Antonio Sacchini

Antonio Maria Gasparo Sacchini (14 June 1730 – 6 October 1786) was an Italian composer, most famous 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 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".

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