Sarti, Giuseppe (1729–1802)

Italian composer and conductor. As well as holding posts in Italy as an organist and music director, he spent many years in Denmark as an opera conductor. He later went to Russia, where he lived in St Petersburg and produced Russian operas for the court. His best-known works are the operas Fra due litiganti (1782) and Giulio Sabino.

He studied under Francesco Vallotti in Padua and Padre Martini in Bologna. He was organist of Faenza Cathedral 1748–51, was appointed music director of the theatre there in 1752, and produced his first opera the same year. In 1753 he went to Copenhagen as conductor of the Mingotti opera company, and two years later was appointed Kapellmeister to the Danish court. He stayed there until 1775, except for three years in Italy 1765–68. He was director of the Ospedaletto Conservatory in Venice 1775–79, and was then appointed maestro di cappella of Milan Cathedral, where Cherubini was his pupil.

In 1784 he became music director to the Russian court. He travelled to St Petersburg via Vienna, where he met Mozart, who quoted the aria ‘Come un agnello’ from his opera Fra due litiganti in the supper scene in Don Giovanni. He produced a number of operas in Russia, including Oleg on a libretto by the empress, and stayed there until 1802, founding a music school in the Ukraine and becoming director of the Conservatory in St Petersburg in 1793. He then intended to retire in Italy, but died in Berlin on the way.

Works Opera Pompeo in Armenia (1752); Il rè pastore (1753); La giardiniera brillante (1768); Farnace; Le gelosie villane; Fra due litiganti (1782); Medonte (1777); Giulio Sabino; I finti eredi; Armida e Rinaldo (1786); Oleg (in Russian, with Pashkevich and Canobbio).

Sacred and secular music two Russian oratorios; requiem for Louis XVI (1793); Masses; Te Deum; other church music; keyboard music.