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Updated: June 25, 2025
In 1778 the young composer visited Paris, where he stayed for several months. This period may be looked upon as the turning-point in his operatic career. In Paris he heard the operas of Gluck and Grétry, besides those of the Italian composers, such as Piccinni and Sacchini, whose best works were written for the French stage.
All that happy disposition, assiduous study under so good a master could accomplish, especially when teacher and pupil loved each other passionately, and were equally impassioned for the art, which one taught, and the other learned, it is all that which you must imagine, to get an idea of the talent of Mme. Piccinni.
Two years later, the Prince of Brunswick's younger brother went to Naples to visit him, and there he happened upon a domestic scene which gives us a pretty notion of Piccinni's home life. "He surprised Piccinni in the midst of his family, and was amazed at the tableau.
The small number of amateurs who gathered there will long remember the impression of that which one may call the last song of the swan. They were profoundly moved to hear Mme. Piccinni sing with due expression the beautiful air from 'Zendia, Lasciami, o ciel pietoso! composed in all the vigour of youth, by this illustrious man, now old and unfortunate.
Vapidly pretty Italian operas were in fashion, and Piccinni was the favorite composer. It was some years afterward that the great contest between the Piccinnists and Gluckists culminated in the victory of the latter, though "Alceste," had already been produced, and "Iphigenia" was soon to follow.
This Sacchini, by the bye, was a reckless voluptuary, who seems never to have married. Piccinni was the very beau ideal of a father and a husband. He and his wife, who was a singer of exquisite skill and a teacher of ability, gave little home concerts, which were events.
Jostling elbows with him comes Gluck's chiefest rival, Piccinni, one of the most beautiful characters in history, a man who could wage a mortal combat in art, without bitterness toward his bitter rivals. He could, when Gluck died, strive to organise a memorial festival in his honour, and when his other rival, Sacchini, was taken from the arena by death, he could deliver the funeral eulogy.
He returned home in a triumph, which was perhaps greater than the work deserved, but certainly not greater than so good a man merited. Piccinni was large-hearted enough to cherish no malice against either of his rivals, Sacchini or Gluck.
Poor old Piccinni died in 1800 at the age of seventy-two, and his tomb said that he was "Cher aux Arts et
"Devoted to his art, foreign to all intrigue, to all ambition, to the morals, tastes, customs, and language of the country, Piccinni lived in his family circle, and devoted himself quietly to his work, in oblivion of the efforts that the Gluckists made to thwart the success, and even to prevent the representation, of his work.
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