Filippo NicoliniFilippo Nicolini was an Italian impresario who dominated the theatre scene in Braunschweig for over twenty years.LifeEarly lifeNothing is known of his early life, though documents show he toured Holland, France and several German cities with his child pantomime troupe. In September 1745 he was in Frankfurt am Main, where the city council gave him permission to perform pantomimes during the festivities for the coronation of Francis I. He also toured to Vienna, Prague and Leipzig, where Gotthold Ephraim Lessing saw them but dismissed them afterwards as "trained little monkeys". The composer Ignazio Fiorillo joined the troupe in 1747 and composed many intermezzos for it. In November 1749 Nicolini opened his "Opera Pantomima di Piccoli Hollandesi" in a large wooden booth on Hamburg's Neumarkt, which he ran until 5 June 1749 that year. He then stayed at the Dresden court.