Composer. A student at the Conservatorio della Pietà in Naples, Rutini later traveled to Prague where he produced two operas, Alessandro nell'Indie (1750) and Semiramide (1752); from 1757 he was impresario at the court theatre in St Petersburg. He returned to Florence in 1761 and thereafter produced operas throughout Italy as well as holding the title Maestro di cappella to the Principe ereditario of Modena. He was also widely admired for his keyboard sonatas; in 1771 Leopold asked Nannerl Mozart to send some of his sonatas, possibly op. 6 (letter 241). Lit.: Torrefranca, ‘Il primo maestro di W.A. Mozart (Giovanni Maria Rutini)’; Pestelli, ‘Mozart e Rutini’; de Angelis, Melodrama spettacolo e musica nella Firenze dei Lorena (Florence, 1991); Freeman, ‘J.C. Bach and the Early Classical Italian Masters’; Oxford Music Online.