Giovanni Francesco Busenello

Giovanni Francesco Busenello was a Venetian lawyer and poet, and the most literary of the librettists who supplied the city's first public opera houses. He belonged to the Accademia degli Incogniti, the libertine academy whose members funded and shaped early Venetian opera, and wrote for Cavalli, including Gli amori d'Apollo e di Dafne and La Didone, as well as for Monteverdi. His texts take a cool, sceptical view of their subjects: L'incoronazione di Poppea ends with ambition and adultery triumphant and virtue destroyed. He collected his libretti as poetry in Delle hore ociose, published in 1656.