Domenico Cimarosa (Italian: [doˈmeːniko tʃimaˈrɔːza]; 17 December 1749 – 11 January 1801) was an Italian composer from the Neapolitan School and the Classical period. He wrote more than eighty operas, the most famous being Il matrimonio segreto (1792). Most of his operas were comedies. He also composed music for instruments and wrote church music.

Cimarosa was mainly based in Naples but worked in other parts of Italy, including Rome, Venice, and Florence. He was hired by Catherine the Great of Russia as her court composer and conductor from 1787 to 1791. Later in life, he returned to Naples and supported the losing side in a fight to remove the monarchy there. Because of this, he was imprisoned and then exiled. He died in Venice at the age of 51.

Life and career

Domenico Cimarosa was born in Aversa, a town near Naples. His family name was Cimmarosa, as recorded on his baptismal certificate. He appears to have been an only child. His father, Gennaro, was a stonemason. Soon after Domenico was born, the family moved to Naples, where Gennaro found work building the Palace of Capodimonte. When Domenico was seven, Gennaro fell from scaffolding and died. His mother, Anna, became a laundress for a religious group at the Church of San Severo. There, monks and clergy provided Cimarosa with a good education, including music lessons.

The organist of the monastery, Padre Polcano, helped teach him. Cimarosa learned quickly and was admitted to the Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto, Naples’s top music school, in 1761 at age twelve. His teachers included Gennaro Manna and Fedele Fenaroli for composition, and Saverio Carcais, the violin teacher. Cimarosa was skilled in playing the keyboard, violin, and singing, but he focused most on composing. In 1770, he and two other students were senior composers in the school’s class.

As a student, Cimarosa wrote religious music, but he first gained public attention in 1772 with the premiere of his first comic opera, Le stravaganze del conte, performed at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples. The opera was well received, and another work, Le pazzie di Stelladaura e di Zoroastro, followed the same year. His fame spread across Italy. In 1774, he was invited to Rome to write an opera for that year’s season. There, he composed another comic opera, L’italiana in Londra. In 1777, he married Constanza Suffi, who died the next year.

In the 1770s and 1780s, Cimarosa wrote many operas for Italian theaters. He was best known for his comedies but also composed serious works, such as Caio Mario (1780) and Alessandro nell’Indie (1781). He also wrote church music. In 1779, he was named a supernumerary organist at the Neapolitan royal court. By the early 1780s, he was a visiting music teacher at the Ospedaletto di Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice.

For Rome, he wrote operas for three theaters in the late 1780s and early 1790s. These included Il ritorno di Don Calandrino, L’italiana in Londra, Le donne rivali, Il pittore parigino, and for La Scala in Milan, La Circe, a three-act opera based on the Odyssey. In the 1780s, he married again, this time to Gaetana Pallante, Constanza’s step-sister. They had two sons. Gaetana died in 1796.

In 1787, Cimarosa traveled to Saint Petersburg at the invitation of Empress Catherine II. He was one of several Italian composers hired by the Russian court, including Vincenzo Manfredini, Baldassare Galuppi, Tommaso Traetta, Giovanni Paisiello, and Giuseppe Sarti. He composed a serious opera, Cleopatra, and revised two of his comic operas, Le donne rivali and I due baroni di Rocca Azzurra. He also wrote a Requiem in G minor for the court. However, Cimarosa was less successful in Russia than some of his colleagues. His subordinate, Martin y Soler, gained more favor with the empress. Combined with the loss of many Italian singers and his dislike of Russia’s cold winters, Cimarosa left Russia in June 1791.

After spending three months in Warsaw, Cimarosa arrived in Vienna. His music was already popular there, and Emperor Leopold II appointed him Kapellmeister to the court, commissioning a new opera. The result was Il matrimonio segreto, based on a play by George Colman the Elder and David Garrick. The opera premiered at the Burgtheater on February 7, 1792, and was so successful that Leopold had it performed again that evening in his private chambers, a record described as “the longest encore in operatic history.” Cimarosa did not consider this his best work, but it had a clearer story and better characters than some of his other operas. His favorite opera was Artemisia, regina di Caria, a serious work he composed for Naples five years later.

Cimarosa’s success was international. He and Giovanni Paisiello were the most popular opera composers in the late 18th century. He wrote 60 comic operas and 20 serious operas, many of which were performed across Europe, including in Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, London, Prague, Stockholm, Saint Petersburg, Vienna, and major Italian cities. Between 1783 and 1790, Joseph Haydn conducted thirteen of Cimarosa’s operas for his employer at Schloss Esterházy, with many performed multiple times. La ballerina amante, a comic opera first performed in Naples, was chosen as the opening work at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon in June 1793.

Three weeks after the premiere of Il matrimonio segreto, Emperor Leopold II died suddenly. His successor, Francis II, cared less about music. In 1793, Cimarosa returned to Naples. In 1796, he was named principal organist of the royal chapel and continued composing and revising operas. He adapted L’italiana in Londra and I due baroni by adding sections in the Neapolitan dialect. His most important works from this period were Le astuzie femminili (1794) and two serious operas, Penelope

Works

Domenico Cimarosa composed a large amount of instrumental and church music, but he is most famous for his operas. He was known for his skill in composing, though he often reused parts of his music, which was common during his time. He also used assistants for tasks like writing recitatives. According to an article in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001), Jennifer E. Johnson and Gordana Lazarevich note that Cimarosa created music that was "light, elegant, and refined," even though some of the librettos he used were not of high quality.

Cimarosa avoided the strict structure of traditional da capo arias and instead wrote solo pieces with more flexible sections. These sections included changes in tempo, rhythm, and key to match the words of the librettists. Johnson and Lazarevich observe that this flexibility gave his music a sense of spontaneity. His arias often ended with a faster section, similar to cabalettas. In contrast to these elaborate pieces, he also wrote simpler arias, like cavatinas. A notable feature of his music was the use of multiple voices working together in harmony. As the Grove article states, Cimarosa did not use new harmonic techniques, instead relying on traditional methods. Johnson and Lazarevich highlight his strengths as "rich melodies, energetic rhythms, and lively accompaniments."

Over time, Cimarosa's orchestration style evolved. His early works typically used strings, oboes, horns, and trumpets, with occasional use of bassoons and flutes. In these pieces, the orchestra provided quiet support for the singers. During his time in Saint Petersburg, he began using clarinets and created fuller, more detailed orchestral arrangements. Johnson and Lazarevich point to Il matrimonio segreto, where a large orchestra "adds color and includes independent musical ideas that reflect the story."

Cimarosa composed many piano sonatas, which were found in written form in the 1920s. Some sources claim there are over 80 single-movement works, though it is believed many may actually be part of three-movement pieces. A piece sometimes called Cimarosa's "Concerto for oboe" was actually created in 1949 by Arthur Benjamin, who arranged movements from the sonatas.

Reputation

Johnson and Lazarevich note that during his lifetime, Cimarosa's fame reached a level not matched until Rossini's time of greatest success. His reputation remained strong throughout the 19th century. Eugène Delacroix preferred Cimarosa's music over Mozart's. He described Il matrimonio segreto as "perfection itself." He praised the work for its balance, emotional expression, appropriateness, happiness, tenderness, and unmatched elegance. Stendhal stated that Cimarosa, Mozart, and Shakespeare were the only passions of his life. To Stendhal, Cimarosa was "the Molière of composers," and he claimed to have seen Il matrimonio segreto more than 100 times.

Hector Berlioz, who disliked Italian opera, did not admire Cimarosa. He wrote, "I would throw the never-ending Matrimonio Segreto to the devil, as it is as tiresome as The Marriage of Figaro but far less musical." Robert Schumann admired Cimarosa's "absolutely masterful" orchestration but found little else impressive. Eduard Hanslick praised Cimarosa's skill, expert techniques, and good taste. He said, "Full of sunshine—that is the right way to describe Cimarosa's music."

Notes, references and sources

This article uses text from a book that is now free for everyone to use: Chisholm, Hugh, editor (1911). "Cimarosa, Domenico." Encyclopedia Britannica. Volume 6 of the 11th edition. Published by Cambridge University Press. Pages 367 to 368.

Holden, Amanda (1997) [originally published in 1993]. The Penguin Opera Guide. Published by Penguin Books in London. ISBN 978-0-14-051385-1.

Osborne, Richard (2007). Rossini (Second edition). Published by Oxford University Press in Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-518129-6.

Riley, Charles A. (2001). Aristocracy and the Modern Imagination. Published by University Press of New England in Hanover, New Hampshire. ISBN 978-1-58465-151-2.

Rossi, Nick; Fauntleroy, Talmage (1999). Domenico Cimarosa: His Life and His Operas. Published by Greenwood Press in Westport. ISBN 978-0-313-30112-4.