Bussani, Francesco

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Bussani, Francesco

Bussani, Francesco, Italian bass; b. Rome, 1743; d. after 1807. He sang tenor roles, then turned to bass. He was active from 1783 to 1794 in Vienna, where he married Dorothea Bussani in 1786. He created the roles of Bartolo and Antonio in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, May 1, 1786) and Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte (Vienna, Jan. 26, 1790), opposite his wife as Cherubino and Despina. He returned to Italy with her in 1795 and continued to make appearances there until they went to Lisbon in 1807.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire