He was born on 20 March 1680 at Naples. No authentic account of Astorga's life can be successfully constructed from the obscure and confusing evidence that has been until now handed down, although historians have not failed to indulge many pleasant conjectures. According to Volkmann his father, a baron of Sicily, took an active part in the attempt to throw off the Spanish yoke, but was betrayed by his own soldiers and publicly executed. His wife and son were compelled to be spectators of his fate; and such was the effect upon them that his mother died on the spot, and Emanuele fell into a state of gloomy despondency, which threatened to deprive him of reason.
Education
By the kindness of the Princess of Ursini, the unfortunate young man was placed in a convent at Astorga, in León, where he completed a musical education which is said to have been begun in Palermo under Francesco Scarlatti. Here he recovered his health, and his admirable musical talents were cultivated under the best masters.
Career
Astorga’s first opera, La moglie nemica (“The Hostile Wife”), was performed privately at Palermo in 1698. Later he quarreled with his father and left home.
In Rome he met the poet Sebastiano Biancardi, whose Rime (1732) contains information on Astorga.
At Genoa both men were robbed, and they wrote the opera Dafni to raise money.
After adventures under an assumed name, Astorga was summoned to Barcelona by the Spanish king Charles III; later he lived in Vienna.
Astorga returned to Palermo in 1715 to reclaim his family estates after his father’s death (1712).
He married and became a senator, but in 1721 he left after restoring his wife’s dowry.
He was subsequently in Lisbon and apparently passed through London en route to Bohemia.
In 1744 his estates were sold to pay his wife’s debts. Johann Joseph Abert’s opera Astorga (1866) was based on his life.
According to a manuscript in the Santini collection in Münster he died in 1757 in Madrid.