Pedro António Avondano

Pedro António Avondano was born in Lisbon on April 14, 1714, the son of the Genoese Pietro Giorgio Avondano, who had settled in Lisbon and won the position of first violin of the royal chapel during the reign of King João V¹. No details are known about the composer’s childhood, but it is assumed that he studied violin with his father, since this was common practice in musical families. Other teachers or sources of learning are unknown, but it is possible that he developed his musical career in northern Portugal and abroad before settling in Lisbon².

Avondano is believed to have entered the Orchestra of the Royal Chamber as a violinist between 1751 and 1756, around the time of his father’s death between 1750 and 1752. A few years later, in 1758, he rented a spacious residence in the Bairro de Santa Catarina, where he decided to host the meetings and parties of the Assembleia da Nação Inglesa, a club he had founded, which consisted of members of the British community in Portugal and organised gatherings filled with dance and music³. Some of the works performed there were by the composer himself – his Minuetes de Lisboa (Lisbon Minuets), for example, were even published in London thanks to the contributions of the Assembly’s members⁴. In the same year, driven by his entrepreneurial ambition, Avondano sought partnerships with the impresario Pietro Setaro and later with the architect Giovanni Antinori, with the aim of establishing a theatre. From this plan, which would eventually be developed on his own, resulted the Ópera da Estrela, a theatre that would have a short life⁵.

In the 1760s, the composer played a significant role in the reorganisation of the Brotherhood of Santa Cecília. In 1765, he received more than a hundred people in his house to celebrate the signing of the Compromisso da Irmandade da Gloriosa Virgem e Martyr Santa Cecília, a document establishing the statutes and rules necessary for the reform of the institution⁶. The same space also began to host a new, expanded version of Avondano’s club, whose name changed to Assembleia das Nações Estrangeiras. Around the same time, the musician acquired the title of Knight of the Order of Christ. Throughout his final years of activity, Avondano seems to have given up playing at the various religious festivals that permeated that era, devoting himself instead to musical composition, participation in the royal orchestra and his entrepreneurial activities. The composer died in 1782.

Avondano is frequently identified as “the most important composer of instrumental music in Portugal in the second half of the 18th century,” having produced a large quantity of keyboard music, chamber music and also orchestral music⁷.

Among Avondano’s vocal output, six oratorios stand out, three of them presented in Hamburg, and at least two – Il voto di Jefte (1771) and Adamo e Eva (1772) – heard in Portugal. An aria from another of his oratorios, Betulia liberata, curiously survives in a copy by Jean‑Jacques Rousseau⁸. In addition to some serenatas, cantatas and a few sacred works, he wrote at least three operas, but only the music of one survives: Il mondo della luna, with a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, presented at the Teatro de Salvaterra during the Carnival of 1765 with “excellent reception”⁹. According to the composer’s inventory, his other two operas would have been Dido and Zenobia¹⁰.