Giuseppe Carpani

He is remembered in large part for his role in the history of classical music: he knew Haydn, Mozart, Salieri, Beethoven, and Rossini, and served them in various ways as poet, translator, and biographer.

[3] Already during his studies, he turned to literature on his own time, writing poetry and plays, some in standard Italian and some in Milanese dialect.

[4] An early success (1780) was Gli antiquari in Palmira, an opera composed by Giacomo Rust to Carpani's libretto,[5] which led to his being invited to write libretti for the Milanese court, performed in the country residence at Monza.

This was the historical period in which Napoleon's conquests in Italy began, and Carpani wrote some sharply anti-French pieces in the journal.

[8] Carpani was a "passionate royalist", supporting the (at the time, highly repressive[9]) imperial Austrian government by working as an internal spy.

Rossini, who admired Beethoven greatly, later expressed sorrow over the squalor of his surroundings and the "indefinable sadness spread over his features".

He published a number of translations of French and German operas, and also wrote an oratorio on La passione di Gesù Christo, which was set to music by Joseph Weigl, and performed in 1808, in the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, and in 1821 by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.