Finazzi, Filippo

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Finazzi, Filippo

Finazzi, Filippo, Italian castrato soprano and composer; b. Bergamo, c. 1706; d. Jersbeck, near Hamburg, April 21, 1776. After singing in Venice in 1726, he was a member of the Italian Opera in Breslau (1728–30). By 1732 he was again in Venice and by 1739 he was in the service of the Duke of Modena. In 1743 he joined Pietro Mingotti’s opera company in Linz, and then was active with it in Hamburg in 1743–44. Thereafter he worked with the company mainly as a composer, giving his last public appearance as a singer in his own opera Temistocle (Hamburg, Feb. 16, 1746). After a decade of teaching, he retired to his country estate in Jersbeck. In 1762 a special decree of the Hamburg Senate allowed him to marry his housekeeper. Among his publ. works were 6 Sinfonien (Hamburg, 1754).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire