Zingarelli, Niccolò Antonio (1752–1837)

Italian composer. He wrote 37 operas, chiefly on serious and mythological themes; the best-known of these is Giulietta e Romeo (1796). In 1793 he was appointed to the first of several church posts, and after 1804 devoted himself to writing large quantities of church music.

Zingarelli studied at the Conservatorio Santa Maria di Loreto in Naples, where his intermezzo I quattro pazzi was produced in 1768. In 1772 he left the Conservatory and at first worked as an organist, but with Montezuma, produced at Naples in 1781, he began his career as an opera composer. From 1785 to 1803 he produced works in all the main Italian cities and also in Paris. He was appointed maestro di cappella at the cathedral in Milan in 1793, at Loreto in 1794, and in 1804 succeeded Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi at St Peter's, Rome. From about this time he devoted himself chiefly to church music. He became director of the Real Collegio di Musica in Naples in 1813, and maestro di cappella of the cathedral there in 1816. Bellini and Mercadante were among his pupils.

Works Opera 37, including Montezuma (1781), Armida (1786), Antigono, Ifigenia in Aulide (1787), Antigone (1790), Il mercato di Monfregoso (1792), Artaserse, Quinto Fabio, Gli Orazi e Curazi, Giulietta e Romeo (after Shakespeare, 1796), Andromeda, La morte di Mitridate (1797), I veri amici (1798), Il ratto delle Sabine (1799), Edipo a Colono (after Sophocles, 1802), Berenice, regina d'Armenia.

Choral oratorios La Passione (1787), Gerusalemme distrutta (1812), La medificazione di Gerusalemme, and others; many cantatas; 23 Masses, Requiems, and other church music, including 55 Magnificats; canon for eight voices; partimenti and solfeggi for vocal exercise.