Arditi

Arditi, LUIGI, musician and composer, born 22d July 1822, in Piedmont, studied music at the Conservatoire of Milan. Famous first as a violinist, then as a conductor, he came to London in 1857, and from that year till 1878 was musical director at Her Majesty's Theatre. He has conducted Italian opera and concerts in places as remote from one another as New York and Constantinople; has published the operas I Briganti (1841) and La Spia (1856); and is known as author of much popular music—songs, violin duets, and waltzes such as Il Bacio.