Antonio Sartorio

Antonio Sartorio (1630 – 30 December 1680) was an Italian composer active mainly in Italy and in Hanover, Germany. He was a leading composer of operas in his native Venice in the 1660s and 1670s and was also known for composing in other genres of vocal music. Between 1665 and 1675 he spent most of his winters in Hanover, where he held the post of Kapellmeister to Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg – returning to Venice for the summer months. In 1676 he became vice maestro di capella at San Marco in Venice.

Sartorio was the brother of composer and organist Gasparo Sartorio and architect Girolamo Sartorio who also had connections with the theatre. Beyond birth records, the first known information about Sartorio relates to the mounting of his first opera, Gl'amori infruttuosi di Pirro, at the Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice on 4 January 1661. His second opera, Seleuco, did not come until five years later when it was produced at the Teatro San Luca on 16 January 1666. The year before he had been appointed to the position of Kapellmeister to Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg; just months after the duke had assumed authority over the Principality of Calenberg upon his elder brother Georg Wilhelm's inheriting of the Principality of Lüneburg. Frederick ruled over the Calenberg subdivision of the duchy from 1665 until his death fourteen years later.

Friedrich was a highly intelligent and educated sovereign who had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1651. Upon becoming duke, he instituted the Catholic rite to his court, which accordingly led to his choice of Sartorio, a Catholic, as Kapellmeister. The duke had met Sartorio upon one of his four visits to Italy, one of which was for the purpose of lending the Republic of Venice substantial military aid against the Turks. Sartorio began his duties as Kapellmeister on Trinity Sunday 1666 not too long after the Duke's new palace in Herrenhausen near Hanover was finished. The palace's design was inspired by the Palace of Versailles and is famous for its gardens, the Herrenhausen Gardens.

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