Giuseppe Bonno (29 January 1711-15 April 1788) was an Italian composer in the service of the Austrian Empire. He served as kapellmeister under Emperor Joseph II of Austria during the late 18th century.
Biography[]
Giuseppe Bonno was born on 29 January 1711 in Vienna, Austria, the son of an Italian footman from Brescia. He was a gifted musician from a young age, and he was sent to Naples in 1726 to study opera and church music. In 1736, he returned to Vienna to become a court composer, and he served as the Kapellmeister (court musician) to the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen in the 1750s and 1760s. In 1781, he did not agree with Emperor Joseph II of Austria's plans to commission Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to write a German opera, saying that the German language was too "brutal" to be sung as an opera. Bonno died in 1788.