SPONTINI, GASPARE
(Maiolati, Ancona 1774-1851)

Italian composer. He studied with Sala and Tritto at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini in Naples, but made his debut as an opera composer in Rome with Li puntigli delle donne (1796), which was a remarkable success. From 1799 to 1801 he was in Palermo before moving to Paris (1803). There in 1807 his opera La vestale was a triumph. He became official composer to the Court of Napoleon and wrote Fernand Cortez (1809). He was director of the Théâtre Italien from 1810 to 1812 and again from 1814 to 1820. He took French nationality in 1817 and in 1819 composed and staged Olympie, which had very little success. This disappointment prompted Spontini to leave France and move to Berlin, on the invitation of the Emperor Friedrich Wilhelm III (1820). There he composed Lalla Rookh (1821), Alcidor (1823) and most notably Agnes von Hohenstaufen (1829, revised 1837), the atmosphere of which was already openly Romantic.