Michelangelo Rossi

Michelangelo Rossi was an important Italian composer, violinist and organist of the Baroque era. Rossi was born in Genoa, where he studied with his uncle, Lelio Rossi, an organist, at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Around the year 1624, he moved to Rome to enter the service of Cardinal Maurizio of Savoy. It was there that he met the madrigal composer Sigismondo d'India as well as the keyboard composer Girolamo Frescobaldi. Rossi's two books of madrigals, which have only comparatively recently come to scholarly attention, were likely written during this period. Rossi's madrigal output from this period is remarkably chromatic, to a level matched only by the music of such experimental composers as Carlo Gesualdo. The circumstances of Rossi's dismissal from the Cardinal's service in 1629, after a short stay in Turin, are unclear. From 1629 to 1632, Rossi was organist in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. Rossi's first known opera dates from his second period of Roman service, while in the retinue of the wealthy Taddeo Barberini. His opera Erminia sul Giordano was premiered during the Carnival of 1633 at the theatre of the Palazzo Barberini, and appeared in print four years later. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michela...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)