Andrea Adolfati

Andrea Adolfati was born in Venice around 1721 or 1722 and died in Padua on 28 October 1760. An Italian composer trained in Venice, he was a pupil of Galuppi, and his career took him through several courts and churches in northern Italy. His style remained, on the whole, within the conventions of his time.

After his training, he held the post of maestro di cappella at Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. In 1745 he left that position to serve the court of Modena as maestro di cappella to the Archduchess, where his work La pace fra la virtù e la bellezza was premiered that same year. The same period saw his collaboration with Hasse on Lo starnuto d'Ercole, for which he composed the recitatives, choruses and six arias. A printed libretto notes that one performance was given with marionettes in the small Teatro San Girolamo, located in the Venetian palace of Angelo Labia, in 1745 and during the carnival of 1746. Between 1748 and the beginning of 1760 he directed the music at SS. Annunziata del Vastato in Genoa, after which he moved to Padua, where he succeeded Rampini as maestro di cappella on 30 May.

His relationship with Metastasio was uneven: the poet did not appreciate his music for La clemenza di Tito, heard in Vienna in 1753, although he sent him courteous letters from Genoa in 1755 and 1757. Nevertheless, two curiosities of his writing stand out: an aria in 5/4 time and a youthful attempt to use 7/4.

Adolfati is today a minor figure, and much of his work has been lost. His surviving output includes operas, cantatas, sacred music and six sonatas published in Paris and Amsterdam, and his interest lies above all in documenting the musical life of Venice, Genoa and Padua in the mid-eighteenth century.