Cloux
April 14, ’18
Tomorrow evening, Pietro Papini will play his lira da braccio for us, music I composed in Milan, when friend Atalante and I played and sang. Papini is Court maestro and master of the lira. He’ll be playing his amusing instrument—moustached mascherone on the sound box.
Good Francesco has searched through my manuscripts for rebuses and notations, and he and Papini have put together a song that begins:
Amore sol la mi fa remirare, la sol mi fa sollecita.
Tomorrow is my birthday.
Princess d’Arezzo will wear a gold mask I designed for her. Pity to hide beauty behind a mask. The King is wearing my skeleton cloak. Three dwarfs will appear as miniature elephants. I will wear a replica of a camel’s head. Francesco is to impersonate a Hindu seer. Countess Benci—sixteen years old—will be naked except for silver slippers and an Etruscan helmet of silver foil.
It will be gala!