Carnival of 1733
Francisco António de Almeida, a Portuguese composer, was one of the first young men sent to Rome between 1717 and 1720 at the expense of the court of King D. João V, to improve and expand the study in the art of Italian music. Whilst there, he received lessons from Alessandro Scarlatti, father of Domenico Scarlatti, whose style assimilated and professed with flattering notoriety. When returning to Portugal in 1726, he stood out as a composer of palace opera in Italian libretto. After the premiere in 1733, La pacienza di Socrate was repeated the following year at the Paço da Ribeira (a sign that he had pleased them very much) and in 1735 the opera La Finta Pazza premieres. At the carnival of 1739, again in Paço da Ribeira, the comic opera in 3 acts La Spinalba ovvero Il Vecchio Matto (The Spinalba or the Crazy Old Man) is premiered as a true masterpiece. The composer’s last piece is entitled L’Ippolito, a six-voice serenade sung at Paço da Ribeira in 1752.