Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista

Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista (jōvän`nē bät-tēs`tä pārgōlā`zē), 1710–36, Italian composer of the Neapolitan school. Although he died at the age of 26, he is credited with masterpieces in two fields of music: La serva padrona (The Maid as Mistress, c.1733), an intermezzo, or short comic opera; and a setting of the Stabat Mater for treble voices and strings. His fame rests chiefly on the popularity of La serva padrona, although much of his best music is contained in two serious operas, Salustia (1732) and L'Olimpiade (1735).

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Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista

(born Jan. 4, 1710, Jesi, Italy—died March 16, 1736, Pozzuoli) Italian composer. In 1732 he was appointed chapel master to a Neapolitan prince. His comic opera Lo frate 'nnamorato (1732) was followed in 1733 by an opera seria, which had a comic intermezzo that became his best-known work, La serva padrona. His health failing, he moved into a Franciscan monastery (1736), where he wrote his famous Stabat Mater and Salve Regina before dying at age 26. Traveling opera troupes took up La serva padrona, and in 1752 the success of a Paris production set off the controversy known as the guerre des bouffons (“war of the buffoons”), with musical forgers vying to produce spurious works of Pergolesi, leaving some uncertainty about the authenticity of works attributed to him.

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Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista 

(real surname Draghi; pseudonym derived from the name of the city of the family’s origin). Born Jan. 4, 1710, in Jesi, near Ancona; died Mar. 17, 1736, in Pozzuoli, near Naples. Italian composer and representative of the Neapolitan school of opera.

Pergolesi’s first opera, Salustia, was staged in Naples in 1731. Pergolesi wrote opere serie, oratorios, and comic intermezzi, which were staged between the acts of opere serie. These intermezzi were subsequently performed independently as comic operas. In 1733, Pergolesi wrote the intermezzo La serva padrona for II prigioner superbo, an opera seria. La serva padrona was one of the first opere buffe and is still one of the best. Pergolesi also composed trio sonatas, operatic overtures, and other works, all of which anticipated the sudden stylistic changes that took place in Italian art in the mid-18th century. His religious work Stabat Mater (1735) is widely known.

WORKS

Recente è l’edizione dell’Opera omnia, vols. 1–25 [26–27], Rome, 1936— 42.

REFERENCES

Materialy i dokumenty po istorii muzyki, vol. 2. Edited by M. V. Ivanov-Boretskii. Moscow, 1934.
Della Corte, A. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Turin, 1936.
Margadonna, M. Pergolesi. [Milan, 1961.]