Tommaso Giordani

Tommaso Giordani was born in Naples, in Italy, around 1733. His father was a singer who ran a small opera company, and most of its singers were his own children. The family travelled through Italy, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and France. Tommaso did not sing. He played the harpsichord and wrote music for the company. In 1753 they reached London, and in 1756, at about 23, he wrote his first comic opera there.

In 1764 the company moved to Dublin, and Tommaso became its music director. A few years later he went back to London. For about fifteen years he wrote operas, songs and concert music there. He wrote whatever the theatres and the music publishers needed.

In 1782 the famous singer Tenducci sang a new song by Giordani at concerts in London. It was Caro mio ben (My Dear Love). Giordani paid to print it himself. It sold well, and that spring he sold the rights to his publisher, together with some other songs, for thirty pounds. His signed receipt still exists. Later, in Italy, copies of the song were wrongly marked as music by Handel. For a long time people did not know who had written it. For many years the song was also credited to another composer called Giuseppe Giordani. People often said that the two men were brothers, but in fact they were not related. Giuseppe spent his whole life in Italy, and the two probably never met.

At that time, comic operas in London often used tunes by different composers. In 1782 the writer John O’Keeffe was writing one in rented rooms in London. Every morning the composer Samuel Arnold came to play him tunes for it on the piano. One morning Arnold played a beautiful Italian song. After Arnold left, an elegant older man in a dressing gown and slippers came down from the room upstairs. It was Giordani, and the song was his. O’Keeffe later remembered that Giordani said, in a very friendly way, that O’Keeffe was welcome to use it, and that he could have another one too. He asked only one thing: that he himself could sell the printed music of the songs and keep the money.

Soon afterwards Giordani went back to Dublin, and he stayed there for the rest of his life. He opened his own opera house, but it lost money and closed after one season. Then he taught, ran concerts and led the music at a theatre. He died in Dublin in 1806, at about 73.

Giordani wrote operas, concerts and songs for London and Dublin for fifty years, and most of them are forgotten. But one small concert song became one of the first Italian songs that singing students all over the world learn.