Francesco Bartolomeo Conti

Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (20 January 168219 July 1732) was an Italian composer and player of the mandolin and theorbo. Little is known about the biography of Conti. He was born in Florence, Italy. By 1700 he was already known as a theorbist not only in his native Florence, but also in other cities such as Ferrara and Milan. The fame he enjoyed by 1701 enabled him to obtain appointment as an auxiliary theorbist at the Habsburg court in Vienna with the same salary as the main theorbist, Orazio Clementi. At the 1706 carnival he made his debut as an opera composer with Cleotide, and in 1713 was appointed as a court composer. In 1708, with the death of Clementi, Conti was promoted senior theorbist, a position he held until 1726. In the same year he was elected a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna and in 1711 he was appointed vice-Kapellmeister (vice-maestro di cappella) in Vienna. In April of that year, after the death of his first wife, Theresia Kugler, Conti remarried to the prima donna Maria Landini, at that time the highest-paid singer in Vienna. She sang the main soprano roles in Conti’s operas from 1714 and 1721, but died in 1722. After her death Anna Maria Lorenzani