Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and trumpet player who wrote music in a wide range of styles. Morricone composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. His score...

Giacomo Puccini was the most important composer of Italian opera after Verdi. He wrote in the verismo style, a counterpart to the movement of Realism in literature and a trend that favored subjects and characters from everyday life for oper...

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian opera composer. Verdi was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, and developed a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian...

Bellini, Vincenzo, Italian opera composer. He acquired his musical training from his grandfather and father, and began composing religious and secular music in his childhood. His first opera, Adelson e Salvini, was successfully performed in...

Gaetano Donizetti was among the most important composers of bel canto opera in both Italian and French in the first half of the nineteenth Century. Many of Donizetti's more than 60 operas are still part of the modern repertoire and continue...

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was an Italian musical composer who wrote more than 30 operas as well as sacred music and chamber music. His best known works include Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), and Guillaume Tell (William Te...

Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was the most celebrated violin virtuoso of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique. His 24 Caprices for Solo Violin Op. 1 a...

Luigi Cherubini was an Italian Classical and Romantic composer. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries. His operas were heavily praised and interpret...

Antonio Salieri is still better known today for the renowned composers with whom he was associated than for his own many and varied compositions. While he cannot be ranked among the great masters himself, he has nevertheless come into view...

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer of the Neapolitan school. Although he died at the age of 26, he is credited with masterpieces in two fields of music: La serva padrona (The Maid as Mistress, c.1733), an intermezzo, or short com...

Pietro Antonio Locatelli was an Italian composer and violinist. A child prodigy on the violin, he was sent to study in Rome under the direction of Arcangelo Corelli. Little is known of his subsequent activities except that he finally settle...

Italian composer and keyboard player. Son of the composer Alessandro Scarlatti, he worked as his father's assistant in Naples. By 1705 he was living in Rome. His father subsequently sent him to Venice, where he stayed until about 1708. Ther...

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, he was recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. H...

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, Italian composer. Born to a wealthy Venetian family, he was not obliged to work for a living and became a highly prolific composer. He had more than 50 operas successfully produced between 1694 and 1741, though few...

Alessandro Scarlatti was among the most important Italian composers of opera from the late Baroque period. He is credited with establishing the Neapolitan school of opera in the eighteenth century, rapidly improving the predominantly provin...