Italian Baroque composer Giovanni Alberto Ristori had a distinguished career in several Eastern European capitals and composed the first Italian opera performed in Russia. He also wrote attractive instrumental music in a Vivaldian vein. Ristori's works remain obscure, partly because large parts of his output were destroyed during World War II bombing, and partly because the Eastern European Baroque scene is still little known in the West. It is likely that operas such as Calandro (1726), performed from Dresden to St. Petersburg, are worthy of investigation for possible revival. Ristori was born in 1692. Most details of his early life are obscure, and his birthplace is unknown. His father was a theater director who took his troupe of comedians to Germany, where they performed for the Elector Georg III of Saxony. Ristori grew up with Italian opera and also with a sense of the opportunities to be found in lands to the north. In 1717 he began composing music for his father's troupe and was also appointed as director of the Polish Kapelle in Warsaw. For several years he divided his time between Dresden and Warsaw. Ristori's operas Cleonice (1718) and Calandro (1726) attracted the highest of high-profile admirers: the Saxon Elector Augustus the Strong, the Crown Princess Maria Josepha, and the Prussian king Frederick the Great, who attended a performance of Calandro in 1728. All this attracted the attention of Russia's westward-looking rulers, and Ristori's troupe was sent to Moscow to perform for the coronation of Empress Anna in 1731. While they were there, they gave a performance of Calandro; this was the first Italian opera performance in Russia. Augustus' successor, Friedrich Augustus II, was less musically oriented than his predecessor, and Ristori's troupe disbanded. Ristori turned to church music, composing three masses and winning an appointment as church composer, a post Bach and Zelenka had previously held. In 1750 he became vice-kapellmeister under Johann Adolf Hasse. He died in 1753. A few of Ristori's cantatas to texts by the Princess (later Electress) Maria Antonia have been recorded, and German oboist Albrecht Mayer recorded a Ristori oboe concerto in 2017. His operas, however, remain largely virgin territory for performers, and they grew from a different musical ecosystem than that which produced most other Baroque operas.