SAN GIOVANNI BATTISTA

THE COMPOSER

Like his compatriot Caravaggio, Stradella’s life was brief yet filled with scandal. He was born in 1639 in the town of Nepi, near Viterbo. At age 14, he became a page to Duke Lante in Rome. Years later, he attempted to embezzle money from the Roman Catholic Church and was forced to flee to Venice where he had a torrid affair with a woman under local royal protection. Once the affair came to light, the lovers fled to Torino where they were tracked down by henchmen hired by his lover’s royal protector. Stradella was publicly beaten to a pulp and left for dead. After a miraculous recovery, he fled to Genova (wisely without his girlfriend) where he led a highly successful professional life thankfully under the radar of the authorities, and his compositions were revered by the church and the nobility.

By all reports, Stradella was viewed as a beloved musical genius and a charming reprobate in Genova, but his charm eventually wore off and his luck ran out in 1682 when he was once again beset upon in public by three bounty hunters hired by a local nobleman (the cause for this attack is officially unknown but is easily surmised), and he was killed instantly by a dagger thrust in his back. If Stradella’s life seems like fodder for an opera plot, you’re not the first to think so, it was indeed the subject of an 1844 opera entitled Alessandro Stradella by German composer Friedrich von Flotow.