Giovanni Ricordi (3 March 1785 – 15 March 1853) was an Italian violinist and the founder of the classical music publishing company Casa Ricordi. The musicologist Philip Gossett described him as "a genius and positive force in the history of Italian opera". By the 1840s and throughout that decade, Casa Ricordi had grown to be the largest music publisher in southern Europe and in 1842 the company created the musical journal the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano. Ricordi died on 15 March 1853 in Milan.