Fortunato Chelleri

Fortunato Chelleri [Kelleri, Keller, Cheler]
(b Parma, c1690; d Kassel, 11 Dec 1757). Italian composer of German origin.

He was a choirboy at the chapel of the Madonna della Steccata, Parma (1700–03), but after the death of his German father when Fortunato was 12, and of his mother three years later, he was cared for by his maternal uncle Francesco Maria Bazzani, a priest and maestro di cappella of Piacenza cathedral, who instructed him in singing and keyboard playing. The opera Griselda (1707/8, Piacenza), usually attributed to Chelleri, was in fact a revival of Albinoni's setting for Florence (1703); however, Chelleri may have contributed the six arias that are new. This and other misattributions originate in Gerber's long article (GerberL) based on a supposedly autobiographical account by Chelleri himself. Equally dubious is the authorship of an Alessandro il grande (1708, Cremona). It seems that Chelleri's first opera was Zenobia in Palmira, composed in 1709 for Barcelona, which during the war of the Spanish Succession regained its status as a court and mounted an opera season with a group of Italians headed by Caldara, Astorga and Porsile.