Cesare Pugni

Genoa, Kingdom of Sardinia

Cesare Pugni was an Italian composer who worked in the theaters of Milan, Paris, London and St. Petersburg. He is the author of 312 ballets, 10 operas, 40 masses, as well as symphonies, cantatas and other works. In 1822 he graduated from the Milan Conservatory in composition. In 1825-1834 he worked at the La Scala theater, where his ballets such as The Siege of Calais (1827), Agamemnon (1828), Adelaide of France (1829), and Macbeth (1830) were staged. From 1834 to 1843 he worked in Paris, and from 1843 to 1850 in London, as a composer of ballet music at the Royal Theater in Haymarket. Beginning in 1851, Cesare Pugni was a composer of ballet music for the St. Petersburg imperial theaters. In 1864, in collaboration with Saint-Léon, Pugni created the first ballet on a Russian national theme - "The Little Humpbacked Horse" based on the fairy tale by P.P. Ershov, where he used popular Russian melodies. He is buried in St. Petersburg at the Vyborg Roman Catholic Cemetery.