BENDA, GEORG  

Jir Antonin Benda, known in German as Georg Benda, was born in 1722 at Stare Beniltky and had his schooling in Bohemia before moving in 1742 with the rest of his family to join his brother Frantisek at Potsdam, where he became a violinist in the court orchestra. In 1750 he became Kapellmeister to Duke Friederich III of Saxe-Gotha. Gotha had long and distinguished musical traditions, to which Benda contributed, breaking new ground there with his Italian opera seria Xindo riconnosciuto, written for the Duchess Luise Dorothea. There followed a period in Italy for further study which resulted in the composition of two Intermezzi, Il buon marito and Il nuovo maestro di capella, performed in Gotha in 1766 and 1767. More significantly he was largely responsible for giving wide popularity to the form of melodrama. His early and very successful attempts at the genre were written after the arrival in Gotha in 1774 of the theatrical troupe directed by the Swiss actor Abel Seyler, a company which had been active in Hanover and Weimar. For the Seyler troupe Benda wrote his melodramas Ariadne aufNaxos, Medea and Pygmalion, the first two of which aroused the admiration of Mozart, who heard performances in Mannheim and planned something of the same kind on the subject of Semiramide. Benda also wrote a series of Singspiel for the Gotha theatre.

Benda had been given the title of Kapelldirektor in 1770, but resigned in 1778, moving to Hamburg and to Vienna. Finding no position there, he returned in 1779 to Gotha, living in retirement at first at the nearby Georgenthal before moving to Ohrdruf. He spent his final years at Kstritz, where he died in 1795. His compositions include some half dozen other stage works, Singspiel, melodramas and a children's operetta, a quantity of church music and vocal compositions, keyboard sonatas and sonatinas and some thirty symphonies, ten harpsichord concertos and eleven violin concertos.