Gasparo Angiolini
ballet dancer, composer, choreographer
Gasparo Angiolini (7 February 1731 – 6 February 1803), real name Domenico Maria Gasparo, son of Francesco Angiolini and Maria Maddalena Torzi, was an Italian dancer, choreographer and composer. He was born in Florence and died in Milan.
Life and career
He is known thanks to the polemics with the French ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre. Gasparo Angiolini directed the ballet at the Imperial Theatre in Vienna, taking over the post in 1758, working closely with Christoph Willibald von Gluck on such works as Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre (1761), and the opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). The dancing in both Don Juan and Orpheus was said to have insisted on the "primacy of drama". In addition to collaborating with Gluck, he also composed music for many of his ballets.
He later succeeded Franz Hilverding as director of the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1766. Both Hilverding and Angiolini are credited with bringing the pantomime ballet to Russia. Likewise, Angiolini also attempted to introduce elements of Russian culture into his own work through the use of songs, folk dances, and Russian themes.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gasparo Angiolini” is ballet dancer, composer, choreographer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gasparo, Angiolini and ballet, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “ballet dancer, composer, choreographer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1495308. VIAF identifies the subject as 9836474. The Library of Congress control number is no94032290. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1731, 1803, 1758 and 1761.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gasparo Angiolini” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.