Paer, Ferdinando (1771–1839)

Italian composer. He was a prolific and popular composer of operas. His works, which included Griselda (1798), Camilla (1799), and Le maître de chapelle (1821), were performed in Italy, Austria, Germany, and France.

He was born at Parma, and studied there with Gasparo Ghiretti. At the age of 20 he became a conductor at Venice. Having married the singer Francesca Riccardi, he was invited to Vienna in 1798, where she was engaged at the court opera. There he produced Camilla in 1799. In 1803 he went to Dresden, remaining there as an opera conductor until 1806, and producing Leonora, a setting of an Italian version of Gaveaux's opera on which Beethoven later based his Fidelio. In 1807, after accompanying Napoleon to Warsaw and Posen, he was appointed his maître de chapelle and settled in Paris.

Works Opera Circe (1792), Il tempo fa giustizia a tutti (1792), Il nuovo Figaro (after Beaumarchais' Mariage de Figaro, 1794), Il matrimonio improvviso, Idomeneo (1794), Eroe e Leandro (1794), L'intrigo amoroso, Il principe di Taranto, Camilla, o Il sotterraneo (1799), La sonnambula (1800), Achille, Leonora, o L'amore conjugale (1804), Sofonisba, Numa Pompilio (1808), Agnese di Fitz-Henry (1809), Didone abbandonata (1810), Le maître de chapelle (1821), La Marquise de Brinvilliers (with Auber, Batton, Berton, Blangini, Boieldieu, Carafa, Cherubini, and Hérold, 1831), and over 20 others.

Other oratorios Il santo sepolcro and La passione; Masses and motets; about 12 cantatas (Italian, French and German); Bacchanalian symphony for orchestra; Bridal March for the wedding of Napoleon and Joséphine.