Antonio Sartorio
Antonio Sartorio (1630 – 30 December 1680) was an Italian composer active mainly in Venice, Italy, and in Hanover, Germany. He was a leading composer of operas in his native Venice in the 1660s and 1670s and was also known for composing in other genres of vocal music. Between 1665 and 1675 he spent most of his time in Hanover, where he held the post of Kapellmeister to Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg – returning frequently to Venice to compose operas for the Carnival. In 1676 he became vice maestro di capella at San Marco in Venice. Early work in Italy and work as Kapellmeister Sartorio was the brother of composer and organist Gasparo Sartorio and architect Girolamo Sartorio who also had connections with the theatre. Beyond birth records, the first known information about Sartorio relates to the mounting of his first opera, Gl'amori infruttuosi di Pirro, at the Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice on 4 January 1661. His second opera, Seleuco, did not come until five years later when it was produced at the Teatro San Luca on 16 January 1666. The year before, he had been appointed to the position of Kapellmeister to Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg; just months after the duke had assumed authority over the Principality of Calenberg upon his elder brother Georg Wilhelm's inheriting of the Principality of Lüneburg. Friedrich ruled over the Calenberg subdivision of the duchy from 1665 until his death in 1679, fourteen years later. Friedrich was a highly intelligent and educated sovereign who had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1651. Upon becoming duke, he instituted the Catholic rite to his court, which accordingly led to his choice of Sartorio, a Catholic, as Kapellmeister. The duke had met Sartorio upon one of his four visits to Italy, one of which was for the purpose of lending the Republic of Venice substantial military aid against the Turks. Sartorio began his duties as Kapellmeister on Trinity Sunday 1666 not too long after the Duke's new palace in Herrenhausen near Hanover was finished. The palace's design was inspired by the Palace of Versailles and is famous for its gardens, the Herrenhausen Gardens. As Kapellmeister, Sartorio had at his disposal six instrumentalists and seven or eight singers, the majority of which were Italian. For the group, Sartorio composed music for the Kapelle, a missa brevis, and several vesper psalms and cantatas in both the stile antico and the stile moderno. In addition, the group's repertory included masses, motets and psalms by Henri Dumont, Bonifatio Gratiani and Orazio Tarditi. Some of the group's music was discovered in 1958 in an organ bellows in the village of Hüpede. Trips home to Venice Sartorio worked in Hanover up until 1675, during which time he returned frequently to Venice in the winter, both to compose operas for Carnival and to hire musicians for service at court. His first trip back to his native city was in 1666–1667. During this time his remarkable duo operas, La prosperità d'Elio