Nicola de Giovanni (04/06/1802 - 15/03/1856), an Italian Violinist and composer. Born in Genoa in June 1804, his first youth spent it in the commercial employment of his father, from whom he received his first lessons in music. Thanks to his innate talent, he was then lucky enough to have Paganini and Costa as violin masters, while in counterpoint he had Uccelli and Vissley. He began his concert activity in 1825 in Genoa at the Albaro theater and became Academic Philharmonic of Bologna in 1826 and of Rome. From 1829 to 1837 he was a violin and viola teacher at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna. Also in 1829 he held a happy academy at the Carlo Felice (GE) and in the same year he became first violin at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna (among the various operas we remember Jefte represented in autumn), simultaneously starting a career as a conductor in Bologna and in other cities. S exhibits at the Società del Casino di Bologna on 20 December 1830, 23 March 1832 and 28 November 1841. During a break from the Bolognese activity, he made himself heard once again in the main theater of his hometown on 20 August 1830. Remaining active as first violin conductor in Bologna (as in Elena da Feltre, held in the Gran Teatro Comunitativo in autumn 1839) he also conducted in numerous other Italian cities, including Pisa, Livorno, Sinigaglia, Lucca and Rome. Towards the end of 1836 he was called to Parma to lead the ducal orchestra (a position he held until his death) as well as the violin school for the recruitment of artists for the orchestra itself. Here he had his first performance on 26 December with the opera Il pirata by Bellini. He was then called to other theaters to direct the orchestra: Perugia, Cesena, Treviso, Mantua, Verona. He was also invited several times to London, but the Parma court always prevented him. He was much appreciated by European musicians such as Meyerbeer and was also a composer of virtuosic pages for his instrument on motifs of famous works (such as Ernani and I Vespri Siciliani) as well as chamber and orchestral works, such as Adagio and Polacca. There are about 150 musical works. Many of his unpublished compositions have been lost, in fact only about thirty survive, some manuscripts and others published in Milan and Genoa. He died in Parma on March 15, 1856.