Giovanni Filippo Apolloni

The Piazza dei Santi Apostoli in Rome in 1665. The large building on the right is the Palazzo Chigi where Apolloni was a member of the household from 1668 until his death in 1688

Apolloni was born in Arezzo to a family prominent in the city's history. Little is known about his early life, but according to Carolyn Gianturco in her biography of Alessandro Stradella, Apolloni had been a mercenary before turning to poetry.[1] In the 1640s he was a member of Accademia dei Percossi in Florence. Founded by Salvator Rosa, its members were composed of the intellectual and artistic elite of the city and included Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, Antonio Cesti, Antonio Abati, and Lorenzo Lippi.[3] In 1653, on the recommendation of Rosa's patron Cardinal Giancarlo de' Medici, Apolloni was appointed court poet to Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Austria at Innsbruck. There he produced the libretti for three works by Antonio Cesti: the operas L'Argia (1655) and La Dori (1657) and the courtly entertainment Mars und Adonis (1655). Both L'Argia and Mars und Adonis were performed during the week-long celebrations in November 1655 welcoming Queen Christina of Sweden on her journey to Rome.[2] For Cesti's opera Orontea, performed in Innsbruck in 1656, Apolloni revised the original libretto by Cicognini and wrote a new prologue involving a debate between Philosophy and Love.[lower-alpha 2]

In 1659 Apolloni returned to Italy and shortly thereafter entered the service of Cardinal Volumnio Bandinelli (1598–1667) who had been a fellow member of the Accademia dei Percossi. After the death of Bandinelli, he joined the Chigi household in Rome, working first for Cardinal Sigismondo Chigi and then for Sigismondo's cousin Cardinal Flavio Chigi.[1] The Colonna and Chigi families, who both had residences in the Piazza dei Santi Apostoli in Rome, had close social, political, and cultural ties with each other. They jointly sponsored the creation of several operas with libretti by Apolloni, including L'Alcasta composed by Bernardo Pasquini and dedicated to Queen Christina. It was through this extended network that Apolloni also began working with Alessandro Stradella.[5][6] In 1672 Flavio and Agostino Chigi formed the Accademia degli Sfaccendati (Academy of the Idlers). Its members were their close associates and all shared an interest in the theatre. They included Apolloni, Queen Christina (patron of the Teatro Tordinona in Rome), Filippo Acciaiuoli (the Tordinona's impresario), Giuliano Capranica whose family ran the Teatro Capranica, and Alessandro Capizucchi. The express purpose of the Sfaccendati was to produce operas to be performed at the Chigi palazzo in Ariccia on the outskirts of Rome. Apolloni and Acciaiuoli co-authored the librettos for two operas which were performed there, Il Tirinto and L'Adalinda. However the high cost of producing operas so far from the center of Rome made L'Adalinda the last of these "country house operas". The last opera for which Apolloni wrote the libretto was La forza d'amore composed by Bernardo Pasquini. A slight pastoral work with only three characters, it was performed in Florence at the Villa di Pratolino in 1679.[7]

Title page of Apolloni's libretto for Il Tirinto, composed by Bernardo Pasquini and first performed in 1672

Apolloni stayed in the service of the Chigi family until his death in 1688. His most enduring works remain the two Innsbruck operas he wrote for Antonio Cesti in the 1650s—La Dori and L'Argia. Convoluted semi-comic tales of multiple disguises and mistaken identities, both of them were immensely popular in their day with multiple productions in Italy during Apolloni's lifetime. L'Argia had its first performance in modern times at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music in 1996 with subsequent performances in Lausanne and Paris.[8] La Dori has been revived several times in the 20th century, including productions in 1983 at the Spitalfields Festival in London, 1990 at the Mannes College of Music in New York, and 1999 at the Cittadella Musicale in Arezzo.[9][10][11]