Cosmopolitan musician, virtuoso violinist, composer, teacher and writer of treatises: these are the key words to describe the career of Francesco Saverio (Xaviero) Geminiani (1687–1762). Born in Lucca, he was first taught by his father and then trained in Milan under Carlo Ambrogio Lonati; he completed his studies in Rome, where his masters were Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli. After making his professional debut in Lucca, he moved to Naples in 1706 as first violin at the Teatro dei Fiorentini, returning to Lucca a year later to take over his father's position at the Cappella Palatina. In 1714 he went to England, which was to become his second home. The virtuoso violinist won over the London audiences, and it was there that he met his main patron, Baron Johann Adolf Kielmansegge, Lord Chamberlain to George I. A number of Geminiani's disciples became illustrious figures in their own right, including the virtuosos Matthew Dubourg and Michael Festing, the composer Charles Avison and the publisher Robert Bremner. A great traveller, Geminiani went to Ireland several times during the 1730s, returned to Italy in the 1740s, then visited the Netherlands and France. In Paris he arranged for many of his works to appear in revised and corrected editions. After returning to England, in 1751 he published his highly acclaimed treatise The Art of Playing on the Violin.

Although Geminiani was one of the most prominent musicians of the baroque era, an important link in the chain of Italian violinists from Corelli to Tartini, no complete critical edition of his music and writings presently exists. Now, however, the publishing house Ut Orpheus Edizioni (Bologna), in collaboration with the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca, and the journal Ad Parnassum, has launched an Opera Omnia project, under the general editorship of Christopher Hogwood and supported by an authoritative international group of scholars: Clive Brown (University of Leeds), Enrico Careri (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II), Kate Eckersley (University of Oxford), Richard Hardie (Wellington), Peter Holman (University of Leeds), Sandra Mangsen (University of Western Ontario), Richard Maunder (University of Cambridge), Fulvia Morabito (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca), Rudolf Rasch (Universiteit Utrecht), Robin Stowell (University of Cardiff), Michael Talbot (University of Liverpool), Peter Walls (Victoria University of Wellington), Christoph Wolff (Harvard University) and Neal Zaslaw (Cornell University).

The Opera Omnia will comprise all of Geminiani's instrumental, vocal and didactic works, in full critical editions, with the composer's first versions, revisions and reworkings presented consecutively by opus number, including critical commentary and facsimiles, together with complete performance materials for the orchestral and chamber works. The didactic treatises issued in English will be accompanied by Italian, French or German translations of the period, where these exist, together with full commentaries from modern authorities. It is planned that all volumes of the edition be available in both library volumes and practical performing versions by 2012, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the composer's death.

For further information please visit the website <www.francescogeminiani.com>.