Giovanni Bottesini

Bottesini took up the double bass because the Milan Conservatory had a scholarship going for it. He studied under Luigi Rossi and developed a bel canto approach to the instrument, touring Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. Contemporaries called him the Paganini of the double bass. His works include the Second Concerto in B minor, the Gran duo concertante and the Elegy. He wrote operas and sacred music as well, conducted in the theatres of Europe and in Cairo, and it was Verdi who chose him for the world première of Aida there in 1871. Born in Crema in 1821 and first taught by his clarinettist father, he left the conservatory after only four years with a prize of three hundred francs, enough to buy a Testore bass. He was principal bass and later director at the Italian opera in Havana, where his first opera appeared in 1847, conducted the Theatre des Italiens in Paris from 1855 to 1857, and led a London season at the Lyceum in 1871 that brought out his Ali Baba. On Verdi's recommendation he became director of the Parma Conservatory shortly before his death there in 1889.