surprise that this figure of composer, who died very young with an artistic parable of only five years and yet able to leave a handful of unforgettable compositions, has been able to influence poets and artists who, during the 19th century, reinterpreted the figure in a romantic key. As the historian and traveler Charles Burney wrote: Indeed, the myth that was born throughout Europe around his life and work after his death represents an exceptional phenomenon in the history of music. Mozart will experience a similar phenomenon after his death. Thus, more than three hundred works have been attributed to him, of which only about thirty have been recognized by modern critics as true Pergolesi's compositions, a phenomenon which testifies the reputation of the composer. However, already in the middle of the 18th century Pergolesi was immensely better known than he had been in life: as mentioned, the numerous prints of his compositions began to spread throughout Europe. Several years after Pergolesi's death, the performance in Paris, in 1752, of La Serva padrona by an Italian comic opera troupe, triggered the famous Querelle des Bouffons between the defenders of French music and the supporters of the Opera buffa. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in particular, the freshness and the grace of his music was the dazzling demonstration of the superiority of Italian opera over French lyric tragedy. The French composer André Grétry said: Above all, the scarcity of tangible information about his life and works was fertile ground for the flourishing of imaginative anecdotes of all kinds. The doubt crept in that his tragic end was due not to natural causes but to poisoning by musicians envious of his talent. Apollonian beauty and numerous tragic loves were attributed to him. Because of this extraordinary posthumous fame, the catalog of his works had an unpredictable destiny: during the 18th century and 19th century spread in Europe the practice of publishing under his name, for the purpose of speculation, any score having the musical style of the Neapolitan school. By the end of the 19th century, this led to over five hundred compositions in the informal catalog of his works. Contemporary studies have reduced Pergolesi's compositions to less than fifty, and of these only twenty-eight are the works whose paternity is considered sure. There are still serious doubts about the attribution of various works, even among the best known, such as the Salve Regina