Martín y Soler, Vicente (1754–1806)

Spanish composer. He travelled widely, producing operas in Italy, Russia, and Vienna, notably Una cosa rara 1786, written in collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte.

He was born at Valencia, and was a chorister there. He made his debut as an opera composer in Madrid in 1776, then went to Italy, where he probably studied with Padre Martini, and produced operas successfully in Naples, Turin, and Venice. In Vienna, 1785–88, he composed three operas on libretti by da Ponte, the most successful of which, Una cosa rara (1786), for a time eclipsed Mozart's Marriage of Figaro; Mozart quotes from it in the supper scene in Don Giovanni. Apart from a visit to London 1794–95, he lived from 1788 in St Petersburg, in the service of the Russian court.

Works Opera Ifigenia in Aulide (1779), Ipermestra, Andromaca (1780), Astartea, Partenope, L'amor geloso (1782), In amor si vuol destrezza (L'accorta cameriera, 1782), Vologeso, Le burle per amore (1784), La vedova spiritosa, Il burbero di buon cuore (1786), Una cosa rara, o Bellezza ed onestà (1786), L'arbore di Diana (1787), Gore Bogatyr Kosometovich (1789), Melomania (Russian), Fedul and his Children (Russian; libretti of these three by Catherine II), Il castello d'Atlante (1791), La scuola de' maritati (1795), L'isola del piacere (1795), Le nozze de contadini spagnuoli, La festa del villaggio (1798).

Other prologue La Dora festeggiante for Vologeso; several ballets; church music; cantatas La deità benefica and Il sogno; canzonets; canons.