an Italian composer. Through the following decade, the 1760s, Tommaso Traetta composed music unceasingly—not just opera seria, either. There was a clutch of comedies as well, to say nothing of sacred music composed to imperial order. For Traetta served from 1768 to 1775 as music director for Catherine the Great of Russia, to which he relocated. Still, opera seria was generally what her imperial majesty commanded. Traetta's first operas for Catherine the Great seem to have been largely revivals and revisions of his earlier works.
