Antonio Cesti

Pietro Marc'Antonio Cesti (baptism 5 August 1623 – 14 October 1669), known today primarily as an Italian composer of the Baroque era, was also a singer (tenor), and organist. He was "the most celebrated Italian musician of his generation".

Cesti is known principally as a composer of operas. The most celebrated of these were La Dori (Venice, 1663), Il pomo d'oro (Vienna, 1668) and Orontea (1656). Il pomo d'oro (The Golden Apple) was written for the wedding in Vienna of Emperor Leopold I in 1666, and first performed in 1668, in a famously lavish production. It was far more elaborate than contemporary Venetian operas, including a large orchestra, numerous choruses, and various mechanical devices used to stage things like gods descending from heaven (deus ex machina), naval battles, and storms.

Orontea was revived seventeen times in the next thirty years, making it one of the most frequently performed operas on the continent in the mid-17th century. Even Samuel Pepys owned a copy of the score. It includes a well-known soprano aria "Intorno all'idol mio" (English: "Around my idol").

Cesti was also a composer of chamber cantatas, and his operas are notable for the pure and delicate style of their airs, more suited to the chamber than to the stage. He wrote in the bel canto style of the 17th century, and his compositions were heavily influenced by his career as a professional singer. Cesti's musical writing owes much to the emerging tonality of the time.