Albert Visetti

Albert Anthony Visetti (13 May 1846–10 July 1928) was a Dalmatian musician who moved to London where he was Professor of Singing at the Royal College of Music, becoming a Fellow in 1921. He was the stepfather of the novelist Radclyffe Hall.

Early life Born in Solin in Dalmatia to a landowner Italian father and an English mother, Visetti was originally intended by his father for a career as a surgeon so was sent to the University of Padua to study medicine. Affected by the sights of the dissecting room, he withdrew and turned instead to music. He was awarded musical scholarships from the Austrian and Italian governments. He studied music at the Milan Conservatory where a friend was Arrigo Boito who wrote the libretto for Visetti's Cantico des Cantici, and where he was a pupil of Alberto Mazzucato in class composition, winning several awards. While there he made the acquaintance of Verdi. Visetti was later engaged as a conductor at Nice before moving to Paris where he was an assistant to the composer Daniel Auber at the Court of Napoleon III. While in Paris, he composed the opera Les Trois Mousquetaires after he met Alexandre Dumas, who wrote the libretto.

Move to London

Visetti moved to England in May 1871 after the turmoil of the Siege of Paris, living there for the rest of his life, being naturalised in 1884. There he became a champion of English music and musicians, arranging for the works of such composers as Arthur Sullivan, William Sterndale Bennett and Charles Villiers Stanford to be performed for the first time at La Scala in Milan and in Rome and Naples. Denise Orme,

Personal life

By marriage he became the stepfather of the novelist Radclyffe Hall in 1889; he had a tempestuous relationship with her mother Marie (née Sager) because of his affairs with his female students and Radclyffe Hall, who hated him, claimed he made sexual advances to her when she was a teenager.

He died in London in 1928 and is buried with his wife Marie in the Catholic Section of Brookwood Cemetery.