Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini

Italian composer Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini was born in Florence on 14 June 1730 and grew up in Naples, where he studied.

He became known in Italy as a composer of operas, and then moved to London in 1772, producing works for the King's Theatre in Haymarket. He lived in Paris from 1781, becoming a patron of Marie Antoinette and also involved in various musical intrigues.

Antonio Sacchini died rather dramatically, in Paris, on 6 October 1786, aged fifty-six, just a few days after being told in person by Marie Antoinette that she had been pressured into having French composer Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne's opera performed instead of Sacchini's 1785 opera seria Œdipe à Colone.  When this news caught the public imagination, Sacchini's opera went immediately into rehearsal, the packed first performance on 1 February 1787 was extremely successful, and the opera was then staged in Paris every year until 1830.