Naples, Vienna, Drury Lane
Stephen Storace was born in London in 1762, the son of an Italian double-bass player, and trained at the Conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio in Naples. In the mid-1780s he worked in Vienna, where his sister Nancy Storace was the leading soprano of the Italian opera and Mozart’s first Susanna. There he wrote two Italian comic operas before returning to London.
At Drury Lane he joined spoken English drama to music with the scale and ensemble writing of the Viennese stage. He died in London in March 1796, aged thirty-three.
A fuller biography and a catalogue of works will be added in a later version.