Storace, Stephen (1762–1796)

English composer. He wrote operas in Italian and English, including his Mozart-influenced Shakespearean opera Gli equivoci (1786), and his most successful English opera The Pirates (1792).

He studied at the Conservatorio di Sant' Onofrio in Naples, and in about 1784 went to Vienna, where he produced two operas and became friendly with Mozart. In 1787 he returned to London with his sister, the soprano Anna Storace, and became composer to Sheridan's company at the Drury Lane Theatre. Gli equivoci has been successfully revived in London in 1974 and at Wexford in 1992.

Works Opera and stage the operas Gli sposi malcontenti (1785), Gli equivoci (after Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, 1786), La cameriera astuta (1788), The Haunted Tower, No Song, No Supper (1790), The Siege of Belgrade (1791), The Pirates, Dido: Queen of Carthage (1792), The Cherokee (1794), The Iron Chest (Colman), Mahmoud, or The Prince of Persia (unfinished, completed by Michael Kelly and Ann Storace, produced 1796) and others; ballet Venus and Adonis.