Anna Bon

Anna Bon (1738 – after 1769) was an Italian composer and performer. Her parents were both involved in music and traveled internationally; her father was Girolamo Bon, a Bolognese librettist and scenographer, and her mother was the singer Rosa Ruvinetti Bon.

Anna was baptized on August 11, 1738 in Bologna as "Anna Ioanna Lucia, filia Hieronymus Boni et Rosa Ruinetti", some time after her parents had come back from a tour that included performances at Anna of Russia's court in Saint Petersburg. 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 Pietà wards, but a tuition-paying pupil (figlia de spesi). She studied with the maestra di viola, Candida della Pietà (who herself had been admitted into the coro in 1707).

By 1756, Anna had 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. She dedicated the published set of six harpsichord sonatas, op. 2 (1757), to Ernestina Augusta Sophia, Princess of Saxe-Weimar, and the set of six divertimenti (trio sonatas), op. 3 (1759), to Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria.

By 1767, Anna was living in Hildburghausen, Thuringia, with her husband, a singer named Mongeri.