Anna Bon

Who is Anna Bon?

Anna Bon was an Italian composer and performer. Her parents were both involved in music and traveled internationally; her father was the Bolognese artist Girolamo Bon, a librettist and scenographer, and her mother was the singer Rosa Ruvinetti Bon. Anna was born in Russia. On March 8, 1743, at the age of four, she was admitted to the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice as a student; that she had a surname indicates that she was not a foundling as were most of the Pièta wards, but a tuition-paying pupil. She studied with the maestra di viola, Candida della Pièta.

By 1756, Anna rejoined her parents in Bayreuth where they were in the service of Margrave Friedrich of Brandenburg Kulmbach; she held the new post of 'chamber music virtuosa' at the court, and dedicated her six op. 1 flute sonatas, published in Nürnberg in 1756, to Friedrich. From the frontispiece we learn that she composed them at the age of sixteen.

In 1762 the family moved to the Esterházy court at Eisenstadt, where Anna remained until at least 1765.