Alveri, Giovanni Battista

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(b Bologna, ?1660–70; d after 1719). Italian composer and instrumentalist. He was a pupil of G.P. Colonna and is described in his Cantate a voce sola da camera op.1 (Bologna, 1687; one ed. H. Riemann: Ausgewählte Kammer-Kantaten, Leipzig, [1911]) as a musician in the service of Marquis Guido Rangoni. Alveri also published Arie italiane amorose e lamentabili for solo voice and continuo (Antwerp, 1690), and two operas by him (Il re pastore, overo il Basilio in Arcadia and L'Isione) were performed at the court of Wolfenbüttel in 1691. The libretto of Il re pastore describes him as a ‘virtuoso’ of the duke there and as a member of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna. His name appears in a list of instrumentalists who were at Parma Cathedral on 10 August 1719. According to Schmitz, his cantatas are mostly fairly conservative in form although not without interesting features. Seven motets by him survive (...