Gaspare Pacchierotti was a great mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano

A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...

 castrato

Castrato

A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...

, and one of the most famous singers of his time.

Training and first appearances

Details of his early life are scarce. It is possible that he studied with Mario Bittoni, maestro di cappella in the cathedral of his home city. Under the stage name of Porfirio Pacchierotti, he made his début in Baldassare Galuppi's opera Le nozze di Dorina at the Teatro dei Nobili in Perugia

Perugia

Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....

 during the carnival season of 1759, playing, as young castrati often did, a female role: Livietta. He made further appearances under his assumed name in Venice (1764) and Innsbruck (1765). On this latter occasion he sang Acronte in Hasse

Johann Adolph Hasse

Johann Adolph Hasse was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music...

's Romolo ed Ersilia on the occasion of the marriage of Peter Leopold

Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor

Leopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1790 to 1792, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...

 of Habsburg-Lorraine, future Grand Duke of Tuscany and Holy Roman Emperor

Holy Roman Emperor

The Holy Roman Emperor is a term used by historians to denote a medieval ruler who, as German King, had also received the title of "Emperor of the Romans" from the Pope...

, and the Infanta of Spain, Maria Luisa de Borbón. Here, for the first time, he encountered the famous castrato Gaetano Guadagni

Gaetano Guadagni

Gaetano Guadagni was an Italian mezzo-soprano castrato singer, most famous for singing the role of Orpheus at the premiere of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice in 1762.- Career :...

, then at the height of his career.

Early career

By the late 1760s Pacchierotti was well established in Venice, both as an opera singer and member of the choir of St Mark's, where Galuppi was Director of Music. His first success as primo uomo (lead male singer) was in that composer's Il re pastore, in which he first sang the role of Agenore at the Teatro San Benedetto

Teatro San Benedetto

The Teatro San Benedetto was a theatre in Venice, particularly prominent in the operatic life of the city in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It saw the premieres of over 140 operas, including Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, and was the theatre of choice for the presentation of opera seria until...

, Venice, in the summer of 1769. In that city he also received further vocal tuition from Ferdinando Bertoni

Ferdinando Bertoni

Ferdinando Bertoni was an Italian composer and organist.He was born in Salò, and began his music studies in Brescia, not far from his birthplace. Around 1740 he went to Bologna, where he studied till 1745 with the famous music theorist Giovanni Battista Martini...

, the composer and singing-teacher, who became a lifelong friend.

In 1770, he was at Palermo, where he sang alongside the famous and notoriously capricious soprano, Caterina Gabrielli, whose every feat of virtuosity he not only equalled but so far surpassed that he earned that redoubtable lady's admiration. The following year saw him performing at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, perhaps the most famous opera house in Italy at this time. Here he remained for some five years, performing in twenty operas. His prima donna was often Anna de Amicis, and soon their respective adoring fans caused the sparks to fly. One supporter of the soprano, an officer in the Royal Guard called Francesco Ruffo, saw fit to insult Pacchierotti publicly, and a duel was fought as a result. Because of Ruffo's royal connection (and also because, as a nobleman, he was immune from prosecution), the poor singer spent several days in prison, but apparently the noble youth himself obtained his release. There is another version of this story in which Ruffo was the lover (cavalier servente) of a certain Marchesa Santa Marca, who had become infatuated with Pacchierotti on hearing him sing in Schuster's Didone abbandonata. His honour insulted, Ruffo again challenged the singer to a duel, and this time it was none other than the King of Naples who ordered Gaspare to be released from prison.

Career in northern Italy

After such adventures, it is hardly surprising that Pacchierotti left Naples in 1776, never to sing there again. For the next fifteen years he worked in northern Italy, especially Milan, Venice, Genoa, Padua and Turin. In Milan, he famously appeared at the inauguration of the Teatro alla Scala on 3 August 1778, taking the protagonist's role of Asterio in Europa riconosciuta

Europa riconosciuta

Europa riconosciuta is an opera in two acts by Antonio Salieri, designated as a dramma per musica, set to an Italian libretto by Mattia Verazi.The opera takes place in Tyre and tells a story of love, violence and political discord in ancient times...

by Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....

. While appearing at Venice in 1785, he sang at the funeral of his old patron Galuppi, remarking that "I sang very devoutly indeed to obtain a quiet for his soul".

Visits to London

Pacchierotti also visited London on several occasions between 1778 and 1791. There he was universally adored, perhaps even more by real opera cognoscenti than by the public in general. One of the former, Lord Mount Edgcumbe, left a detailed description of the singer's many merits: "Pacchierotti's voice was an extensive soprano, full and sweet in the highest degree: his powers of execution were great, but he had far too good taste and good sense to make a display of them where it would have been misapplied, ... conscious that the chief delight of singing and his own supreme excellence lay in touching expression and exquisite pathos. Yet he was so thorough a musician that nothing came amiss to him; every style was to him equally easy, and he could sing, at first sight, all songs of the most opposite characters, not merely with the facility and correctness which a complete knowledge of music must give, but entering at once into the views of the composer, and giving them all the spirit and expression he had designed. Such was his genius in his embellishments and cadences, that their variety was inexhaustible. ... As an actor, with many disadvantages of person ... he was nevertheless forcible and impressive ... His recitative was inimitably fine, so that even those who did not understand the language could not fail to comprehend, from his countenance, voice and action, every sentiment he expressed. As a concert singer, and particularly in private society, he shone almost more than on the stage ... he was a worthy and good man, modest and diffident to a fault ... He was unpresuming in his manners, grateful and attached to all his numerous friends and patrons."

During his visits to London, Pacchierotti mainly performed in operas by his friend Bertoni, now well-known as a composer in the genre. In spite of the "many disadvantages of person" remarked on by Mount Edgcumbe, the singer continued to have ladies fall in love with him, notably Susanna Burney, daughter of the famous music historian Charles Burney

Charles Burney

Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.-Life and career:...

, who described his singing as "divine". Known as "sweet Pacc" to Susanna and her sister Fanny (herself a well-known author and later Madame d'Arblay), he also earned their respect during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots

Gordon Riots

The Gordon Riots of 1780 were an anti-Catholic protest against the Papists Act 1778.The Popery Act 1698 had imposed a number of penalties and disabilities on Roman Catholics in England; the 1778 act eliminated some of these. An initial peaceful protest led on to widespread rioting and looting and...

 of June 1780 by refusing to remove his name from his door and, though an Italian Catholic, insisting on walking the streets openly while the mob yelled "No Popery!" As to further emotional entanglements, the notorious William Beckford

William Thomas Beckford

William Thomas Beckford , usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England...

 wrote of one noblewoman, Lady Mary Duncan, that she was "more preciously fond" of the singer "than a she-bear of its suckling". Pacchierotti had met Beckford in 1780 at Lucca, during the young aristocrat's grand tour

Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

, and the following year he became involved in a performance marking that dissolute young nobleman's twenty-first birthday. This was of a cantata entitled Il tributo, by a fellow castrato, Venanzio Rauzzini, long settled in England, and took place at Beckford's mansion Fonthill Splendens

Fonthill Abbey

Fonthill Abbey — also known as Beckford's Folly — was a large Gothic revival country house built around the turn of the 19th century at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford and architect James Wyatt...

, near Bath. The third soloist was another castrato, Ferdinando Tenducci, a friend of Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...

. On 27 May 1784 Pacchierotti sang various arias by Handel at the centenary celebrations of the composer's birth held in the London Pantheon. His last visit to London in 1791 has become famous to posterity for his numerous performances of Haydn's cantata Arianna a Naxos to the composer's own piano accompaniment.

Return to Italy

His first appearance on his final return to Italy was for the inauguration of another opera house: for the inauguration of the new Teatro la Fenice in Venice on 16 May 1792 he sang the leading role of Alceo in I giuochi d'Agrigento by Paisiello

Giovanni Paisiello

Giovanni Paisiello was an Italian composer of the Classical era.-Life:Paisiello was born at Taranto and educated by the Jesuits there. He became known for his beautiful singing voice and in 1754 was sent to the Conservatorio di S. Onofrio at Naples, where he studied under Francesco Durante, and...

 alongside Brigida Banti

Brigida Banti

Brigida Giorgi, better known by her husband's surname and her stage-name, as Brigida Banti was an Italian soprano.- Obscure beginnings :...

. The following season he made his last operatic appearance in the same theatre, in the premiere production of Giuseppe Giordani

Giuseppe Giordani

Giuseppe Giordani was an Italian composer, mainly of opera.He was born in Naples, where he studied music with Domenico Cimarosa and Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli. In 1774 he was appointed as music director of the chapel of the Duomo of Naples. His first opera was released in 1779...

's Ines de Castro, which opened on 27 January 1793, during the Carnival season.

Pacchierotti retired to Padua, but on 2 May 1797, in the Teatro Nuovo of that city, was obliged to perform again at a concert for the all-conquering Napoleon. Never reconciled to the destruction of his beloved Venetian Republic by the French, Pacchierotti's patriotism got him into trouble. In a letter to his colleague Angelica Catalani

Angelica Catalani

Angelica Catalani was an Italian opera singer, the daughter of a tradesman.At Sinigaglia, she was educated at the convent of Santa Lucia at Gubbio, where her soprano voice soon became famous....

 he referred to "the splendid miseries of victory." This was unfortunately intercepted by the French police, and the singer was once more imprisoned.

Retirement and old age

Famous even in retirement, Pacchierotti was visited by many well-known figures, including Rossini. On the singer's complaining that the latter's music was too noisy, the composer retorted: "Give me another Pacchierotti and I will know how to write for him!" Another visitor was Stendhal

Stendhal

Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...

, who remarked that: "I learned more about music in six conversations with this great artist, than from any book; it was the soul speaking to the soul." Though now out of the limelight, Pacchierotti continued to practise, being particularly devoted to the Psalm settings of Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Marcello was a Venetian composer, writer, advocate, magistrate, and teacher.-Life:...

, from which he averred "to have learned the little that he knew". On 28 June 1814, he underwent the emotional experience of singing in Saint Mark's Basilica in Venice at the funeral service held in honour of his old friend and favourite composer, Ferdinando Bertoni. He last sang in public on 19 October 1817, at the age of seventy-seven, performing a motet in the church of Mirano, a few miles west of Venice. Famous for this remark that "he who knows how to breathe, knows how to sing", he also taught singing, and it is likely that a treatise by Antonio Calegari, entitled Modi generali del canto and published in Milan in 1836, is at least partly based on Pacchierotti's own methods.

In and around Padua, the singer bought several properties, the best known being the Ca' Farsetti, said to have been once owned by Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...

. He also built an extraordinary neo-Gothic mansion, the Castello Pacchierotti, the ruins of which were much later (1881) described by the English writer Vernon Lee: " ... in this remote corner of Padua we stumbled one day into a beautiful tangle of trees and grass and flowers ... and were informed by a gardener's boy that this garden had once belonged to a famous singer, by name Gasparo Pacchierotti ... The gardener led us into the house, a battered house, covered with creepers and amphorae, and sentimental inscriptions from the works of the poets and philosophers in vogue a hundred years ago ... He showed us into a long narrow room, in which was a large slender harpsichord ... which had belonged to ... the singer. It was open, and looked as if it might just have been touched, but no sound could be drawn from it. The gardener then led us into a darkened lumber-room, where hung the portrait of the singer, thickly covered with dust: a mass of dark blurs, from out of which appeared scarcely more than the pale thin face - a face with deep dreamy eyes and tremulously tender lips, full of a vague, wistful, contemplative poetry..."

Stricken by dropsy, Pacchierotti died at the age of eighty-one. His grave was recently discovered in the church of Cervarese Santa Croce, near Montemerlo, west of Padua, where another Castello Pacchierotti (now the Villa Serenella) can be found.

In his still seminal work, The Castrati in Opera, Angus Heriot wrote: "Today we can but guess what the great singers of the past can have sounded like; but one might hazard a guess that of all the castrati, could we hear them, Pacchierotti would please us most …"

Roles created

The following list is not absolutely complete (it misses out, for instance, Pacchiarotti's performances in Palermo, the première of Bertoni’s Artaserse, etc.) , but is indicative of the wide extent of the singer's career.

• Amadeus Almanac, accessed 20 May 2009

role	opera	genre	composer	theatre	première’s date
Acronte	Romolo ed Ersilia	dramma per musica Opera seria Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...	Johann Adolf Hasse	Innsbruck Innsbruck - Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus... , Opernhoftheater	6 August 1765
Ulisse	Achille in Sciro	dramma per musica	Florian Leopold Gassmann Florian Leopold Gassmann Florian Leopold Gassmann was a German-speaking Bohemian opera composer of the transitional period between the baroque and classical eras. He was one of the principal composers of dramma giocoso immediately before Mozart....	Venezia, Teatro (Grimani) San Giovanni Grisostomo Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo The Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, now known as the Teatro Malibran, is an opera house in Venice. Founded in 1678 by the Grimani family, it was founded primarily to provide entertainment for the aristocracy and to advance the social position of the Grimani family, and was not expected to be a...	8 May 1766
Agenore	Il re pastore	dramma per musica	Baldassare Galuppi	Venezia, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto Teatro San Benedetto The Teatro San Benedetto was a theatre in Venice, particularly prominent in the operatic life of the city in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It saw the premieres of over 140 operas, including Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, and was the theatre of choice for the presentation of opera seria until...	Summer 1767
Jove	Jupiter et Calisto	2nd entrée of the opéra-ballet Opéra-ballet Opéra-ballet was a popular genre of French Baroque opera, "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeeth century". It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways...  "Les projets de l'Amour"	Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville	Naples Naples Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples... , Real Teatro San Carlo Teatro di San Carlo The Real Teatro di San Carlo is an opera house in Naples, Italy. It is the oldest continuously active such venue in Europe.Founded by the Bourbon Charles VII of Naples of the Spanish branch of the dynasty, the theatre was inaugurated on 4 November 1737 — the king's name day — with a performance...	29 May 1771
Oreste	Ifigenia in Tauride Ifigenia in Tauride (Jommelli) Ifigenia in Tauride is an opera in three acts by Niccolò Jommelli set to a libretto by the Mannheim court poet Mattia Verazi. It premiered on 30 May 1771 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples to celebrate the name day of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies...	dramma per musica	Niccolò Jommelli Niccolò Jommelli Niccolò Jommelli was an Italian composer. He was born in Aversa and died in Naples. Along with other composers mainly in the Holy Roman Empire and France, he made important changes to opera and reduced the importance of star singers.-Early life:Jommelli was born to Francesco Antonio Jommelli and...	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	30 May 1771
Sammete	Nitteti	dramma per musica	Pasquale Anfossi Pasquale Anfossi Bonifacio Domenico Pasquale Anfossi was an Italian opera composer. Born in Taggia, Liguria, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome....	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	13 August 1771
Ezio	Ezio	dramma per musica	Antonio Sacchini Antonio Sacchini Antonio Maria Gasparo Sacchini was an Italian opera composer.Sacchini was born in Florence, but was raised in Naples, where he received his musical education at the San Onofrio conservatory. He wrote his first operas in Naples, thereafter moving to Venice, then London and eventually Paris, where...	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	4 November 1771
	"Per festeggiare il felicissimo giorno natalizio di sua maestà cattolica" (Ferdinando IV)	cantata Cantata A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....	Vincenzo Curcio Vincenzo Curcio Vincenzo Curcio , a member of the Sicilian Mafia, is famous for escaping from his Turin prison cell by sawing through the bars of his cell with dental floss on March 17, 2000.-Biography:...	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	12 January 1772
Tarquinio	Il trionfo di Clelia	dramma per musica	Giovanni Battista Borghi	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	20 May 1773
Romolo	Romolo ed Ersilia Romolo ed Ersilia Romolo ed Ersilia is an 18th-century Italian opera in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček composed to a libretto by the Italian poet Metastasio first produced in Innsbruck in 1765 with music by Johann Adolf Hasse. The drama was one of Metastasio's last, shortest, and least popular...	dramma per musica	Josef Mysliveček Josef Myslivecek Josef Mysliveček was a Czech composer who contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music...	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	13 August 1773
Adriano	Adriano in Siria	dramma per musica	Giacomo Insanguine Giacomo Insanguine Giacomo Antonio Francesco Paolo Michele Insanguine was an Italian composer, organist, and music educator....	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	4 November 1773
Orfeo	Orfeo ed Euridice	azione teatrale per musica	Antonio Tozzi Antonio Tozzi Antonio Tozzi was an Italian opera composer.He was born at Bologna, Italy. He studied with Padre Martini and became a member of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna in 1761. His first opera Tigrane, was performed in Venice in 1762. His La morte di Dimone of 1763 was an early opera semiseria. In...	Munich, Hoftheater an der Residenz Residenz Theatre The Residence Theatre or New Residence Theatre of the Residence in Munich was built from 1950 to 1951 by Karl Hocheder...	9 January 1775
Ezio	Ezio Ezio (Mysliveček) (1775) Ezio is an eighteenth-century Italian opera in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. It was the composer's first setting of a libretto by the Italian poet Metastasio that was first performed with music by Pietro Auletta in 1728, one of the most popular of the Metastasian librettos in...	opera seria Opera seria Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...	Josef Mysliveček	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	5 June 1775
Sammete	La Nitteti	dramma per musica	Domenico Fischietti Domenico Fischietti Domenico Fischietti was an Italian composer.He was born in Naples and studied at the Conservatory of Sant'Onofrio Porta Capuana under the leadership of Leonardo Leo and Francesco Durante....  (Fischetti)	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	4 November 1775
Orfeo	Orfeo ed Euridice	dramma per musica	Ferdinando Bertoni Ferdinando Bertoni Ferdinando Bertoni was an Italian composer and organist.He was born in Salò, and began his music studies in Brescia, not far from his birthplace. Around 1740 he went to Bologna, where he studied till 1745 with the famous music theorist Giovanni Battista Martini...	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto Teatro San Benedetto The Teatro San Benedetto was a theatre in Venice, particularly prominent in the operatic life of the city in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It saw the premieres of over 140 operas, including Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, and was the theatre of choice for the presentation of opera seria until...	3 January 1776
Tolomeo	Tolomeo re d'Egitto	cantata	Joseph Schuster Joseph Schuster Joseph Schuster is a cellist born in Constantinople of Russian descent.-Biography:On a trip through Russia, the famous Russian composer Alexander Glazunov heard young Schuster and was impressed with his talent. With Glazunov's help, Schuster entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music at the...	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	12 January 1776
Enea	Didone abbandonata	dramma per musica	Joseph Schuster	Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo	12 March 1776
Timante	Demofoonte	dramma per musica	Joseph Schuster	Forlì Forlì Forlì is a comune and city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the right of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre... , Teatro nuovo	30 May 1776
Arsace	Medonte	opera seria	Ferdinando Bertoni	Turin Turin Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat... , Nuovo Teatro Regio >27 December 1777
Quinto Fabio	Quinto Fabio	dramma per musica	Ferdinando Bertoni	Milan Milan Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,... , Teatro Interinale (viz the temporary substitute for Milan’s former main theatre which had been destroyed by fire)	31 January 1778
Asterio	L'Europa riconosciuta	dramma serio per musica	Antonio Salieri Antonio Salieri Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....	Milan, Teatro alla Scala La Scala La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...  (inauguration)	3 August 1778
Rinaldo	Armida abbandonata	dramma per musica	Ferdinando Bertoni	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto	26 December 1780
Sabino	Giulio Sabino	dramma per musica	Giuseppe Sarti Giuseppe Sarti Giuseppe Sarti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:He was born at Faenza. His date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 1 December 1729. Some earlier sources say he was born on 28 December, but his baptism certificate proves the later date impossible...	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto	3 January 1781
	Il tributo	cantata	Venanzio Rauzzini Venanzio Rauzzini Venanzio Rauzzini was an Italian castrato, composer, pianist and singing teacher. As a boy he was a member of the Sistine Chapel Choir and was a pupil of Domenico Corri and Muzio Clementi. He also studied with Giuseppe Santarelli in Rome and Nicola Porpora in Naples.Rauzzini was born at Camerino...	William Beckford William Thomas Beckford William Thomas Beckford , usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England... ’s residence at Fonthill Gifford Fonthill Abbey Fonthill Abbey — also known as Beckford's Folly — was a large Gothic revival country house built around the turn of the 19th century at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford and architect James Wyatt... , (Wiltshire Wiltshire Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers... )	29 September 1781
Gualtieri	Il disertore francese	dramma per musica	Francesco Bianchi Francesco Bianchi (musician) Giuseppe Francesco Bianchi was an Italian opera composer. Born at Cremona, Lombardy, he studied with Pasquale Cafaro and Niccolò Jommelli, and worked mainly in London, Paris and in all the major Italian operatic scenes, Venice, Naples, Rome, Milan, Turin, Florence.He wrote at least 78 operas of...	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto	26 December 1784
Poro	Alessandro nell'Indie	dramma per musica	Francesco Bianchi	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto	28 January 1785
Timante	Demofoonte	dramma per musica	Alessio Prati	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto	26 December 1786
Zamti	L'orfano cinese	dramma per musica	Francesco Bianchi	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto	30 January 1787
Giulio Cesare	La morte di Cesare La morte di Cesare La morte di Cesare is an opera seria in three acts by Francesco Bianchi. The libretto was by Gaetano Sertor, after Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar....	dramma per musica	Francesco Bianchi	Venice, Teatro (Gallo) San Benedetto	27 December 1788
Sammete	Nitteti	dramma per musica	Ferdinando Bertoni	Venice, Teatro San Samuele	1789
Alcéo-Clearco	I giuochi di Agrigento	dramma per musica	Giovanni Paisiello Giovanni Paisiello Giovanni Paisiello was an Italian composer of the Classical era.-Life:Paisiello was born at Taranto and educated by the Jesuits there. He became known for his beautiful singing voice and in 1754 was sent to the Conservatorio di S. Onofrio at Naples, where he studied under Francesco Durante, and...	Venice, Teatro alla Fenice La Fenice Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...   (inauguration)	16 May 1792
Tarara	Tarara o sia La virtù premiata	dramma per musica	Francesco Bianchi	Venice, Teatro alla Fenice	26 December 1792
Don Pedro	Ines de Castro	dramma per musica	Giuseppe Giordani Giuseppe Giordani Giuseppe Giordani was an Italian composer, mainly of opera.He was born in Naples, where he studied music with Domenico Cimarosa and Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli. In 1774 he was appointed as music director of the chapel of the Duomo of Naples. His first opera was released in 1779... "Giordaniello"	Venice, Teatro alla Fenice	28 January 1793