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Summary

Paisiello, Giovanni (b. Roccaforzata, near Taranto, 9 May 1740; d. Naples, 5 June 1816). Famed above all for his opere buffe, Paisiello worked for most of his life in Naples, aside from eight years in St Petersburg (1776–84) and two in Vienna (1802–4). He met Mozart in Naples in mid-1770, in Turin in early 1771 and in Vienna in 1784 on his way back to Naples from Russia. On the latter occasion, he attended a private concert given by Mozart and his pupil Barbara von Ployer (13 June 1784); Mozart duly reciprocated by going to the premiere of Paisiello's Il re Teodoro in Venezia (23 August) at the Burgtheater. (The opera was performed another thirteen times before the end of the year.) In his ‘Reminiscences’ (1826) Michael Kelly, the original Don Basilio and Don Curzio in Le nozze di Figaro and a popular singer in Vienna in the 1780s, recalled one of the meetings between Paisiello and Mozart in 1784: ‘it was gratifying to witness the satisfaction which they appeared to feel by becoming acquainted; the esteem which they had for each other was well known’.

Paisiello was easily the most popular operatic composer at the Viennese court theatres during Mozart's decade in the city (1781–91) – he had over a hundred more performances in this period than Salieri, his nearest rival.