Saldoni, Baltasar
Saldoni, Baltasar
Saldoni, Baltasar , Spanish composer and lexiographer; b. Barcelona, Jan. 4, 1807; d. Madrid, Dec. 3, 1889. He was a pupil of Mateo Ferrer in Montserrat and of Francisco Queralt in Barcelona, then completed his studies with Carnicer in Madrid (1829). In 1830 he became prof. of voice training and singing at the Madrid Cons. In 1826 he produced in Madrid his light opera El triunfo del amor and the Italian operas Saladino e Clotilde (1833), Ipermestra (Jan. 20, 1838), and Cleonice regina di Siria (Jan. 24, 1840); he also wrote the zarzuelas La corte de Mónaco (Feb. 16, 1857) and Los maridos en las mascaras (Barcelona, Aug. 26, 1864). His magnum opus as a scholar was the Diccionario biográfico-bibliográfico de efemérides de músicos espagñoles, in 4 vols. (Madrid, 1868–81), to which was added a supplementary vol. in the form of a chronology of births and deaths of Spanish musicians, with exhaustive biographical notes. This monumental compilation, upon which Saldoni worked nearly 40 years, contains (inevitably) a number of errors, but in the absence of other musicographical works on Spanish musicians, it still retains considerable documentary value.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire