Luigi Astolfi

Luigi Astolfi (Italian pronunciation: [luˈid͡ʒi asˈtɔlfi]; 1790s–1860s) was an Italian dancer, choreographer, and composer.

Luigi Astolfi was born in Lombardy in the 1790s.

In 1817 he had his first great success as a dancer performing Osvaldo e Olfrida by Giuseppe Sorrentino at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice.

In the following years he also started to practise as a choreographer, especially in Lisbon and, to a lesser extent, also in Oporto, in Vienna, and in Russia, but with less success; performances of Belisario and Gli esiliati in Siberia (1831) by Gaetano Donizetti, and La muette de Portici by Daniel Auber (1838) were warmly received by critics and audience.

Later he was also the composer of the music that he performed as a dancer; his first great success was Le sette reclute, performed for the first time in 1832 at the Teatro alla Canobbiana in Milan. Again at the Canobbiana in 1837 I minatori di Salerno was performed for the first time: this is his most famous and most performed ballet, not only by Astolfi himself but also by other performers; this was the only work by Astolfi to be performed even after his death.

He was premier danseur, of both Italian and Portuguese dancers, at the Royal Theatre of Saint John in Lisbon until the season 1839–40, which was a complete failure for Astolfi. He experienced other failures in Crema and Bergamo in 1837 and at the Teatro Carignano in Turin in 1842.

In 1840 he married with dancer and leading pantomimic actress Fanny Mazzarelli, sister of the more famous soprano Rosina Mazzarelli.

He was composer and choreographer of La Encantadora de Madrid, successfully performed in the season 1845–46 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, starring Fanny Cerrito and Arthur Saint-Léon.

In 1855 he retired to private life in Milan, where he died in the 1860s.

Luigi Astolfi was a careful dancer, able to recognize and please the taste of the audience. In his worst years he was criticized of being excessively detailed in this sense, but for the rest of his career, critics and audiences always agreed him an indisputable success.

Astolfi wrote more than fifty works, many of which were performed by the most famous dancers of the time, including Nicola Molinari, Emanuele Viotti, Domenico Ronzani, Fanny Cerrito, and Arthur Saint-Léon.