Antonio Maria Gasparo Sacchini was an Italian composer, most famous for his operas.
Background
Sacchini was born on July 23, 1734 in Pozzuoli, Italy, to the family of a humble Florentine cook (or coachman). 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).
Education
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.
Career
In 1772 he visited London, where, notwithstanding a cruel cabal formed against him, he achieved a brilliant success, especially in his four new operas, Tamerlano, Lucio Vero, Nitetti e Perseo and II Gran Cid.
Later he met with an equally enthusiastic reception in Paris, where in 1783 his Rinaldo was produced under the immediate patronage of Queen Marie Antoinette, to whom he had been recommended by the emperor Joseph II.
But neither in England nor in France did his reputation continue to the end of his visit.
He seems everywhere to have been the victim of bitter jealousy.
Even Marie Antoinette was not able to support his cause in the face of the general outcry against the favour shown to foreigners; and by her command, given with the utmost reluctance, his last opera and undoubted masterpiece, CEdipe d Colone, was set aside in 1786 to make room for Lemoine's Phedre-a circumstance which so preyed upon his mind that he died of chagrin on the 7th (or 8th) of October 1786.
Sacchini's style was rather graceful than elevated, and he was deficient both in creative power and originality.
CEdipe was extremely successful after his death, and was performed at the Academie nearly six hundred times.