Trade card of Corri & Sutherland, musical instrument and sheet music sellers, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Domenico Corri was an Italian composer, music publisher, and teacher. He grew up in Rome and eventually went to study with Nicola Porpora (1686-1768) in Naples. Porpora was a leading Italian teacher of singing in the first half of the eighteenth century. After Porpora’s death in Naples in 1768, Corri returned home to Rome where in 1770 he married one of his singing pupils Signorina Bacchelli and a year later after they both got invitations from the Musical Society of Edinburgh to perform. They moved to Edinburgh and stayed there for eighteen years. Corri launched a couple of businesses during his time in Edinburgh, including a music publishing company that dissolved due to financial troubles around 1790.
In 1790, Corri moved to London and established himself as a music publisher. Corri had already played a role in London’s music scene, since his opera Alessandro nell’Indie was performed at the King's Theatre in 1775. His wife also contributed performances at several concerts at the King’s Theatre and the Hanover Square Rooms. After his move to London, Corri managed to start another music publishing company with Jan Ladislav Dussek, who had married Corri’s daughter, the singer and harpist Sofia Corri. The Corri & Dussek publishing company also fell into financial troubles and Dussek fled the country, leaving Corri to keep it going from 1804. Corri's son Montague eventually took over his position. Corri continued to make music from 1806-1816, at which point his health slowly declined with several mental breakdowns within the last six months of his life.