GALUPPI, BALDASSARE (1706-1785), Italian com poser, was born on Oct. 18, 1706, on the island of Burano near Venice, and was named I1 Buranello. His father, a barber, and violinist at the local theatre, was his first teacher. He studied at the Conservatorio degli Incurabili at Venice, under Antonio Lotti. After producing two operas in collaboration with G. B. Pescetti, in 1728 and 1729, he began to compose operas for the Venetian theatres, writing sometimes as many as five in a year. He visited London in 1741, and arranged a pasticcio, Alexander in Persia, for the Haymarket. Burney considered his influence on English music to have been very powerful. In 1740 he became vice maestro di cappella at St. Mark's and maestro in 1762. In he began writing comic operas to libretti by Goldoni, which en joyed an enormous popularity. He was invited by Catherine II. in to Russia where he composed his opera I figenia in Tauride (1768) . He returned to Venice in 1768, where he had held the post of director of the Conservatorio degli Incurabili since 1762. He died on Jan. 3, 1785.
Galuppi's best works are his comic operas, of which Il Filosofo di Campagna , known in England as The Guardian Trick'd (Dublin, 1762) was the most popular. His melody is attractive rather than original, but his workmanship in harmony and orches tration is generally superior to that of his contemporaries. He was one of the first to extend the concerted finales of Leo and Logro scino into a chain of several separate movements, working up to a climax.
For details of Galuppi's operas see Alfred Wotquenne, Baldassare Galuppi, etude bibliographique sur ses oeuvres dramatiques (Brussels, 1902).