A pupil of Durante in Naples, Antonio Sacchini occupied various positions there before travelling to Venice and then to Padua; he won growing success with new operas which allowed him eventually to abandon his duties at the Conservatory in Naples. In 1768 he was appointed director of the Conservatorio dell’Ospedaletto in Venice, where his pupils included Nancy Storace. He spent 10 years in London and in 1781 moved to Paris, where he became involved in the current quarrel between supporters of Gluck and adherents of Piccinni, eventually seeming to please neither one nor the other. The patronage of Marie Antoinette aroused further prejudice, in view of the Queen’s known predilection for foreign music. He died in Paris in 1786.

Operas
In Paris Sacchini attempted to fulfil the demands of French taste, and his opera Dardanus succeeded when it was staged at Fontainebleau in 1785. Oedipe à Colone (‘Oedipus at Colonus’), regarded as Sacchini’s masterpiece, was staged at the Opéra in 1787 and remained in the repertoire of the house for many years. During his career of some 30 years Sacchini enjoyed great fame, notably as a composer of Italian opera seria. The decline in his reputation may be attributed to the neglect of a form in which he had excelled. His skills were most notably deployed in Oedipe à Colone, a work in which he was able to unite the rival trends of contemporary opera within a French dramatic structure.