PERGOLESI (or Pergolese), Giovanni Battista (1710-1736), Italian musical composer, was born at Jesi, Ancona, 3d January 1710, and educated at Naples in the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesu Cristo, where he studied the violin under Domenico de Matteis, and counterpoint under Gaetano Greco, Durante, and Francesco Feo. While learning all he could from these great teachers he struck out from the very first a style of his own, and brought it prominently forward in his earliest known composition, an oratorio, called La Conversione di S. Guglielmo, performed in the church of S. Agnello in 1731, in which year he also produced his first opera, Sallustia, at the Teatro Fiorentino. After receiving further instruction from Vinci he produced another opera, Recimiro, which failed lamentably. This disappointment led him to devote his chief attention to church music; and his next great works—two masses, one for two and the other for four choirs, with double orchestra—established his reputation as a genius of the highest order, and proved that he was at least as great in his newly-adopted style as in his dramatic pieces. Nevertheless, the greatest success that he was ever destined to attain was reserved for his celebrated intermezzo —or, as we should now call it, operetta —La Serνa Padrona. This delightful work, fairly successful on the occasion of its first production in 1731 or 1733, became after Pergolesi’s death a recognized favourite at every theatre of importance in Europe. In 1746 it found its way to Paris, and had a long run at the Théâtre Italien, followed in 1752 by an equally successful one at the Académie. Two years later it was translated into French, and ran for 150 successive nights. As late as 1867 it was revived in this form at the Opéra Comique; and in ...