Giulio Strozzi

Giulio Strozzi (1583 - 31 March 1652) was a Venitian poet and libretto writer. His libretti were put to music by composers like Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Francesco Manelli, and Francesco Sacrati. He sometimes used the pseudonym Luigi Zorzisto.

Giuliio Strozzi was a bastard, and later legitimized, son of Roberto Strozzi, from the Strozzi family. Born in Venice in 1583, he first studied there before going to the University of Pisa to study law.

He lived and worked in Rome, Padua and Urbino before returning to Venice in the 1620s. He was the adoptive father of composer Barbara Strozzi (born in 1619 from Isabella Garzoni, a woman servant living in Strozzi's house, and possibly his illegitimate daughter). He remained there until his death on 31 March 1652.

He wrote poetry and plays, but is best remembered as one of the first writers of libretti, the texts used for all kinds of musical plays but most specifically opera.

His earliest known work was in 1609, an oration for the burial of Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, for whom he also organized the burial rites. It was the first in a long-term series of efforts to get the patronage of the Medici family during the next decades, including a lengthy dedication of his 1624 reprint of the Venetia edificata to Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

In 1621, he wrote his only epic poem, Venetia edificata. It was expanded and reprinted in 1624. Celebrating the glory of the Republic of Venice, it was at the same time written in support of Galileo Galilei and his controversial scientific theories. He also wrote a translation of the Spanish Lazarillo de Tormes which remained unpublished.

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