Torri, Pietro
Torri, Pietro
Torri, Pietro, Italian composer; b. Peschiera, e. 1650; d. Munich, July 6, 1737. He served as court organist and later Kapellmeister at the court in Bayreuth (until 1684), and in 1689 he became organist at the court of Max Emanuel II, Elector of Bavaria, in Munich. When the elector became governor of the Spanish Netherlands in 1692, he took Torri with him to Brussels as his maître de chapelle. In 1696 he was conductor for the carnival season at Hannover; in 1701 he was appointed court chamber music director at Munich, following the Elector to Brussels upon the latter’s exile in 1704; he fled Brussels with the Elector (1706). In Brussels he produced the oratorio La vanitá del mondo (March 5, 1706); from 1715 he was again in Munich, where he was made Hofkapell-Direktor; later he was named Hofkapellmeis-ter (1732). He composed about 20 operas, 2 of which were produced at the Munich court: Lucio Vero (Oct. 12, 1720) and Griselda (Oct. 12, 1723), as well as some chamber duets, but he became best known in his lifetime for his vocal chamber pieces.
Bibliography
K. Kremer, P. T. und seine kammermusiaklische Werke (diss., Univ. of Munich, 1956).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire