Jommelli, Niccolò

Related Category: Music: History, Composers, and Performers: Biographies

(nēk-kōlô´ yōm-mĕl´lē), 1714–74, Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school, who worked variously in Vienna, Rome, Stuttgart, and eventually Naples, successfully fusing German, French and Italian elements in his operas. His earliest works, such as L'errore amoroso (1737) and Ezio (1741), were very successful. He produced operas in Vienna (1749–50). While he was choir director (1751–54) at St. Peter's in Rome, he composed church music. Jommelli was musical director (1754–69) to the duke of Württemberg at Stuttgart. After his return to Naples his last operas, such as Armida abbandonata (1770) and Ifigenia in Tauride (1771), were rejected by the public as too learned and too German. In his operas he introduced recitativo accompagnato and anticipated many of the reforms of Gluck.