Overture (Il matrimonio segreto)

Il matrimonio segreto was first given at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 7 February 1792, before Leopold II, who had brought Cimarosa back from the court of Catherine the Great in St Petersburg. The emperor had the company fed after the performance and the whole opera repeated the same evening — still the longest encore on record. Giovanni Bertati's libretto came from an English comedy, The Clandestine Marriage by Colman and Garrick: a merchant's daughter has married the clerk in secret, and the household spends two acts almost finding out. It held the repertory through the nineteenth century.