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Composer: Francesco Barsanti (1690-1775)
Work: Concerto Grosso à 8, Opera III (1742)
Performers: Isrаеl Philarmonic Orchestra
Painting: Matthijs Naiveu (1647-1726) - Townscape with a stage performance
HD image: flic.kr/p/2nt7ZNj
Map: Joan Blaeu (1596-1673) - Stato Della Repvblica Di Lvcca (1665)
HD image: flic.kr/p/2nqVPcK
Further info: www.amazon.es/Horn-Music-Hand...
Listen free: open.spotify.com/album/4PTrSV...
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Francesco Barsanti
(Lucca, 1690 - London, 1772)
Italian composer. Very little is known about Barsanti's background. His father may or may not have been the opera librettist Giovanni Nicolao Barsanti (Il Temistocle) but this has never been proved. He studied law in Padua as a young man, but abandoned it to pursue a career in music. In 1714 he emigrated to London with Francesco Geminiani, another musician from Lucca who was several years his senior. He played oboe and recorder, and soon obtained a post in the opera orchestra at the Haymarket where Handel's operas were being produced. Nerici reports that he returned briefly to Lucca in 1717 and again in 1718 to play in the Festival of the Holy Cross, 'for a very high salary.' According to Hawkins and other authorities, in 1735 he left London for Edinburgh in Scotland where he obtained a post as a 'Master' with the Edinburgh Musical Society. He stayed in Scotland 8 years, during which time he benefitted from the support (moral if not financial) of the young Lady Erskine (Charlotte Hope) (1720-1788), and married a commoner named 'Jean', about whom nothing else is known. The fortunes of the EMS were less than stellar at that time; in 1740 the Society was obliged to cut Barsanti's salary from £50 per year to £25, and over the next three years, it refused two of Barsanti's requests for a raise. Barsanti finally returned to London some time after 1743, with his wife and daughter Jane (known as 'Jenny'), but found that he has lost his place in musical society in London and was obliged to take a post as a violist in Handel's opera orchestra. He drew little income from his earlier compositions, and the two works he composed after his return to London brought him almost nothing. He suffered a stroke in 1772 on the eve of his daughter Jenny's début at Covent Garden, and died three years later, sometime between May 1 and 4, 1775. He was cared for to the end of his life by his daughter Jenny, a well-known actress upon the London and Dublin stages.