Jean-Baptiste Pergolèse

Giovanni Battista Draghi was born on 4 January 1710 in Jesi, a small town in the Marche in central Italy. His family, originally from Pergola, was nicknamed “Pergolesi”, the name under which he would become famous. The child was frail — he limped, perhaps because of tuberculosis of the bone — and several of his siblings died in infancy. He first studied music in his home town, where a local nobleman noticed his talent for the violin.

Around 1720, thanks to this patron, he was sent to Naples, then the musical capital of Italy, to study at the conservatory of the Poveri di Gesù Cristo, one of the city’s four conservatories. These institutions, originally orphanages, trained young musicians who sang in churches and processions. Pergolesi studied violin, singing and composition there with renowned masters such as Gaetano Greco, Leonardo Vinci and Francesco Durante. He stood out as a virtuoso violinist and improviser.

In 1731 he completed his studies with the premiere of a sacred drama, Li prodigi della divina grazia nella conversione di San Guglielmo, then of his first opera, Salustia. His beginnings were difficult: the leading singer died during rehearsals and the work had little success. But in 1732 he became maestro di cappella to Prince Ferdinando Colonna Stigliano, equerry to the Viceroy of Naples, and had his first real success with Lo frate ’nnamorato, a comedy in Neapolitan dialect.

That same year, after a violent earthquake struck Naples, he composed a solemn mass for the services of intercession. In 1733, to accompany his serious opera Il prigionier superbo, he wrote two short comic intermezzos to be played between the acts: La serva padrona, “The Maid as Mistress”. The story is simple: the cunning maid Serpina manages to get her grumpy old master Uberto to marry her, helped by a mute valet. This little masterpiece of liveliness soon eclipsed the opera it accompanied.

In 1734 Pergolesi was appointed deputy maestro di cappella of the city of Naples. He composed sacred music, such as the Salve Regina in C minor, and new operas. In January 1735 his opera L’Olimpiade, to a libretto by Metastasio, was premiered in Rome but poorly received: according to an anecdote, a spectator threw an orange at the composer. The work was nonetheless admired later.

Suffering from tuberculosis, Pergolesi withdrew in early 1736 to the Franciscan monastery at Pozzuoli near Naples, by the sea. There he completed his Stabat Mater for soprano, alto and strings, commissioned by a Neapolitan confraternity to replace Alessandro Scarlatti’s. This work, of intense sorrow and poignant tenderness, was his last. He died on 16 March 1736, aged only twenty-six, and was buried in a common grave at Pozzuoli Cathedral.

His fame exploded after his death. The Stabat Mater became the most printed work of the eighteenth century; Bach arranged it to a German text. In 1752 a performance of La serva padrona in Paris sparked the “Querelle des Bouffons”, pitting supporters of natural, lively Italian opera against those of Rameau’s French opera. Publishers then wrongly attributed many works to him. In 1920 Stravinsky drew on music thought to be his for his ballet Pulcinella.