Domenico Lalli
Italian librettist and poet (1679-1741)
Sebastiano Biancardi (27 March 1679 – 9 October 1741), known by the pseudonym Domenico Lalli, was an Italian poet and librettist. Amongst the many libretti he produced, largely for the opera houses of Venice, were those for Vivaldi's Ottone in villa and Alessandro Scarlatti's Tigrane. A member of the Accademia degli Arcadi, he also wrote under his arcadian name "Ortanio". Lalli was born and raised in Naples as the adopted son of Fulvio Caracciolo but fled the city after being implicated in a bank fraud. After two years wandering about Italy in the company of Emanuele d'Astorga, he settled in Venice in 1710 and worked as the "house poet" of the Grimani family's theatres for the rest of his career. In addition to his stage works, Lalli published several volumes of poetry and a collection of biographies of the kings of Naples. He died in Venice at the age of 62.
Biography
Early life
Modern accounts of Lalli's life prior to arriving in Venice are largely based on a biography included in a book of poetry which he published in 1732. The biography was written by the Venetian poet Giovanni Boldini who collaborated with Lalli on several of his libretti. A further biography of Lalli by Andrea Mazzarella was published in 1818 in Biografia degli uomini illustri del Regno di Napoli.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1237180. VIAF identifies the subject as 121704381. The Library of Congress control number is n79135454. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1679, 1741, 1710 and 1732.
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This entry incorporates text from “Domenico Lalli” 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.