A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Draghi, Antonio

DRAGHI, Antonio, capellmeister to the court at Vienna, born at Ferrara 1635 (not 1642, as generally stated). In 74 he was invited to Vienna as Hoftheater Intendant to the Emperor Leopold I, and chapel-master to the Empress Leonore, and in 82 took up his abode there for life. He was a gifted dramatic composer, and most prolific, as may be seen by the list of his works performed at the court during 38 years, amounting to no less than 87 operas, 87 feste teatrali and serenades, and 32 oratorios. (See Köchel's life of Fux.) Some of his carnival operas have been several times revived. The scores of most of his works are in the imperial library, and some in the archives of the 'Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.' His librettos, some of them illustrated, were printed in the imperial press by Cosmerow, and have nearly all been preserved. Occasionally he wrote librettos, which were set by other composers, Ziani, Bertali, and even the Emperor Leopold, who composed the complete opera 'Apollo deluso' (1669), and airs for others. Various mistakes have been made about the year of his death. Walther's Lexicon speaks of him as alive in 1703, and Fétis, followed by most modern biographers, says he went back to Ferrara and died there in 1707; but all doubts are set at rest by the register of deaths in Vienna, from which it appears he died there Jan. 18, 1700, aged 65. A son of his, Carlo, was court-scholar in 1688, court-organist in 1698, and died May 2, 1711.

[ C. F. P. ]