Miró, António Luís

António Luís Miró (d.1853) was a composer and pianist born in Granada but based for most of his life in Lisbon. It was suggested by Sousa Bastos (1899, p. 271), who received information from the composer’s widow, that Miró was born in Lisbon in 1815, though Vieira (1900) cast doubt on this, pointing out that he was older than 38 when he died and that by this reckoning he would have begun his performing and composing career aged only 11. According to Sousa Bastos and tradition, Miró was a student of José Marques e Silva and João Domingos Bomtempo (Vieira 1900, ii, pp. 90-91). After 1834, Miró developed a successful career as an opera director and composer associated with the Laranjeiras, S. Carlos and D. Maria theatres. Miró was also a composer of sacred music with orchestral accompaniment in the 1840s, and also an active member of musical associations and corporations besides the professional organisation, the St Cecilia brotherhood, for which he wrote an orchestral mass in 1829 (Vieira 1900, ii, p. 95). In 1849 he departed for Brazil, becoming a piano teacher and director of a lyric opera company at Maranhão. Some time after, he decided to return to Portugal after falling ill, but was unable to complete the journey; he died in Pernambuco in May 1853 (Vieira 1900, ii, p. 94).

Antonio Sousa Bastos, Carteira do artista; apontamentos para a historia do theatro portuguez e brazileiro. Acompanhados de notícias sobre os principaes artistas, escriptores dramaticos e compositores estrangeiros (Lisbon: Antiga Casa Bertrand, 1899).

Ernesto Vieira, Diccionario biographico de musicos portuguezes: historia e bibliographia da musica em Portugal, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Typographia Mattos Moreira & Pinheiro, 1900), ii, pp. 90-97.