GUGLIELMI, Pietro Carlo ca. 1763-1817

V'era un certo Barocino Duetto. [Copyist manuscript for voices and piano]

Italy or France: [ca. 1820].

Oblong quarto (207 x 264 mm). Sewn. [i] (title), 18 pp., with watermark of [?]F NERDLE.

Scored for soprano ("Agata") and basso ("Bucefalo") voices and piano.

With small oval handstamp of the Glasgow Society of Musicians and "68" in contemporary manuscript to lower inner corner of title; "A 1" in pencil to head of title.

Minor staining to margins of title.

With "Del Sigr. Fioravanti" to title, possibly referring to the arranger rather than the composer. There is a copy of the same piece, but for voices and orchestra, in the Archivio e Museo della Badia Basilica Benedettina di San Pietro (RISM online: 850001384).

Guglielmi was an "Italian composer, eldest son of Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi. Pietro Carlo spent most of his childhood in Massa; his first musical instruction came from his uncle, the Abate Domenico Guglielmi (b Oct 26, 1713; d Jan 20, 1790), organist and maestro di cappella at Massa Cathedral from 1744 to 1787. He probably also received some early instruction from his mother, the soprano Lelia Acchiapati. It is unlikely that, as has been suggested, he entered the S Maria di Loreto conservatory in Naples in 1782 or 1783 since he would have been only 11 years old; Giampaoli’s suggestion of 1787 is more plausible. While there he studied singing, the keyboard, and composition. In 1794 he was in Madrid where his first opera, Demetrio, had a successful première. By 1797 he had returned to settle in Naples for several years, with theatrical commissions taking him to Rome, Palermo, and, briefly in 1805, to Pavia and Venice. In 1806 he travelled between Naples and Rome; he returned to Massa in 1807, and soon after travelled to Lisbon where he remained for a few months. Between the spring of 1809 and November 1810 he settled in London, where he wrote operas and taught. He returned to his ancestral home in Massa and was in Rome in 1812. In 1813, during his tenure as house composer at La Scala, Milan, three of his operas had their premières and his reputation as a composer of international status was established. On his return to Massa in 1814 he composed a Te Deum in honour of the Archduchess Maria Beatrice d’Este; two years later he was made maestro di cappella onorario at her court. He continued to produce operas occasionally until his death in Naples in 1817 during a production of Paolo e Virginia." James L. Jackman, Kay Lipton, and Mary Hunter in Grove Music Online.

Item #40245

Price: $150.00  other currencies