Piccinni, Niccolò (1728–1800)

Italian composer. He wrote over 120 operas, using many of Metastasio's libretti, and was a significant figure in the development of both French and Italian opera.

He studied at the Conservatorio di Sant' Onofrio at Naples, where he was taught by Leonardo Leo and Francesco Durante. He produced his first opera at Naples in 1754. It was well received and was soon followed by other operas, both comic and serious. In 1756 he married the singer Vincenza Sibilia, his pupil. In 1760, his opera La buona figliuola, based on Richardson's novel Pamela, was an enormous success in Rome. He enjoyed some years of success there before being ousted by his former pupil Pasquale Anfossi and returning to Naples in 1773.

In 1776 he was invited to Paris, where he was at first in great difficulties but was helped by the author Jean Marmontel, who taught him French and wrote the libretto of his first French opera, Roland (1778). He was pitted against Christoph Willibald von Gluck by partisans who liked to have something to quarrel about. The feud between the Gluckists and Piccinnists – in which the composers themselves took no part – reached its height when, in 1781, Piccinni set the libretto of Iphigénie en Tauride, which had already been used by Gluck.

At the Revolution he left for Italy, visited Venice, and then returned home to Naples, where he was placed under close surveillance and lived in great poverty. In 1798 he at last succeeded in returning to Paris. After a period of comparative affluence, he again fell into poverty, was relieved by a gift from Napoleon and an inspector's post at the Conservatory, but became paralysed and finally died in distress.

His son Luigi (1766–1827) and his grandson Louis-Alexandre (1779–1850) were both composers. The former wrote operas for Paris and Stockholm, the latter ballets and melodramas for the Paris theatres.

Works Opera about 120, including Le donne dispettose (1754), Le Gelosie, Zenobia (1756), Alessandro nell' Indie (two versions), Madama Arrighetta (1758), La buona figliuola, La buona figliuola maritata (both after Richardson's Pamela, 1760, 1761), Il cavaliere per amore (1762), Le contadine bizarre, Gli stravaganti (1764), L'Olimpiade (1761), I viaggiatori (1775), La pescatrice (1766), Le finte gemelle, Vittorina (Goldoni), Roland, Atys, Iphigénie en Tauride (1781), Didon (1783), Le Faux Lord (1783), Pénélope, Endymion (1784).

Other oratorio Jonathan and three others; Mass, psalms, and other church music.