Bertoni, Ferdinando Giuseppe (1725-1813)

Italian composer. He was a pupil of Giovanni Martini at Bologna. Organist at St Mark's, Venice, from 1752 and choirmaster at the Conservatorio dei Mendicanti from 1757, he wrote many works for the female musicians there. He produced his first opera in Florence in 1745. In 1776 he produced his Orfeo, on the libretto by Raniero de Calzabigi already set by Christoph Willibald von Gluck in 1762; it contains many echoes of Gluck's music. He visited London to produce operas in 1778-80 and 1781-83. In 1785 he succeeded Baldassare Galuppi as maestro di cappella at St Mark's, Venice.

Works Opera Cajetto (1746), Orazio Curiazo, Tancredi (1766), Orfeo ed Euridice (1776), Quinto Fabio (1778), and over 40 others.

Other oratorios and Latin cantatas; string quartets; keyboard music.