Francesco Durante (31 March 1684 – 30 September 1755) was a Neapolitan composer.
He was born at Frattamaggiore, in the Kingdom of Naples, and at an early age he entered the Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesù Cristo, in Naples, where he received lessons from Gaetano Greco. Later he became a pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio. He is also supposed to have studied under Bernardo Pasquini and Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni in Rome, but there is no documentary evidence. He is said to have succeeded Scarlatti in 1725 at Sant' Onofrio, and to have remained there until 1742, when he succeeded Porpora as head of the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, also in Naples. This post he held for thirteen years, till his death in Naples. He was married three times.
His fame as a teacher was considerable, and Niccolò Jommelli, Giovanni Paisiello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Niccolò Piccinni and Leonardo Vinci were amongst his pupils. As a teacher, he insisted on the unreasoning observance of rules, differing thus from Scarlatti, who treated all his pupils as individuals.
Francesco Durante was an Italian politician and surgeon.
He was the son of Domenico Durante, mayor of Gallodoro (Messina) from 1880 to 1884. The education of Francesco was entrusted to Don Di Blasi; his father wanted to see him graduate in engineering but one day he went to the university of medicine in Messina with his friend, who was studying here. The teacher, amazed at his comments and at his bent, urged him to study medicine. So he started to study medicine in Messina, but he graduated in Naples in 1864. He moved to Rome in 1872 after a lot of travels around Europe. He projected and founded with Guido Baccelli the general hospital Policlinico Umberto I in Rome in 1872.
Durante became Senator of the kingdom of Italy in the 16th Legislature. He was one of the first surgeons in Italy and in the world to successfully remove brain tumors. During the First World War, he gave his all and besides avoided the mutilation of thousands of soldiers. In 1908 he moved to Messina, just devastated by an earthquake, with a load of medical materials and with a group of volunteers and developed surgical pavilions. He followed Hippocrates' doctrine; doctor has to heal and soothe without profit purposes. He became president of the Order of Surgeons in Italy. In 1919 he decided to leave Rome and to return definitively to Sicily. He retired to private life in his home in Letojanni where he died on 2 October 1934.