Pasquale Anfossi
Pasquale Anfossi (5 April 1727 – February 1797) was an Italian opera composer. Pasquale Anfossi was born in Taggia, Republic of Genoa, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome. He wrote more than 80 operas, both opera seria and opera buffa, although he concentrated on church music, especially oratorios, during his last years.
Pasquale Anfossi

Heinrich Eduard Winter · This file comes from Gallica Digital Library and is available under the digital ID btv1b8415361m · Public domain
- Born
- 1727 · Taggia.
- Died
- 1797 · Rome.
- Occupation
- composer · violinist
- Fields
- opera
- Languages
- Italian
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
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Documentary summary
Pasquale Anfossi (5 April 1727 – February 1797) was an Italian opera composer. Pasquale Anfossi was born in Taggia, Republic of Genoa, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome. He wrote more than 80 operas, both opera seria and opera buffa, although he concentrated on church music, especially oratorios, during his last years.
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Note VALÉORINE
Pasquale Anfossi (1727–1797) was a composer and violinist. Born in Taggia, the composer died in Rome. Pasquale Anfossi held the position of chapelmaster.
Genres include opera. Languages used include Italian. Works by the composer are held at Procuratoria di San Marco musical archive.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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technical hold · checked 25 September 2026
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Authority files
museum · e3740fb5-615e-4f69-b6ff-f2988ae890c5 · wikidata · Q266985 · wikipedia · Pasquale Anfossi
In this article
Career
Career
Anfossi died in Rome in 1797.
Aiming at first to become a performer, he studied violin at the Neapolitan Loreto Conservatorium from 1744 to 1752, and played in an opera orchestra for ten years. He then turned to composing, studying with Sacchini and Piccinni. The first performance of his own work, the opera buffa La Serva Spiritosa was at the Rome Carnival in 1763, though his authorship of the work was not clearly established at the time. It appears he preferred to work under his teacher Sacchini, supplementing his tutor's works. Nevertheless, he made a breakthrough with his dramma giocoso L'incognita perseguitata in 1773 in Rome. By 1782 he had written about 30 operas, performed mainly in Venice and Rome, although on occasion also in other parts of Italy and in Vienna. His first London performance was Il trionfo della costanza in 1782. He was engaged as musical director in London until 1786, where he performed five of his own operas and alternative versions of work by other composers; for example, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice with supplementary music by Johann Christian Bach and Händel. His works were not always well received: one critic wrote "the music suffers obviously from a tiring monotony" about his last opera in London, L'inglese in Italia. Anfossi returned to Italy, and won back Roman public opinion in 1787 with the farsa Le pazzie de' gelosi at the Carnival. In 1789, the uninterrupted 20-year stretch of operatic composition stopped, and Anfossi restricted himself to church music. He was appointed Maestro di Capella of San Giovanni in Laterano, and held this position till his death in 1797.
Works
Works
The sum of Anfossi's work is not completely known, but he composed at least 60, possibly 70 or more, operas, and at least 20 oratorios in Latin and Italian. His early work is, understandably, closely related in style to that of his teachers, Piccinni and Sacchini, with diatonic harmony and intermittently inspired melody. His orchestration style changed significantly during the course of his career; he realised more colourful effects through the use of wind instruments. Until the middle of the 1770s his opera buffa showed him to prefer the old-fashioned, pure da capo type of aria, in order to, as in his comic works, proceed to more freely shaped passages. He appeared to prefer longer passages such as finali, and he clearly had a preference for sentimental moments and phrases. Anfossi's music was fundamentally criticised as inadequately dramatic, and weak in characterisation. His buffo characters are generally not as original as those of some of his contemporaries, such as Cimarosa and Paisiello, while his seria music has a certain stereotypical nature. As an operatic composer, Anfossi remained forgotten for a long time, despite his great popularity with his contemporaries, because his works were overshadowed by those of Salieri, Rossini and Mozart. Nevertheless, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe staged Anfossi's farsetta La maga Circe (Circe, the Sorceress) in his role as the theatre director of Weimar. He adapted the libretto with Christian August Vulpius and also made plans for a continuation, which never came to bear. Only in the last 20 years has Anfossi's work been appreciated anew, through diverse productions such as Giuseppe riconosciuto. His work was featured at the 2005 Salzburg Summer Festival.
Operas
Operas
See List of operas by Pasquale Anfossi.
![Titre uniforme: Anfossi, Pasquale (1727-1797). Compositeur. [Le Gelosie fortunate] Titre propre pris au dos de la reliure. - Opera buffa en 2 actes. - 1ère représentation: Turin, Théâtre Carignano, 1783. - Mq. l'ouverture. -](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Gelosie_Fortunate_-_btv1b84528492_%28079_of_331%29.jpg/800px-Gelosie_Fortunate_-_btv1b84528492_%28079_of_331%29.jpg)
Titre uniforme: Anfossi, Pasquale (1727-1797). Compositeur. [Le Gelosie fortunate] Titre propre pris au dos de la reliure. - Opera buffa en 2 actes. - 1ère représentation: Turin, Théâtre Carignano, 1783. - Mq. l'ouverture. -
Anfossi, Pasquale (1727-1797). Compositeur · Bibliothèque nationale de France
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1797
Pasquale Anfossi died at Rome.
Places
Named by the record
Places
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Taggia.
Birth place
Rome.
Death place
Primary material
Documents and archives
Institutional database
- MusicBrainz artist record for Pasquale Anfossi
Scholarly · MetaBrainz Foundation
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q266985: Pasquale Anfossi
Scholarly · Wikimedia Foundation
scholarly publication
- Anfossi, Pasquale (opera), Oxford Music Online, 2002
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2002
reference work
- “Pasquale Anfossi”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages,
- Giovanni Tribuzio, Pasquale Anfossi, operista alla moda, in Il secolo d'oro della musica a Napoli. Per un canone della Scuola musicale napoletana del '700, vol. II, a cura di Lorenzo Fiorito, Frattamaggiore, Diana Edizioni, 2019, pp. 133–148.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
Anfossi, Pasquale (opera), Oxford Music Online, 2002Crossref registry
VerifiedInstitutional database
MusicBrainz artist record for Pasquale AnfossiMetaBrainz Foundation
VerifiedInstitutional database
Wikidata, structured authority record Q266985: Pasquale AnfossiWikimedia Foundation
Verifiedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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