Carlo Ambrogio Lonati

Together with Carlo Mannelli and Lelio Colista he counted among the "più valorosi professori musici di Roma".

The Teatro Tordinona, the first public theater for opera performances in Rome, opened in 1671 with music by Bernardo Pasquini.

Due to the closure of the Tordinona theatre from the Holy Year 1675, it is suggested that Lonati left Rome and participated in two Venetian works of Giovanni Legrenzi.

It is not known if Lonati visited the court of Emperor Leopold I, to whom he dedicated his last work, a set of twelve sonatas for violin and basso continuo.

Lonati's few extant violin works reveal a bold, fluent style with (in his 1701 12 Sonate per violino e basso continuo)[1] prominent double stopping and use of scordatura, as well as the idiosyncratic melodic writing that runs through all his music.

His cantatas – long, varied and of unusual expressive force – rank with those of Stradella and Alessandro Scarlatti, while his surviving operas, in Venetian style, are characterized by mature da capo arias and a penchant for the stile concitato with brilliant writing for obbligato instruments.