Baldassare Galuppi

Baldassare Galuppi (18 October 1706 – 3 January 1785) was a Venetian composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Republic.

From 1726 to 1728, Galuppi was harpsichordist at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence.

On his return to Venice in 1728, he produced a second opera, Gl'odi delusi dal sangue, written in collaboration with another Lotti pupil, Giovanni Battista Pescetti; it was well received when it was presented at the Teatro San Angelo.

The collaborators followed it with an opera seria, Dorinda, the next year.

This, too, was modestly successful, and Galuppi began to receive commissions for operas and oratorios.

In his early career Galuppi made a modest success in opera seria, but from the 1740s, together with the playwright and librettist Carlo Goldoni, he became famous throughout Europe for his comic operas in the new dramma giocoso style.

To the succeeding generation of composers, he was known as "the father of comic opera".

Some of his mature opere serie, for which his librettists included the poet and dramatist Metastasio, were also widely popular.

Throughout his career Galuppi held official positions with charitable and religious institutions in Venice, the most prestigious of which was maestro di cappella at the Doge's chapel, St Mark's Basilica.

In these various capacities he composed a large amount of sacred music.

He was also highly regarded as a virtuoso performer on and composer for keyboard instruments.

In 1740, Galuppi was appointed "maestro di coro" at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti in Venice, where his duties ranged from teaching and conducting to composing liturgical music and oratorios.

In his first year of service at the Mendicanti, he composed 31 works: 16 motets, 13 settings of the Salve Regina, and two psalm settings.

Although he became internationally known as an operatic composer, he maintained a steady output of sacred music throughout his career.

In 1741 Galuppi was invited to work in London.

He petitioned the Mendicanti authorities for leave of absence, to which they agreed.

He was in England for 18 months, supervising productions for the Italian opera company at the King's Theatre.

Of the 11 operas under his direction, at least three are known to have been his own compositions, Penelope, Scipione in Cartagine and Sirbace; a fourth was presented shortly after he left London to return to Venice.

Rival composer Handel attended one of these productions.

Galuppi also attracted attention as a keyboard virtuoso and composer.

His contemporary, the English musicologist Charles Burney, wrote that "Galuppi had had more influence on English music than any other Italian composer".

However, in Burney's view Galuppi's skills were still immature during his spell in London.

Burney wrote, "He now copied the hasty, light and flimsy style which reigned in Italy at this time, and which Handel's solidity and science had taught the English to despise."

On his return to Venice in May 1743, Galuppi returned to his employment with the Mendicanti, and to composing for the opera houses.

The operatic fashion in Venice was on the point of changing from opera seria to a new style of comic opera, dramma giocoso.

Full-length comic operas from Naples and Rome were becoming fashionable; Galuppi adapted three of them for Venetian audiences in 1744, and the following year composed one of his own, La forza d'amore, which was only a mild success.

He continued to compose serious operas, sometimes in partnership with the librettist Metastasio.

The latter believed firmly that the music was there to serve the text rather than vice versa.

He grumbled about Galuppi in 1749, "He is, I presume, an excellent composer for violins, for cellos and for voices, but he is an exceedingly bad one for poets. When he writes he thinks as much about the words as you do about being elected Pope ... As far as the public is concerned, he is appreciated by those who judge with their ears but not their souls."

Nevertheless, their joint work prospered, and was staged in other countries.

In Vienna, their Demetrio and Artaserse were great successes, the former breaking all local box-office records.

In the latter half of the 18th century, Galuppi's music was largely forgotten outside of Italy, and Napoleon's invasion of Venice in 1797 resulted in Galuppi's manuscripts being scattered around Western Europe, and in many cases, destroyed or lost.

Galuppi's name persists in the English poet Robert Browning's 1855 poem "A Toccata of Galuppi's", but this has not helped maintain the composer's work in the general repertoire.

Some of Galuppi's works were occasionally performed in the 200 years after his death, but it was not until the last years of the 20th century that his compositions were extensively revived in live performance and on recordings.

Galuppi was born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Lagoon, and from as early as age 22 was known as "Il Buranello", a nickname which even appears in the signature on his music manuscripts, "Baldassare Galuppi, called 'Buranello'."

His father was a barber, who also played the violin in theatre orchestras, and is believed to have been his son's first music teacher.

Although there is no documentation, oral tradition as related to Francesco Caffi in the nineteenth century says that the young Galuppi was trained in composition and harpsichord by Antonio Lotti, the chief organist at St Mark's Basilica.

At the age of 15 Galuppi composed his first opera, Gli amici rivali, which, according to Caffi, was performed unsuccessfully at Chioggia and equally unsuccessfully in Vicenza under the title La fede nell'incostanza.

He belonged to a generation of composers, including Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and C. P. E. Bach, whose works are emblematic of the prevailing galant music that developed in Europe throughout the 18th century.

He achieved international success, spending periods of his career in Vienna, London and Saint Petersburg, but his main base remained Venice, where he held a succession of leading appointments.