STRADELLA, ALESSANDRO (?1645-1682), Italian composer, one of the most accomplished musicians of the 17th century, was probably born at Naples. The generally accepted story of his life was first circumstantially narrated in Bonnet-Bour delot's Histoire'de la musique et de ses effets (1715). According to this account, Stradella was engaged by a Venetian nobleman to instruct his mistress, Ortensia, in singing. Stradella eloped with Ortensia to Rome, whither the outraged Venetian sent two paid bravi to put him to death. On their arrival in Rome the assassins learned that Stradella had just completed a new oratorio, over the performance of which he was to preside on the following day at S. Giovanni in Laterano. They determined to kill him as he left the church ; but the beauty of the music conquered them, and they warned the composer of his danger. Thereupon Stradella fled with Ortensia to Turin, where, notwithstanding the favour shown to him by the regent of Savoy, he was attacked one night by another band of assassins, who, headed by Ortensia's father, left him on the ramparts for dead. Through the connivance of the French ambassador the ruffians escaped; and Stradella, recovering from his wounds, married Ortensia, by consent of the regent, and re moved with her to Genoa. Here he believed himself safe; but a year later he and Ortensia were murdered in their house by a third party of assassins in the pay of the implacable Venetian. Research has, however, driven several holes in this picturesque story.
The first certain date in Stradella's life is 1672, in which year he composed a prologue for the performance of Cesti's opera La Dori at Rome ; he probably spent a considerable time at Rome about this period, since his cantatas and other compositions con tain frequent allusions to Rome and noble Roman families. There is, however, no proof that he ever performed the oratorio S. Giovanni Battista in the Lateran. Documents in the archives at Turin relate that in 1677 he arrived there with the mistress of Alvise Contarini, with whom he had eloped from Venice. We
hear of Stradella last at Genoa. An opera by him, La Forza dell' amor paterno, was given there in 1678, and his last composition, Il Barcheggio (i.e., a "Water-Music"), was performed on June 16, 1681 in honour of the marriage of Carlo Spinola and Paola Brig nole. That he died at Genoa in Feb. 1682 is established by docu ments in the archives at Modena.
Stradella's best operas are Il Floridoro, also known as II Moro per amore, and Il Trespolo tutore, a comic opera in three acts which worthily carried on the best traditions of Florentine and Roman comic opera in the 17th century. The oratorio S. Giovanni Battista displays the same skill in construction and orchestration (so far as the limited means at his disposal permitted) as the operas. A serenata for voices and two orchestras, Qual prodigo ch'io miri, was used by Handel as the basis of several numbers in Israel in Egypt, and was printed by Chrysander (Leipzig 1888); the MS., however, formerly in the possession of Victor Schoelcher, from which Chrysander made his copy, has entirely disappeared. The well-known aria Pieta, signore, also sung to the words Se i miei sospiri, cannot possibly be a work of Stradella.
The finest collection of Stradella's works extant is that at the Biblioteca Estense at Modena, which contains 148 MSS., includ ing four operas, six oratorios and several other compositions of a semi-dramatic character.
See Heinz Hess, Die Opern Alessandro Stradellas (Leipzig, 1905), which includes the most complete catalogue yet made of Stradella's extant works; Catelani, Delle Opere di A Stradella instenti nell' archivio musicale della r. biblioteca palatina di Modena (Modena, 1865) ; and Sedley Taylor, The Indebtedness of Handel to other Com posers (Cambridge, 2906).