Rospigliosi’s librettos out of their original context. In particular, after its last performance, “San Bonifazio” is cited in December 1666 in a letter to Cardinal Giberto Borromeo by his brother Vitaliano, who was looking for Roman compositions to be performed at the family palace at Isola Bella. This article discusses further evidences of Rospigliosi’s fame in Lombardy through the analysis of an unknown textual correspondence between the lyrics of “San Bonifazio” and a motet, a cantata and a dialogue for two voices composed by Francesco Spagnoli known as Rusca (1634-1704).