Oratory of San Francesco Saverio del Caravita (Rome, Italy)
Oratory of San Francesco Saverio del Caravita
The Oratory of San Francesco Saverio del Caravita (St. Francis Xavier “del Caravita”) is a 17th-century baroque oratory in Rome, near the Church of Sant’Ignazio in rione Pigna. It is home to the Caravita Community, an international English-language Catholic community in Rome.
The organ located upstairs in the Gallery was built in 1790 by the distinguished Priori Family – one of the most important organ builders in Rome at the end of the eighteenth century and throughout all of the nineteenth. The organ at Caravita is defined as “pre-Romantic” – a decisively transitional instrument with respect to the Baroque organ more commonly found in Rome. It is a simple structure of only one keyboard with twenty-three keys and only eight pedals. It was renovated and tuned in 2012.
It is said that Frescobaldi may have played on that organ. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a teenager when he performed at Caravita in 1770 on an earlier organ, prior to the installation of the Priori instrument. Caravita is mentioned in two ironic sonnets composed by Giuseppe Gioachino Belli: L’ineggno dell’Omo written in dialect (Romanesco) and Li frateli Mantelloni, on 18 and 19 December 1832.