Domenico Cimarosa

Educated at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto in Naples, Domenico Cimarosa wrote more than sixty operas for the Italian theatres and for courts abroad, among them engagements at Saint Petersburg and Vienna. Born at Aversa in 1749, he produced in Vienna in 1792 Il matrimonio segreto — so admired at its first night, by contemporary account, that the emperor had the whole opera repeated. He wrote serious operas as well, sacred music, and a large quantity of keyboard sonatas. He returned to Naples and died at Venice in 1801. His first comedy for the theatre, Le stravaganze del conte, was given at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples in 1772, eleven years after the clergy of San Severo, who had supported him after his father’s death, saw him admitted to the conservatory. Catherine II brought him to Saint Petersburg in 1787 and he left in mid-1791 for Warsaw and then Vienna, where he received an annual allowance and court accommodation and where Il matrimonio segreto had its first night at the Burgtheater on 7 February 1792. Haydn conducted thirteen of his operas at Schloss Esterházy between 1783 and 1790, and when Naples turned on the liberals in 1799 he was imprisoned and came near to a death sentence.