LEO, LEONARDO _94 ( 6 , I —1,7 4 , more correctly LIONARDO ORONZO SALVATORE DE LEO, Italian musical composer, was born on Aug. 5, 1694, at S. Vito dei Normanni, near Brindisi. He be came a student at the Conservatorio della Pieta dei Turchini at Naples in 1703, and was a pupil first of Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. His earliest known work was a sacred drama, L'Infedelta abbattuta, performed by his fellow-students in 1712. In 1714 he produced, at the court theatre, an opera, Pisistrato, which was much admired. He held various posts at the royal chapel, and continued to write for the stage, besides teaching at the conservatorio. After adding comic scenes to Gasparini's Bajazette in 1722 for performance at Naples, he composed a comic opera, La Mpeca scoperta, in Neapolitan dialect, in 1723. His most famous comic opera was Amor vuol sofferenze ( 1739) , better known as La Finta Frascatana, highly praised by Des Brosses. L'Olimpiade (1737) is his most famous serious opera and he wrote also some admirable sacred music. He died on Oct. 31, 1744. Leo was one of the first of the Neapolitan school to obtain a complete mastery over modern harmonic counterpoint. His sacred music is masterly and dignified, logical rather than passionate, and free from sentimentality. His serious operas suffer from a coldness and severity of style, but in his comic operas he shows a keen sense of humour. A fine and characteristic
example of his sacred music is the Dixit Dominus in C, edited by C. V. Stanford and published by Novello. A number of songs from his operas are accessible in modern editions, and his charm ing little Arietta, written for the harpsichord, is still played by all pianists.
LEO (The Lion), in astronomy, the fifth sign of the zodiac denoted by the symbol According to Greek mythology this constellation is the Nemean lion, which, after being killed by Hercules, was raised to the heavens by Jupiter in honour of Her cules. It contains the first magnitude star Regulus. The Leonids are a swarm of meteors which meet the earth in November. Magnificent showers of Leonids were displayed in 1833 and 1866; a repetition was expected in 1899 but nothing much occurred, and it appears that the main swarm has been diverted by planetary perturbations, so that its orbit no longer intersects the earth's. LEOBEN, a town in Styria, Austria, situated on the right bank of the Mur. It is the centre of the Upper Styrian lignite workings and has an extensive industry and trade in iron, closely associated with the iron-mining and smelting of Eisenerz and Vordernberg. Surrounded on three sides by the river, it is a well-built, progressive town with a well-known academy of mining and several technical schools. Pop. (1923) 11,900.