Domenico Melani

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Domenico Melani (born March 7, 1629 in Pistoia , † July 12, 1693 in Florence ) was an Italian castrato singer and court official from the Electorate of Saxony .

His father was the musician Domenico di Santi (Domenico di Sante) Melani (* 23 August 1588 Pistoia, † before 1650 Pistoia), his cousin the famous singer and spy Atto Melani .

Domenico was called to Sweden to the court of Queen Christina. In 1654 he came to Dresden to the electoral court. Here he served not only as a musician, but also in business matters. He made a great fortune in the process.

In 1664 Bartolomäo Sorlisi and Domenico Melani bought fields in front of the Wilsdruffer Tor in Dresden and laid out a garden with a summer house, theater, fountains and obelisks, it was called "the Italian garden", the Italian or Welsch garden.

In 1665 Melani was ennobled by Emperor Leopold I.

In 1666 and 1668 he had a passport to Italy, where he worked on behalf of the Elector of Saxony.

In 1678 he staged the ballet of the seven planets as supervisor of the theater at court.

As a secret chamberlain, he traveled with Wolf Caspar von Klengel to Greece and Italy in 1660 , where they acquired antiquities, Venetian glasses, Italian majolica, bronzes, pietradura table plates and pictures, copper engravings and books for the Kunstkammer. The Crucifixus of Jean de Boulogne (Giovanni da Bologna) was brought back from Italy by Melani in 1672 and transferred to the Kunstkammer four years later, in the same year two busts of Roman emperors from Italy.

After the death of Johann Georg II , Melani withdrew to Florence. Here he joined the Oratorium de la Purificació, a lay prayer brotherhood that also took care of pilgrims, army veterans, the poor and prisoners.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peoplepill.com
  2. ^ Moritz Fürstenau: On the history of music and theater at the court of Dresden. Dresden 1861, p. 12
  3. ↑ Barbara Bechter: "Some of the treasures of the Turkish garden on Plauische Gasse in front of Dreßden"
  4. ^ Michael Walter: Opera. History of an Institution, Stuttgart / Kassel 2016, p. 296
  5. ^ Mary E. Frandsen, Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The Patronage of Italian Sacred Music in ..., pp. 46 ff
  6. ↑ Uta Deppe: The festivals at the Dresden court Johann Georg II. Of Saxony, in: Princes without land: courtly splendor in the Saxon secundogenitures ... ed. by Vinzenz Czech, Berlin 2009, p. 218 f.
  7. ↑ Woldemar Seidlitz: Art in Dresden from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era (4): 1625 - 1710 - Dresden, 1922, p. 484 digitized
  8. ↑ Jean Louis Sponsel: The Green Vault: a selection of masterpieces in four volumes. Volume 1, p. 21
  9. ↑ Peoplepill.com
personal data
SURNAME Melani, Domenico
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian castrato
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1629
PLACE OF BIRTH Pistoia
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1693
Place of death Florence