Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

[FATTIBONI, Giovanni Francesco]. IL NUOVO ASILO Azione drammatica da rappresentarsi in Cesena nel Teatro Spada la sera dei XVII maggio MDCCLXXVIII. Dall’ Accademia degli Armonici della stessa città. In Cesena: Per Gregorio Biasini, [1778]. £450

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SOLE EDITION. 4to, pp. 28; woodcut device on title-page, initial, and tailpiece; light dampstain to gutter at head, but otherwise largely clean; in contemporary speckled wrappers, spine defective and upper cover thus somewhat loose, and wear to extremities.

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Very rare libretto for what appears to have been a music entertainment performed only once, at the theatre within Palazzo Spada in Cesena on May 17, 1778. 

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Very much a local production, the play, set on Olympus and featuring Apollo, Jupiter, Mars, and Love, and a chorus including gods and furies, was written by Gian Franceso Fattiboni (1736-1802), a Cesena nobleman who wrote many (often unpublished) works of history and theatre, had ambitions, seemingly unrealised, to establish a literary academy in the city, and was a correspondent of Metastasio, who encouraged him in his writing. The music was by the local composer Benedetto Bajetti, and the sets were painted by Francesco Masini, originally from Venice but now resident in Cesena. The whole production was under the auspices of the Accademia degli Armonici of Cesena, and came as part of a celebration of St Cecilia (oddly in May rather than November), which also included a series of masses in the church of the Celestines (see dell’Amore, who suggests that Il nuova asilo was performed there rather than in the theatre).

A collection of Fattiboni’s plays was published in two volumes in Cesena the previous year, also printed by Biasini. 

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Franco dell’Amore, ‘La Capella Musicale a Cesena dal 1773-1782’, 272-3; SBN (IT\ICCU\URBE\049460) records a single copy, at the Biblioteca e Musei Oliveriani in Pesaro. 

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