Spontini, GASPARO LUIGI PACIFICO, Italian musical composer, was born at Majolati in the March of Ancona on 14th November 1774, and received his musical education at Naples. In 1803 he proceeded to Paris; but it was not until he produced (1804) the one-act opera of Milton that he attracted any notice. Encouraged by this, he composed the grand opera La Vestale; this on its production in December 1807 was greeted with enthusiastic acclaim, and was adjudged the prize of 10,000 francs instituted by Napoleon. An equally warm reception was accorded to Ferdinand Cortez in 1809. In the following year Spontini was appointed director of Italian opera at the Odéon. A third grand opera, Olympia, produced in 1819, did not prove so successful. In 1820 Frederick-William III. summoned Spontini to Berlin. There he remained more than twenty years, though during the greater part of the time it was only court influence that supported him against the enmity of the Berlin public and of the Prussian press. Spontini was jealous of Weber, and was by nature quarrelsome and vain; but as a musician he entertained the loftiest aims, possessed true artistic taste, was grandiose in his conceptions, and breathed the spirit of genuine melody into his compositions. In Berlin he wrote three other grand operas—Nourmahal (1822), Alcidor (1825), and Agnes von Hohenstaufen (1829), his greatest work. Spontini was dismissed by Frederick-William IV. in 1842, and he gradually withdrew into private life. He died at Majolati, his birthplace, on 14th January
1851. See monograph by Robert (Berlin, 1883); and Spitta in Deutsche Rundschau (March 1891).