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Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini (14 June 1730 – 6 October 1786) was an Italian classical era composer, best known for his operas.
Sacchini was born in Florence, but raised in Naples, where he received his musical education. He made a name for himself as a composer of serious and comic opera in Italy before moving to London, where he produced works for the King's Theatre. He spent his final years in Paris, becoming embroiled in the musical dispute between the followers of the composers Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni. His early death in 1786 was blamed on his disappointment over the apparent failure of his opera Œdipe à Colone. However, when the work was revived the following year, it quickly became one of the most popular in the 18th-century French repertoire.
Sacchini was the son of a humble Florentine cook (or coachman), Gaetano Sacchini. At the age of four, he moved with his family to Naples as part of the entourage of the infante Charles of Bourbon (later to become King Charles III of Spain). The young Sacchini's talent for music caught the attention of Francesco Durante, who enrolled him in the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at the age of ten. Here Durante and his assistant Pietrantonio Gallo taught Sacchini the basics of composition, harmony and counterpoint. Sacchini also became a skilled violinist under the tuition of Nicola Fiorenza as well as studying singing under Gennaro Manna. Sacchini was one of the favourite pupils of Durante, a hard teacher to please. It was said that Durante would point out the young Sacchini to his fellow pupils, warning them that he would be a difficult rival to beat and urging them to try to match him, otherwise Sacchini would become the "man of the century."
Sacchini was 25 when Durante died in 1755. The following year, he became a "mastricello" (a junior teacher in the school) and had the opportunity to compose, as the final exercise of his studies, his first operatic work, an intermezzo in two parts entitled Fra' Donato. It was performed to great acclaim by the school's students and was followed a year later by another intermezzo, Il giocatore. The warm reception these works enjoyed paved Sacchini's way to commissions from the smaller theatres which performed opera in Neapolitan dialect. One of his major successes was the opera buffa Olimpia tradita (1758) at the Teatro dei Fiorentini, which led to commissions from the Teatro San Carlo, where his first opera seria, Andromaca, was premiered in 1761. Meanwhile, Sacchini was pursuing his career at the Conservatorio, where he had initially taken up the unpaid position of "maestro di cappella straordinario", assisting the "primo maestro", Manna, and the "secondo maestro", Gallo. When Manna retired in 1761, shortly before the premiere of Andromaca, Sacchini was promoted to "secondo maestro".
In 1762 the Conservatorio gave Sacchini permission to travel to Venice to present the operas Alessandro Severo (with a libretto by Apostolo Zeno) at the Teatro San Benedetto, and Alessandro nelle Indie (with a libretto by Metastasio) the following year at the Teatro San Salvatore. Over the next couple of years, Sacchini produced new operas for theatres across Italy: Olimpiade in Padua (Teatro Nuovo, 1763), Eumene in Florence (La Pergola, 1764), Semiramide riconosciuta in Rome (Teatro Argentina, 1764), and Lucio Vero in Naples (Teatro San Carlo, 1764). Success on an Italian-wide level encouraged Sacchini to leave his job at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, as well as his temporary post in Venice, and to try his luck as an independent composer.
Initially settling in Rome, Sacchini spent several years composing opere buffe for the Teatro Valle. These works made him famous throughout Europe. One of the most notable of them – it has been revived and recorded in modern times – was the two-act intermezzo La contadina in corte (1765). In 1768, Sacchini moved to Venice, having accepted the temporary post of director of the Conservatorio dell'Ospedale dei Poveri Derelitti (the "Ospedaletto"), offered by his predecessor in the job Tommaso Traetta, who had been Sacchini's friend since their studies together in Naples and who was now leaving Venice to work at the court of Saint Petersburg. In Venice, Sacchini soon made a name for himself as a singing master (his pupils included Nancy Storace and, possibly, Adriana Gabrielli, who, under the name Adriana Ferrarese del Bene was subsequently to go down in history as the first singer to play Mozart's Fiordiligi). While continuing to pursue his career as an opera composer, he also spent time writing sacred pieces (oratorios, masses, hymns, motets) for the Conservatorio and various Venetian churches, as his contract required.
Charles Burney met Sacchini in Venice in 1770. By then, Sacchini was enjoying an enormous reputation: he had just scored successes with the operas Scipione in Cartagena and Calliroe in Munich and Ludwigsburg, and he was, in the opinion of the English writer, the only composer worthy to stand alongside the "giant" Baldassare Galuppi among all the "dwarfs" who then populated the Venetian musical scene.
In 1772, Sacchini moved to London, accompanied by Giuseppe Millico, one of the finest castrati then active on the European stage and Gluck's favourite. Beginning with two new operas staged at the King's Theatre in 1773, Il Cid (in January) and Tamerlano (in May), in the words of Burney, Sacchini soon "captured the hearts" of the London public. He was so popular that Tommaso Traetta was unable to make any impression with his operas when he arrived in the British capital in 1776, even though Sacchini himself had supported the move by his old friend. Sacchini remained in London for a decade, until 1782, despite the fact his enormous mounting debts created growing difficulties and even enemies. Among the latter was Venanzio Rauzzini, who had taken over from Millico as the leading male singer at the King's Theatre, and who claimed that he had written some of Sacchini's most famous arias himself. The majority of Sacchini's chamber music dates from his years in London. As far as music for the stage is concerned, new operas by Sacchini were produced every year over the whole period apart from 1776/1777, probably in connection with the composer's trips to the Continent and with the staging in Paris of French-language pasticci based on two previous works: the dramma giocoso from the Roman period, L'isola d'amore, now entitled La colonie, and the opera seria L'Olimpiade, which became L'Olympiade. The translator of the libretti into French was the musician and writer Nicolas-Étienne Framery, a lover of Italian music. At that time, the Parisian operatic scene was divided between supporters of the German composer Gluck, famous for his musical reforms, and followers of his Italian rival Niccolò Piccinni. A member of the emerging Piccinnist faction, Framery also admired Sacchini and formed a lasting friendship with him. On 8 June 1779, a work by Sacchini appeared for the first time on the stage of the Paris Opéra. It was a revival of the dramma giocoso L'amore soldato, which had premiered in England the previous year, and was now advertised as an intermède in three acts. During his stays in Paris in the seventies Sacchini is also said to have imparted the rudiments of a real singing education to the future European star of opera and refined cantatrice, Brigida Banti.
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Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini (14 June 1730 – 6 October 1786) was an Italian classical era composer, best known for his operas.
Sacchini was born in Florence, but raised in Naples, where he received his musical education. He made a name for himself as a composer of serious and comic opera in Italy before moving to London, where he produced works for the King's Theatre. He spent his final years in Paris, becoming embroiled in the musical dispute between the followers of the composers Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni. His early death in 1786 was blamed on his disappointment over the apparent failure of his opera Œdipe à Colone. However, when the work was revived the following year, it quickly became one of the most popular in the 18th-century French repertoire.
Sacchini was the son of a humble Florentine cook (or coachman), Gaetano Sacchini. At the age of four, he moved with his family to Naples as part of the entourage of the infante Charles of Bourbon (later to become King Charles III of Spain). The young Sacchini's talent for music caught the attention of Francesco Durante, who enrolled him in the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at the age of ten. Here Durante and his assistant Pietrantonio Gallo taught Sacchini the basics of composition, harmony and counterpoint. Sacchini also became a skilled violinist under the tuition of Nicola Fiorenza as well as studying singing under Gennaro Manna. Sacchini was one of the favourite pupils of Durante, a hard teacher to please. It was said that Durante would point out the young Sacchini to his fellow pupils, warning them that he would be a difficult rival to beat and urging them to try to match him, otherwise Sacchini would become the "man of the century."
Sacchini was 25 when Durante died in 1755. The following year, he became a "mastricello" (a junior teacher in the school) and had the opportunity to compose, as the final exercise of his studies, his first operatic work, an intermezzo in two parts entitled Fra' Donato. It was performed to great acclaim by the school's students and was followed a year later by another intermezzo, Il giocatore. The warm reception these works enjoyed paved Sacchini's way to commissions from the smaller theatres which performed opera in Neapolitan dialect. One of his major successes was the opera buffa Olimpia tradita (1758) at the Teatro dei Fiorentini, which led to commissions from the Teatro San Carlo, where his first opera seria, Andromaca, was premiered in 1761. Meanwhile, Sacchini was pursuing his career at the Conservatorio, where he had initially taken up the unpaid position of "maestro di cappella straordinario", assisting the "primo maestro", Manna, and the "secondo maestro", Gallo. When Manna retired in 1761, shortly before the premiere of Andromaca, Sacchini was promoted to "secondo maestro".
In 1762 the Conservatorio gave Sacchini permission to travel to Venice to present the operas Alessandro Severo (with a libretto by Apostolo Zeno) at the Teatro San Benedetto, and Alessandro nelle Indie (with a libretto by Metastasio) the following year at the Teatro San Salvatore. Over the next couple of years, Sacchini produced new operas for theatres across Italy: Olimpiade in Padua (Teatro Nuovo, 1763), Eumene in Florence (La Pergola, 1764), Semiramide riconosciuta in Rome (Teatro Argentina, 1764), and Lucio Vero in Naples (Teatro San Carlo, 1764). Success on an Italian-wide level encouraged Sacchini to leave his job at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, as well as his temporary post in Venice, and to try his luck as an independent composer.
Initially settling in Rome, Sacchini spent several years composing opere buffe for the Teatro Valle. These works made him famous throughout Europe. One of the most notable of them – it has been revived and recorded in modern times – was the two-act intermezzo La contadina in corte (1765). In 1768, Sacchini moved to Venice, having accepted the temporary post of director of the Conservatorio dell'Ospedale dei Poveri Derelitti (the "Ospedaletto"), offered by his predecessor in the job Tommaso Traetta, who had been Sacchini's friend since their studies together in Naples and who was now leaving Venice to work at the court of Saint Petersburg. In Venice, Sacchini soon made a name for himself as a singing master (his pupils included Nancy Storace and, possibly, Adriana Gabrielli, who, under the name Adriana Ferrarese del Bene was subsequently to go down in history as the first singer to play Mozart's Fiordiligi). While continuing to pursue his career as an opera composer, he also spent time writing sacred pieces (oratorios, masses, hymns, motets) for the Conservatorio and various Venetian churches, as his contract required.
Charles Burney met Sacchini in Venice in 1770. By then, Sacchini was enjoying an enormous reputation: he had just scored successes with the operas Scipione in Cartagena and Calliroe in Munich and Ludwigsburg, and he was, in the opinion of the English writer, the only composer worthy to stand alongside the "giant" Baldassare Galuppi among all the "dwarfs" who then populated the Venetian musical scene.
In 1772, Sacchini moved to London, accompanied by Giuseppe Millico, one of the finest castrati then active on the European stage and Gluck's favourite. Beginning with two new operas staged at the King's Theatre in 1773, Il Cid (in January) and Tamerlano (in May), in the words of Burney, Sacchini soon "captured the hearts" of the London public. He was so popular that Tommaso Traetta was unable to make any impression with his operas when he arrived in the British capital in 1776, even though Sacchini himself had supported the move by his old friend. Sacchini remained in London for a decade, until 1782, despite the fact his enormous mounting debts created growing difficulties and even enemies. Among the latter was Venanzio Rauzzini, who had taken over from Millico as the leading male singer at the King's Theatre, and who claimed that he had written some of Sacchini's most famous arias himself. The majority of Sacchini's chamber music dates from his years in London. As far as music for the stage is concerned, new operas by Sacchini were produced every year over the whole period apart from 1776/1777, probably in connection with the composer's trips to the Continent and with the staging in Paris of French-language pasticci based on two previous works: the dramma giocoso from the Roman period, L'isola d'amore, now entitled La colonie, and the opera seria L'Olimpiade, which became L'Olympiade. The translator of the libretti into French was the musician and writer Nicolas-Étienne Framery, a lover of Italian music. At that time, the Parisian operatic scene was divided between supporters of the German composer Gluck, famous for his musical reforms, and followers of his Italian rival Niccolò Piccinni. A member of the emerging Piccinnist faction, Framery also admired Sacchini and formed a lasting friendship with him. On 8 June 1779, a work by Sacchini appeared for the first time on the stage of the Paris Opéra. It was a revival of the dramma giocoso L'amore soldato, which had premiered in England the previous year, and was now advertised as an intermède in three acts. During his stays in Paris in the seventies Sacchini is also said to have imparted the rudiments of a real singing education to the future European star of opera and refined cantatrice, Brigida Banti.
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