Elisa favola maritima del cavalier Michel Sagramoso nell'Academia de' Signori Filarmonici il Preparato dedicata all'Illustirss. & Eccellentiss. Sig. D. Gio. Giorgio Aldobrandino prencipe di Rossano, & c.

4to (194x140 mm). [8], 311, [1 blank] pp. Collation: *⁴ A-T⁸ V⁴. Engraved title page with the dedicatee's coat-of-arms on top. Woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. Contemporary stiff vellum with inked title along the spine (soiled). Marginal staining and occasional foxing.

First edition of this five-act play in verse by the seventeenth century Veronese playwright and poet Michele Sagramoso. Sagramoso was a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Verona, the first literary academy in Italy to be principally devoted to music, and it is to the regents of this academy that Elisa was first offered on 30 December 1627.

The action takes place on the island of Manarre, ‘nella costa di Paravi Popoli Orientali', among the pearl fishers, and the plot tells the story of the naturally doomed romance of Elisa, a fisherwoman, and Micandro, a foreign fisherman, amidst a cast of fugitives, nymphs, and priests.

Sagromoso was ambassador of the Duke of Mantua to the courts of Vienna and France. As a member of the Accademia Filarmonica, he went by the name of Il Preparato.

M. Magnabosco, L'Accademia Filarmonica di Verona dalla fondazione al Teatro, Verona, 2015, p. 25; Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\UMCE\037204; Allacci, 284; Clubb, 748.

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