CESTI, MARCO ANTONIO. — A distinguished opera composer, born at Arezzo in 1623, baptized with the name of Pietro, he took the name of Antonio upon entering the Minori Conventuali in 1637; he served as maestro di cappella at the seminary in Volterra (where he may have been ordained priest in 1646), then in Venice, Arezzo, Florence, Lucca, Innsbruck (1653), Rome (supernumerary singer in the papal chapel from 1659 to 1662), and again in Florence, Venice, and Vienna (where he was probably court maestro di cappella), before returning to Venice and Florence, where he died in 1669. In addition to theatrical music, he also composed sacred music, examples of which are preserved in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena (motets for one or more voices from 1620), 14 vocal compositions for 1 to 8 voices, and in the British Museum in London (a four-voice composition, *Filiae Ierusalem*).
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