On June 23 and 24 at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Boston Early Music Festival’s presentation of Francesca Caccini’s “Alcina,” a comic opera in four scenes, will serve as a reminder that music in 17th-century Italy did not concern itself exclusively with liturgy, nor was it written exclusively by men. In fact, this year’s encore performances of “Alcina” (originally staged in November 2018) were programmed for the festival’s 2023 theme, “A Celebration of Women.”

More than 150 years before Joseph Haydn wrote a string quartet nicknamed “The Joke,” Francesca Caccini was cracking wise for the amusement of her commissioning patron, Regent Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria (wife of Cosimo II de’ Medici), and other Florentine light-opera buffs. She was a composer of both chamber and stage music, a lutenist, poet, teacher, rehearsal coach, and vocalist.