October 6, 1786

Antonio Sacchini (June 14, 1730 to October 6, 1786) was an  composer, of operas, and today he is largely forgotten. Such was not always the case, Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, liked his work. In these circumstances a brief biographical quote is appropriate. Antonio Sacchini was born in Florence, 

the  son of a cook who followed the Infante Don Carlos to Naples ....Taken to Naples at the age of four, he entered the Conservatorio S. Maria di Loreto there at the age of ten, studying with Francesco Durante. His first Intermezzo, Fra Donato, was performed successfully at the conservatory in 1756, followed by another work of the same kind the following year, earning him a local reputation. In 1758 he was appointed to the unpaid position of maestro di cappella straordinario at the conservatory and in 1761 he became secondo maestro, the date of his first opera for the Teatro San Carlo, Andromaca. ....

In 1768 he was appointed director of the Conservatorio dell'Ospedaletto in Venice,...With an increasing international reputation, he superintended productions of his work in Stuttgart and Munich and in 1772 moved to London, his home for the next ten years. In the judgement of Charles Burney 'He remained too long in England for his own fame and fortune. The first was injured by cabals … and the second by inactivity and want of economy' .... Sacchini, in fact, ran into financial trouble in London, where he had at first had considerable success.

In 1781 he moved to Paris, where he won the support of the Queen, but met intrigue and opposition from the musical establishment in the quarrel between supporters of Gluck and adherents of [Niccolo] Piccinni, eventually seeming to please neither one nor the other. The patronage of Marie Antoinette aroused further prejudice, in view of the Queen's known predilection for foreign music. Sacchini attempted to fulfill the demands of French taste, and his opera Dardanus succeeded when it was staged at Fontainebleau in 1785. The Queen was unable to have Oedipe à Colone staged, as she had hoped, at Fontainebleau in 1786, a disappointment to which some attributed Sacchini's death in October that year. In the event the new opera, regarded as Sacchini's masterpiece, was staged at the Opéra in 1787 and remained in the repertoire of the house for many years.

During his career of some thirty years Sacchini had enjoyed great fame, notably as a composer of Italian opera seria. The decline in his reputation may in good part be attributed to the neglect of a form in which he had excelled. His skills were most notably deployed in Oedipe à Colone, a work in which he was able to unite the rival trends of contemporary opera within a French dramatic structure.

The fame of Antonio Sacchini was still vivid in the next century. We found an article in
The Lady's Monthly Museum, (1824).  There a brief essay appeared which compared the composing habits of several musicians. Sacchini is mentioned at the end of our excerpt:

Haydn, when he sat down to compose, always dressed himself with the utmost care; had his hair nicely powdered, and put on his best suit. Frederick II. had given him a diamond ring, and Haydn declared, that if he happened to begin without it, he could not summon a single idea. He could write only on the finest paper, and was as particular in forming his notes, as if he had been engraving them on copper-plate. After all these minute preparations, he began by choosing the theme of his subject, and fixing into what keys he wished to modulate it: and he, as it were, varied the action of his subject, by imagining to himself the incidents of some little adventure or romance. ' 

Gluck, when he felt himself in a humour for composing, had his piano carried into a beautiful meadow, and with a bottle of Champaigne on each side of him, transported his imagination to Elysium.

Sarti, a man of gloomy imagination, preferred the solemn stillness of a spacious room, dimly lighted by a single lamp....

Cimarosa delighted in noise and mirth; surrounded by a party of friends, he composed his operas: and as the ideas presented themselves, he seized and embodied them. ...

Paisiello composed his Barhierre de Saviglia, and La Molinara, in bed.

Sacchini declared. that he never had moments of inspiration, except his two favorite cats were sitting one on each shoulder.