Niccolò Piccinni (sometimes referred to as Nicola Piccinni or Piccini) was an Italian composer and a central figure in both Italian and French opera in the second half of the 18th century. He is considered the father of opera buffa on an international level, one of the most important composers of Classicism, and one of the last great representatives of the Neapolitan school of music.

He was born in Bari on January 16, 1728, at “the twenty-first hour,” the son of Silvia Latilla (sister of the opera composer Gaetano Latilla) and Onofrio Piccinno (later changed to Piccinni), a violin and double bass player in the Basilica of San Nicola. Although Piccinni’s father was also a musician, he opposed his son’s pursuit of the same career. However, the Archbishop of Bari, Muzio Gaeta II, was so impressed upon hearing the boy repeatedly play melodic chords on the harpsichord in his palace that he decided to fund his musical studies. At just fourteen years old, Piccinni was sent to the Conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio in Naples, one of the three renowned music institutions of the time.

Piccinni had the fortune of being taught by two of the most renowned conductors: Leonardo Leo and Francesco Durante. From his earliest compositions, they recognized the greatness he would achieve as a composer. During the first four years of activity at the Royal Theater of San Carlo, operas from the golden Neapolitan period were performed, including those by Piccinni. His name still stands out today on the imposing façade overlooking a six-story building where the composer lived with his family.

In 1760, at the age of thirty-two, he composed his youthful masterpiece, *La Cecchina, ossia La buona figliola*, a charming opera buffa (a *dramma giocoso* in two acts) that cemented the talent of the Apulian composer. First performed at the Teatro delle Dame in Rome, the opera was an immediate and overwhelming success across Europe, with an incredible number of performances lasting until the early 19th century. Between 1768 and 1776, the Court Theater of the Royal Palace of Naples mainly staged comic operas from Piccinni’s repertoire.

In 1776, Piccinni left Italy for France, where he was appointed director of the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. The following year, at the request of Queen Marie Antoinette, he was introduced to the court of Louis XVI and appointed as her private singing and harpsichord master. In Versailles, he was honored by Emperor Joseph II of Austria, and in Paris, he was initiated into Freemasonry by the Queen herself, joining the famous *Lodge of the Nine Sisters*, which also counted Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Voltaire among its members.

In 1778, Emperor Qianlong of China had a theater built specifically for an adaptation of *La Cecchina, ossia La buona figliola*, brought to China by Jesuits. For a year, he ordered the court to attend daily performances, making it the first Western opera ever staged in the Forbidden City.

In 1779, Piccinni composed the music for the funeral eulogy of the great Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, his fellow lodge member. All his subsequent works were successful, but the directors of the Grand Opéra deliberately pitted him against Christoph Willibald Gluck, persuading both composers to simultaneously set the same subject to music. The Parisian public split into two factions—Gluckists and Piccinnists—engaging in a near warlike rivalry. The antagonism continued even after Gluck left Paris in 1780, and later, an attempt was made to spark a new rivalry with Antonio Sacchini. Piccinni remained popular, and upon Gluck’s death in 1787, he proposed that a public monument be erected in his memory. In 1784, Piccinni became a professor at the Académie Royale de Musique, one of the institutions from which the Conservatoire was founded in 1794.

With the outbreak of the French Revolution, Piccinni returned to Naples, where Ferdinand IV welcomed him and entrusted him with the Royal School of Singing. However, his daughter’s marriage to a French democrat led to accusations of Jacobinism throughout the kingdom, forcing him to live a transient existence between Rome and Venice. In 1798, he returned to Paris, where the public received him with great enthusiasm. Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, commissioned him to compose a march for the Consular Guard and created the title of *Inspector of Education at the Conservatoire* as a “national reward” for him—an honor he enjoyed for less than a month.

Piccinni died in Passy, near Paris, on May 7, 1800. He was buried in the parish cemetery under a black marble tombstone, created by his pupil and disciple Neveu on a previous gravestone of a French officer. The bombings of World War II completely devastated the Parisian cemetery, and the composer’s remains were lost. Miraculously, only the black tombstone survived, which was recovered by a French museum in the 1950s and later returned to his hometown.

More than a hundred operatic compositions can be definitively attributed to Piccinni, who was a prolific composer of works belonging to the Neapolitan school of the 18th century. However, his later works also reflect French and German influences. Beyond his musical achievements, he was widely admired for his kindness, gentle character, and exquisite manners, which helped him defuse even the fiercest rivalries of the time. He was also known for his patronage and support of young musicians, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose talent he was among the first to recognize and promote in European courts.

Nearly three hundred years after his birth, the memory of the renowned Italian composer continues to live on in the streets and monuments that honor his name, such as the bust depicting him, splendidly placed in a niche on the southwest façade of the Opéra Garnier in Paris.