Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (1682-1732) was an Italian composer and player of the mandolin and theorbo. Conti was born on the 29th January 1682 in Florence, Italy. By 1700 he was already known as a theorbist not only in his native Florence, but also in other cities such as Ferrara and Milan. The fame he enjoyed by 1701 enabled him to obtain appointment as an auxiliary theorbist at the Habsburg court in Vienna on the same salary as the main theorbist, Orazio Clementi. At the 1706 carnival he made his debut as an opera composer with Clotide, and in 1713 was appointed as a court composer. In 1708, with the death of Clementi, Conti was promoted to senior theorbist, a position he held until 1726. In the same year he was elected a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna and in 1711 he was appointed vice-Kapellmeister (vice-maestro di cappella) in Vienna. In April of that year, after the death of his first wife, Theresia Kugler, Conti married prima donna Maria Landini, at that time the highest-paid singer in Vienna. She sang the main soprano roles in Conti's operas from 1714 and 1721, but died in 1722. After her death Anna Maria Lorenzana, was appointed prima donna and performed in three more of Conti's operas. She became his third wife in April 1725. On the 28th August 1723 Conti, as theorbist, took part as the first performance of the festival opera Costanza e Fortezza by Johann Joseph Fux. In 1726 and again during 1729-32 Conti visited Italy because of health problems. He returned to Vienna in 1732, where he staged two new operas, but in July of the same year died. He was succeed by his son Ignazio Conti. Conti also played the mandolin, and wrote the earliest sonatas for the instrument. His works composed between 1714 and 1725 were primarily written for the carnival season or to celebrate birthdays and name days of the members of the imperial family. George Frideric Handel reused some of Conti's music for Clotide in his pasticcio Ormisda (1730) performed at the Queen's Theatre. Conti's music was also appreciated by Johann Sebastian Bach, and Conti's Cantata Languet anima mea survives in a manuscript version from 1716 as arranged by Bach (BWV deest 1006). <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Francesco+Bartolomeo+Conti">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.