Meanwhile the reform in Italian opera associated with Rossini made itself felt in Germany, where, in opera, the Italian style was still supreme, by way of one of the most remarkable figures in the history of music. Gassaro Spontini (1774-1851), the son of a cobbler of Ancona, had studied composition at the Conservatorio dei Turichi in Naples. By 1799 he had written and produced eight operas. Appointed court composer to King Ferdinand of Naples the same year, he was compelled to leave that city in 1800, in consequence of the discovery of an intrigue he had been carrying on with a princess of the court. Two comic operas, _Julie_ and _La petite maison_ (Paris, 1804), having been hissed, he determined to drop the _buffa_ style completely. The production of _Milton_ (one act) in 1804 was his first gage of adherence to the higher ideals he henceforth made his own. He was influenced materially by an earnest study of Gluck and Mozart and through his friendship with the dramatic poet Étienne Jouy. _La Vestale_ (1807), his first great success, was the result of three years of effort, and upon its performance at the Académie Impériale, through the influence of the Empress Josephine, a public triumph, it won the prize offered by Napoleon for the best dramatic work. In _La Vestale_, one of the finest works of its class, Spontini superseded the _parlando_ of Italian opera with accompanied recitative, increased the strength of his orchestra--contemporary criticism accused him of overloading his scores with orchestration--and employed large choruses with telling effect. _La Vestale_ glorified the pseudo-classicism of the French directory; _Ferdinando Cortez_, which duplicated the success of that opera two years later, represents an attempt on the part of Napoleon to ingratiate himself with the Spanish nation he designed to conquer. The same year the composer married the daughter of Érard, the celebrated piano-maker, and in 1810 he became director of the Italian Opera. In this capacity he paid tribute to the German influences which had molded his artistic views by giving the first Parisian performance of Mozart’s _Don Giovanni_ and organizing concerts at which music by Haydn and other German composers was heard. Court composer to Louis XVIII in 1814, he was for five years mainly occupied with the writing of _Olympie_, set to a clumsy and undramatic libretto, which he himself considered his masterwork, though its production in 1819 was a failure.