Angelo Maria Benincori

Angelo Maria Benincori (28 March 1779 – 30 December 1821) was an Italian composer. He wrote string quartets and, in Paris, endeavoured to be a successful composer of operas; his greatest success, the performance of his completion of Nicolas Isouard’s opera Aladin, came a few weeks after his death. Life Benincori was born in Brescia in 1779. Hs father was secretary to the Duke of Parma; at Parma he studied, at an early age, music theory with Gasparo Ghiretti and violin with Alessandro Rolla; his concert debut, aged eight, was at the ducal court, playing a violin concerto. He later studied with Domenico Cimarosa. Aged 14, he wrote a mass which was performed. His opera Nitteti (1797) was produced in Italy, and well received also in Vienna about 1800. In Vienna he met Joseph Haydn, with whose string quartets he was so impressed as to abandon dramatic composition for a time and write only quartets. In 1803 he went to Paris, where his quartets had been published, and wrote two operas, Galatée ou le Nouveau Pygmalion and Hésione, which were accepted by the Académie Impériale de Musique but never performed. Meanwhile, he struggled to gain a living by teaching. Théâtre Feydeau staged three