Giuseppe Sarti (christened on December 1, 1729 in Faenza; † July 28, 1802 in Berlin) was an Italian composer, conductor and music teacher.
Giuseppe Sarti received his first education in his hometown, with Paolo Tommaso Alberghi. Subsequently in Bologna with Padre Martini and was organist at the cathedral in Faenza from 1748 to 1750. Earlier he made himself known as an opera composer. From 1752, he directed the municipal theatre for some time. 1753 he joined Pietro Mingotti's opera troupe as Kapellmeister and came to Copenhagen. 1756 to 1765 he was music teacher of the Danish crown prince and court kapellmeister. He lost this position due to political intrigues and then returned to Italy where he was ''maestro di coro'' of the ''Ospedale della Pietà'' in Venice for about a year in 1766. During this time he composed his ''intermezzo La giardiniera brillante'' which was performed in Rome in 1768. From 1770 to 1772 he directed the court theatre in Copenhagen for which he composed several ''syngespile'' in Danish.
In 1779 Sarti was cathedral conductor in Milan. He followed in 1784 a call of the tsarina Katharina II. as court kapellmeister to Saint Petersburg. On his way there he was received in Vienna by Emperor Joseph II and met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri and Christoph Willibald Gluck. In St. Petersburg he was commissioned to set up a conservatory based on the Italian model, but after Catherine's death in 1796 and the murder of her son and successor Tsar Paul I, these plans came to a standstill. Sarti wanted to return to Italy because of his bad health and died on his way back to Berlin.
Sarti was also a teacher; among his pupils was Luigi Cherubini. He also invented an acoustic apparatus for counting oscillations which earned him admission to the ''Academy of Sciences'' in St. Petersburg.
Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Sarti
Note: Translated from the German version of Wikipedia into English