Giacomo Insanguine

Giacomo Antonio Francesco Paolo Michele Insanguine (also known as “il Monopoli”) was an Italian composer, organist and music educator — a representative of the Neapolitan school. He was born in Monopoli (Kingdom of Naples) on 22 March 1728 and studied at the conservatories in Naples, initially at the Poveri di Gesù Cristo and then at Sant'Onofrio a Porta Capuana under teachers such as Francesco Feo, Girolamo Abos and Francesco Durante. During his years with Durante he also undertook cello studies between 1749 and 1755. He debuted as an opera composer in 1756 with the buffa opera Lo funnaco revotato. His operas were later performed in major theatres in Naples, Rome, Venice and Turin, and his output came to include more than thirty operas, several cantatas and a substantial body of sacred works, instrumental music and theoretical writings. He sometimes completed or revised works by other composers, including Michel Caballone, Johann Adolph Hasse, Nicola Bonifacio Logroscino and Gian Francesco de Majo.

From 1767 Insanguine taught at the conservatory of Sant'Onofrio, becoming its primo maestro in 1785 and serving until his death in 1795; he was the final director of the institution before it merged in 1795 with the conservatory of Santa Maria di Loreto. His career also included appointments as second organist at the Naples Cathedral from 1774, succeeding Josef Doll, and later as maestro di cappella in 1781. Notable operatic milestones included the successful premiere of L'osteria di Marechiaro in 1768, La Didone abbandonata at the Teatro di San Carlo in 1770 and his final opera, Calipso, performed in 1782. Among his students was Giuseppe Nicolini.

Insanguine died in Naples on 1 February 1795. His output and teaching contributed significantly to the late eighteenth-century Neapolitan musical tradition, and modern scholarship has been enriched by a recent critical study published in an anthology of previously unpublished eighteenth-century music from Puglia.

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