Biography
Tommaso Traetta was born on 30 March 1727 in Bitonto, near Bari, and died on 6 April 1779 in Venice. From 1738 to 1748 he studied at the Conservatorio S. Maria di Loreto in Naples, among others under Nicola Porpora and Francesco Durante. His first major opera, Il Farnace (1751, Teatro San Carlo, Naples), launched his career as a sought-after composer of opere serie. From 1758 he served as court composer in Parma, where, alongside minister Guillaume du Tillot, he worked toward a renewal of opera seria modelled on French tragédie lyrique. In 1768 Catherine II called him to her court in Saint Petersburg as successor to Baldassare Galuppi, where he remained until 1774, before an unsuccessful spell in London led him back to Venice in 1776, where he stayed until his death. Because of his role in loosening the rigid da capo aria in favour of a more continuously dramatic style, he is regarded as one of the most important Italian forerunners of Christoph Willibald Gluck's operatic reforms.
On Stagelog
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