Francesco Gasparini

Francesco Gasparini ( born March 5, 1668 Camaiore near Lucca, Tuscany, † March 22, 1727 in Rome) was an Italian composer of the Baroque.

Life and work

Gasparini was born the second of five children of Nicolao and Elisabetta Belfiore. Little is known about his life in Camaiore and his early musical training. He probably studied in Rome under Bernardo Pasquini and Arcangelo Corelli. From 1682 onwards, however, he is organist at the church of the Madonna dei Monti in Rome. In 1684 he was picked up by the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna as a singer, in the following year as a composer.

His operatic debut in 1686 with Olimpia Gasparini vendicata in Livorno. His work includes a total of nearly 60 operas. His most successful piece was Ambleto (also: Amleto ), a variation of the Hamlet theme that is not based on Shakespeare.

1701 went Gasparini as Kapellmeister at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. Until 1713 he led there 24 works on, especially at the Teatro Tron in Teatro San Cassiano. After a brief interlude in Città di Castello in 1716, he returned to Rome, where he worked as a composer and conductor, commissioned by the Marchese Francesco Maria Ruspoli. In the years 1718-1724 is Gasparini went back to composition, his operas were performed in all the major opera houses of Italy from Rome to Turin.

His last position he took in 1725 as Kapellmeister of San Giovanni in Laterano, which he held until his death in 1727.

In addition to his activities as a composer Gasparini had always as a teacher, his most famous students were Domenico Scarlatti and Benedetto Marcello. In 1708 he wrote in a Generalbaßschule Venice, which was reprinted until 1839.