Francesco Maria Bazzani or Bassani (c. 1650 – c. 1700) was an Italian baroque composer. Francesco was a member of the musical Bassani family, of whom Giovanni Battista Bassani is the best remembered today. He is to be distinguished from another Francesco Maria Bassani two generations earlier (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

1621), nephew of the

viola da gamba The viola da gamba (), or viol, or informally gamba, is a bowed and fretted string instrument that is played (i.e. "on the leg"). It is distinct from the later violin family, violin, or ; and it is any one of the earlier viol family of bow (m ...

composer Oratio Bassani, who kept a pedagogic notebook ''Regole di contrapunto'', which contains eight pieces, seven of which are probably by his uncle Oratio. He was

maestro di cappella ( , , ), from German (chapel) and (master), literally "master of the chapel choir", designates the leader of an ensemble of musicians. Originally used to refer to somebody in charge of music in a chapel, the term has evolved considerably in i ...

of the Duomo di Piacenza from 1673 Upon the death of his sister and her husband, a musician named Keller from Germany, Francesco adopted his nephew

Fortunato Chelleri Fortunato Chelleri (originally: Keller, also: Kelleri, Kellery, Cheler) (May or June 1690 in Parma – 11 December 1757 in Kassel) was a Baroque Kapellmeister and composer. Biography Chelleri's father had emigrated from Germany to Italy; h ...

and trained him as a musician.

Works

Operas * ''Ottone il Grande'' (Parma 1670) is cited as an early example of an

opera seria ''Opera seria'' (; plural: ''opere serie''; usually called ''dramma per musica'' or ''melodramma serio'') is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to abou ...

where a minor comic character, in this case the servant Lenno, returns at the end of Acts 1 and 2 of the opera to enable a comic ballet to be performed.Lorenzo Bianconi, Giorgio Pestelli ''Storia dell'opera italiana'' 1988, p. 185 "Per esempio, nell'allestimento dell 'Ottone in Italia del piacentino Francesco Maria Bazzani a Parma nel 1679 il servo Lenno, che nel corso del dramma compare in poche scene comiche di passaggio, ritorna alla fine dell'atto I e del II... * ''L'inganno trionfato overo La disperata speranza ravvivata ne' successi di Giacopo Quinto di Scozia e Maddalena di Francia'', Parma (1673) libretto: Oratio Francesco Roberti

References

Italian opera composers Italian male opera composers 1700s deaths Year of birth uncertain Italian Baroque composers 1650s births {{Italy-composer-stub