MARCELLO – DUETTI 1

BENEDETTO MARCELLO
Duetti 1

Born into a noble Venetian family of lawyers in 1686, Benedetto’s life was a predestined one. He studied law and literature and, like his brother before him, was elected at the age of twenty to the Maggior Consiglio of his native city. He held public office for nearly twenty years there before taking up the position of Provveditore of the Serenissima in Pola. The last seven years of his life were spent as Camerlengo of the republic in Brescia, where he died on 25th June 1739.
Now almost completely degenerated into kitsch tourist entertainment, the original Venetian gondoliers’ songs died away long ago. «O sole mio» has ousted titles such as «La Bionda in Gondoletta» or «Ninna nanna mio tesoro». At the beginning of the 18^th century, a noble citizen of the lagoon city was so impressed by these songs and their interpreter Rosanna Scalfi that he first gave her singing and music lessons before going on to marry her. It is quite possible that the «nobile Veneziano», Benedetto Marcello, recalled that time and those songs later, when composing his Duetti da camera, since their poetry deals with the themes, albeit in simpler form, also found in those popular gondolier songs.