GIUSEPPE

SARTI (1729–1802)  , Italian composer, was born at Faenza on the 28th of December 1729 . He was educated by Padre Martini, and appointed organist of the cathedral of Faenza before the completion of his nineteenth year . Resigning his appointment in 1750, Sarti devoted himself to the study of dramatic music, becoming director of the Faenza theatre in 1752 . In 1751 he produced his first opera, Pompeo, with great success . His next works, Il Re Pastore, Medonte, Demofoonte and L'Olimpiade, assured him so brilliant a reputation that in 1753 King Frederick V. of Denmark invited him to Copenhagen, with the appointments of Hofkapellmeister and director of the opera . Here he produced his Ciro riconsosciuto . In 1765 he travelled to Italy to engage some new singers; meanwhile the death of King Frederick put an end for the time to his engagement . In 1769 he went to London, where he could only contrive to exist by giving music lessons . In 1770 he obtained a post in Venice as music master at the Conservatorio dell' Ospedaletto . In 1779 he was elected maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Milan, where he remained until 1784 . Here he exercised his true vocation—composing, in addition to at least twenty of his most successful operas, a vast quantity of sacred music for the cathedral, and educating a number of clever pupils, the most distinguished of whom was Cherubini . In 1784 Sarti was invited by the empress Catherine II. to St Petersburg .

On his way thither he stopped at

Vienna, where the emperor Joseph II. received him with marked favour, and where he made the acquaintance of Mozart . He reached St Petersburg in 1785, and at once took the direction of the opera, for which he composed many new pieces, besides some very striking sacred music, including a Te Deum for the victory of Ochakov, in which he introduced the firing of real cannon . He remained in Russia until 18o1, when his health was so broken that he solicited permission to return . The emperor Alexander dismissed him in 1802 with a liberal pension; letters of nobility had been granted to him by the empress Catherine . His most successful operas in Russia were Armida and Olega, for the latter of which the empress herself wrote the libretto . Sarti died at Berlin on the 28th of July 1802 . Sarti's opera I Due Litiganti has been immortalized by Mozart, who introduced an air from it into the supper scene in Don Giovanni . It should be noted that Mozart's- Nozze di Figaro owed a great deal to the influence of this opera, which was performed in Vienna in 1784 . The admirable libretto by Da Ponte, author of the libretti of Figaro and Don Giovanni, shows similar situations, and the complicated finale of the first act served as a model to Mozart for the finale of the last act of Figaro .