Giovanni Paisiello

Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816), Italian composer, the leading creator of comic opera of his era after Mozart. Born in Taranto, he worked in Naples except for eight years in Saint Petersburg for Catherine II of Russia. The melodic grace and dramatic aptness that mark his more than 100 operas are especially evident in La Molinara (The Miller Maid, 1788) and in Barber of Seville (1782), once so popular that it rivaled the now more famous 1816 opera of the same title by the Italian Gioacchino Rossini.