Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence

Wilbourne offers an extensive and trail-brazing account of racialized voices in seventeenth-century Florence. Interdisciplinary in scope and meticulously researched, Wilbourne's incomparable work takes us on a tantalizing journey into the musical and performative worlds of early modern Italy's "unsung voices." This book will enthrall non-specialists and specialists alike, transforming our approaches to and understandings of enslavement, race, and the power of sound across the Mediterranean world. * Nicholas R. Jones, author of Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performance of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain *
From one of the leading opera historians of her generation, Wilbourne's Voice, Slavery, and Race is a nuanced account of the reverberations between voice and race on the seventeenth-century stage. "Act I" reads the evidence of paintings, commedia dell'arte scenarios, libretti, and musical scores against a wealth of new documentation from Florentine archives, while "Act II" turns the spotlight on Giovannino Buonaccorsi, an enslaved Black soprano in the service of the Medici. In brilliant analyses that never skip a beat, Wilbourne pieces together a new and original history of racialized performances during the first century of Italian opera. * Kate van Orden, editor of Seachanges: Music in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds, 1550-1800, I Tatti Research Series 2 *
The book, the product of careful study of archival materials on the Medici period of Florence, seeks to identify and unravel how "anachronistic scholarly assumptions about race have concealed the workings of the early modern imaginary". Wilbourne examines not only general archival documents but also scripts of Comedia del arte, librettos of period operas, and even music notation to exemplify ways in which class and foreignness were portrayed on stage. Her work broadens understanding of the mixed society that was Florence in the 17th century. Included is a substantial appendix that makes transparent the author's sources. Highly recommended. * Choice *
Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence reframes the place of racial difference in Western art music and provides a compelling pre-history to later racial formulations of the sonic. * New Books Network *
The richness of this study lies in the focus on the sonic dimension of Others and Otherness in early modern Florence-the voices of foreigners, the enslaved, and those who were racialized. At the end of the book, Wilbourne summarizesthe key findings as five axioms that can be used as a guide to future research and teaching. These alone are immensely useful. The huge appendix of archival references in Florentine sources to enslaved Moorish, "Turkish" (non-Christian) individuals will be valuable to any scholar working in Italian archives as it meticulously details the descriptive language used. The book is abundantly illustrated with color plates, line drawings, half-tone images, and music examples that support the documentary evidence. * Naomi J. Barker, Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association *