Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli

Zingarelli was born in Naples, where he studied (from the age of 7) at the Santa Maria di Loreto conservatory under Fenaroli and Speranza.

Seven years later he publicly refused, as an Italian patriot, to conduct a Te Deum for Napoleon's new-born son, known as King of Rome, in St. Peter's Basilica.

Then in 1816 he replaced Giovanni Paisiello as choir master of Naples Cathedral, a position he held until his death in 1837.

Antigone, in which Zingarelli adopted some of the reform principles of French opera, won little favour in Paris; after that he eschewed innovation and contented himself with tried and tested formulae.

Unfortunately both the work and Costa's singing met with ferocious criticism: "[This cantata] is one of the most tame, insipid things we were ever doomed to hear: a heap of common-place trash from the first to the last note.

In the theatre while singing the air "Nel furor delle tempeste" [from Bellini's Il pirata] and accompanying himself, he had a narrow escape.

The tempests proved contagious, and were beginning to manifest themselves in the galleries, and had he remained but a few moments longer on the stage, he would have witnessed a storm compared to which the roarings of his own Vesuvius would have seemed but a murmur.

"[3] Less than a month before his death he produced an oratorio, The Flight into Egypt, and his requiem mass, composed for his own funeral, is said to embody his most devotional church style.