Bontempi, Giovanni Andrea (c. 1624–1705)

Italian castrato, theorist, and composer. He took the name of a patron, Cesare Bontempi, and sang in St Mark's, Venice, from 1643. At the end of the 1640s he went to Germany, where he became assistant conductor to Heinrich Schütz in Dresden in 1666, but devoted himself to science and architecture the next year. He returned to Italy in 1669 and after another visit to Dresden in 1671, settled down in his birthplace. He wrote three theoretical books.

Works Opera Paride (1662), Dafne (1671), Jupiter and Io (1673).