Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692-1753) - Motetto Pastorale "O admirable mysterium"
Performers: Christine Wolff (soprano); Britta Schwarz (alto); Martin
Petzold (tenor); Dresden Kornerscher Sing-Verein; Dresden Instrumental
Concert; Peter Kopp (conductor)
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Italian composer. He was the son of Tommaso Ristori, a versatile
musician and actor, and the director of a travelling company of Italian
comedians which, shortly before Giovanni’s birth, was in the service of
the Saxon elector Johann Georg III at Dresden. Neither the place nor the
exact date of Giovanni’s birth is documented, but his birthplace is
variously given as Bologna (in La BordeE and GerberL), Vienna, by a
Saxon passport of 1715, and Venice. His first opera, Pallade trionfante
in Arcadia, had its première at the Teatro degli Obizzi, Padua, in the
summer of 1713, and in November his Orlando furioso was given in the
Teatro S Angelo, Venice; both were revived in Venice the following year
when, in addition, his Euristeo was performed in Venice and Bologna and
his Pigmalione in Rovigo. In December 1715 Tommaso Ristori and his
Italian comedians were engaged by the elector Friedrich August I at the
Saxon court. Giovanni and his wife Maria accompanied his parents to
Dresden, but he held no official position there until 1717 when he was
appointed composer to the Italian comic theatre managed by his father;
at the same time he became director of the cappella polacca with a
salary of 600 thalers. The cappella, which accompanied August II on his
journeys to Poland, consisted of a dozen musicians including J.J.
Quantz, first employed as an oboist, and the violinist Franz Benda.
Although Lotti was the resident opera composer at Dresden between 1717
and 1719, Ristori had Cleonice (1718). But Italian opera was severely
curtailed soon afterwards, and Ristori and his father were among the few
Italians not released from service in 1720. During the following years
Ristori, who, together with Heinichen and Zelenka, was responsible for
the church services at the Saxon court, composed masses, motets,
litanies and other liturgical pieces. There is also evidence of an opera
performance in Prague in the autumn of 1723. His comic opera Calandro
is sometimes called the first Italian opera buffa written in Germany.
Ristori spent some of 1731-32 in Russia with his father’s troupe at the
invitation of the newly crowned Empress Anna Ivanovna. There, a revival
of Calandro on 11 December is generally accounted the first performance
of an Italian opera in Russia. After a short visit to St Petersburg in
early 1732, the company went to Warsaw, where August II was residing.
Most of the Italian comedians at Dresden were dismissed when August II
died in 1733; he was succeeded by his only legitimate son, Friedrich
August II, who was also King of Poland as August III. At this time
Ristori was temporarily demoted to the rank of chamber organist with a
reduced salary of 450 thalers, but by 1745 it had increased to 1200
thalers. With the retirement of Tommaso Ristori, improvised Italian
comedy at the Dresden court came to an end, and serious opera, directed
by Hasse the new Kapellmeister, dominated the Saxon stage. Besides
Hasse, Ristori regularly distinguished himself with new compositions,
writing cantatas for birthdays and name days as well as works for the
stage, including the opera Arianna for the elector’s birthday on 7
October 1736. Ristori probably did not supervise the première of his
pasticcio Didone abbandonata at Covent Garden, London, on 13 April 1737,
but he directed rehearsals and performances of his Temistocle and
Adriano in Siria at S Carlo, Naples, in 1738 and 1739; he must have
accompanied the Saxon princess Maria Amalia there following her marriage
to Charles III, King of the Two Sicilies, in May 1738. By 1744 he had
returned to Dresden, where, in that year, he composed three masses,
including the Messa per il Santissimo Natale di N.S.; the quality of
these and other choral works was acknowledged with his appointment as
court Kirchenkomponist in 1746. In 1750 August III again rewarded
Ristori for his many years of service and outstanding music by naming
him vice-Kapellmeister under Hasse. His last work, a Mass in C, is dated
1752. When he died the following year his widow was given a pension of
400 thalers and was paid for Ristori’s collection of his own scores,
some of which were lost in the bombardment of Dresden in 1760 and many
others during World War II.
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