Isorelli, Dionisio

ISORELLI, DIONISIO. - Musician, b. in Parma in 1544, d. in Rome on 21 April 1632. After having served at the court of the Medici in Florence as an organizer of spectacles (for example, the intermedi of 1589), he came to Rome, where he entered the Congregation of the Oratory at the Vallicella, as a layman, in 1599.

He collaborated with E. Del Cavaliere on the staging of the Rappresentazione di anima e corpo, working actively for the establishment in Rome of that monodic recitative style which in Florence had already brought them together to champion Italian musical renewal. He was a good player of the viola and a composer himself: the Rappresentazione del figliol prodigo on a text by Father Agostino Manni, of which it is thought that I. composed the music, is, together with E. Del Cavalieri's L'anima e corpo, an example of those spiritual representations that have the greatest affinity with the Oratory properly so called. In the new recitative style he wrote Lamentations for Holy Thursday. Two laudi by him: "Perché così facesti" and "Mentre a noi vibra" are in the Tempio armonico of Animuccia (Rome 1599, part 1, pp. 102 and 151).

Luisa Cervelli