Giovanni Legrenzi

Giovanni Legrenzi (baptized August 12, 1626 – May 27, 1690) was an Italian composer of opera, vocal and instrumental music, and organist, of the Baroque era.

Legrenzi was probably taught largely at home, and his performance skills developed at the local church, and it can also be assumed there was music-making in the house.

Legrenzi received his first appointment in Bergamo, as Organist at Santa Maria Maggiore, a magnificent church with a celebrated musical history.

His appointment as organist was not reconfirmed at the end of the year owing to his apparent involvement in a minor gambling scandal, though he was reinstated by mid-February 1655.

Legrenzi resigned from his position at Bergamo towards the end of 1655, and in 1656 became maestro di cappella at the Academy of the Holy Spirit in Ferrara.

We know little of certainty about Legrenzi's activities between approximately 1665 and 1670, a situation considerably exacerbated by the destruction of local records during World War II.

He ended his association with the Academy of the Holy Spirit at some point, and does not appear to have had a permanent position of any sort for several years, though it is unlikely that he was in financial difficulty.

In 1676 he was a finalist for appointment as maestro at San Marco in succession to Francesco Cavalli, losing by a single vote to Natale Monferrato.

Later in the year he became maestro di coro of the Ospedale dei Mendicanti, where he remained until 1682 when he succeeded Antonio Sartorio as vice-maestro at San Marco.

Legrenzi's death on 27 May 1690 from the "mal di petra" (a colic-related illness, probably kidney stones) was accompanied by excruciating pain.

The bulk of his instrumental music may also be included in this category, since it would have been used primarily as a substitute for liturgical items at Mass or Vespers.

Legrenzi composed nineteen operas from 1662 to 1685, of which the most successful were Achille in Sciro (1664), La divisione del mondo, I due cesari (1683), Il Giustino (1683), and Publio Elio Pertinace (1684).

By far the most frequently recorded item is Che fiero costume from the opera Eteocle e Polinice (in a 1680 revival, having originally appeared in 1678 in Echi di Riverenza Op.