Among the foreigners who visited Russia in the time of Catherine the Great, none was more distinguished than Guiseppe Sarti. Born at Faenza in December, 1729, celebrated as a composer of opera by the time he was twenty-four, he was appointed in 1753 Director of the Italian opera, and Court Capellmeister to Frederick V. of Denmark. He lived in Copenhagen, with one interval of three years, until the summer of 1775, when he returned to Italy and subsequently became Maestro di Capella of the cathedral of Milan. Here he spent nine years of extraordinary activity composing fifteen operas, besides cantatas, masses and motets. In 1784 Catherine the Great tempted him to visit St. Petersburg, and constituted him her Court-composer. His opera _Armida_ was received with great enthusiasm in the Russian capital in 1786. It was sung in Italian, for it was not until 1790 that Sarti took part in the composition of an opera written to a Russian libretto. This was the _Early Rule of Oleg_, the book from the pen of the Empress herself, in which he co-operated with Paskievich. He also composed a _Te Deum_ in celebration of the fall of Ochakov before the army of Potemkin; this was for double chorus, its triumphal effect being enhanced by drums and salvos of artillery; a procedure which no doubt set a precedent for Tchaikovsky when he came to write his occasional Overture "1812." Many honours fell to Sarti's lot during the eighteen years he lived in Russia, among others the membership of the Academy of Science. The intrigues of the Italian singer Todi obliged him to retire for a time to a country estate belonging to Potemkin in the Ukraine; but he was eventually reinstated in Catherine's good graces. After the Empress's death he determined to return to Italy, but stayed for a time in Berlin, where he died in 1802. Giovanni Paesiello (1741-1816) was another famous Italian whom Catherine invited to St. Petersburg in 1776, where he remained as "Inspector of the Italian operas both serious and buffa" until 1784. Not one of the series of operas which he wrote during his sojourn in St. Petersburg was composed to a Russian libretto or sung in the Russian tongue. His _Barber of Seville_, written during the time when he was living in St. Petersburg, afterwards became so popular with the Italians that when Rossini ventured to make use of the same subject the public regarded it as a kind of sacrilege. Paesiello's influence on Russian opera was practically nil.