Cimarosa:

New, fun-filled arrangements, with historical authenticity on their side, of bright and breezy curtain-raisers by a once-celebrated contemporary of Mozart.

Brilliant Classics has already published all 88 of Domenico Cimarosa’s keyboard sonatas in their commonly encountered appearance as harpsichord pieces (BC95027), as well as an album of 30 sonatas in arrangements for guitar (BC94172). He may still be better known as a composer of comic opera, for masterpiece such as Il matrimonio segreto, but this new album of the sonatas in versions for organ celebrates the variety and adaptability of Cimarosa’s idiom and demonstrates why he was so lionized in his own time.

Cimarosa was one of a number of very good composers who was attracted to do a stint at the court of Catherine the Great. Apparently, this opera was composed during this visit. Though now known mainly for his opera buffa, especially Il Matrimonia Segreto, Cimarosa composed other types of operas, of which this is one. The libretto tells a snippit of the Anthony and Cleopatra tale, and is no competitor of, say, Shakespeare's magnificent and nuanced account. On the surface the libretto seems to be much in the tradition of eighteenth century opera seria, with dialogue interrupted by musical episodes, mainly arias, illustrating the feelings more or less appropriate to the development of the plot.

There are preciously no other recording of Cimarosa's 1781 premiered work Il Pittor Parigiano, so this 1986 Hungarotun recording is about the only performance put down in discography. A recording of the complete score, it is done exceedingly handsomely, with Tamas Pal and the Salieri Chamber Orchestra once again proving that one does not need to be playing period instruments to produce a winning performance. The work is among the finest of operas written by Cimarosa, written for two sopranos, two tenors and one bass.

Domenico Cimarosa, one of the most prominent composers of opera seria and opera buffa in the generation before Rossini, wrote almost 50 operas, but today his comedy Il matrimonio segreto is the only one to remain even on the fringes of the standard repertoire. Gli Orazi e i Curiazi, which Cimarosa set to an odd and inert libretto, tells a kind of Romeo and Juliet story in which two pairs of lovers are threatened because their countries are at war. When the victor returns from the conflict, having killed his sister's beloved, she accuses him of murder, so he stabs her to death and the crowds acclaim him as a hero.

Il matrimonio segreto is the only opera that has ever had the honor of being repeated in full at its premiere, so very much did the comical musical goings-on please its distinguished audience. On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Innsbruck Early Music Festival Weeks, the conductor Alessandro De Marchi again at long last led a performance of Cimarosa’s most popular opera in historical performance practice and in original sound.

Domenico Cimarosa was the most famous and popular Italian composer of the second half of the eighteenth century. In the course of a brilliantly successful career he composed more than 65 operas, as well as a significant body of instrumental music and works for the church. His operas were performed all over Europe, both in Italian and in translation. A number of Cimarosa’s operas continued to enjoy occasional stagings during the nineteenth century, and his most famous work, Il matrimonio segreto, is one of only a handful of operas of the period never to have left the repertory. Cimarosa’s overtures are remarkable for their melodic invention, assured handling of the orchestra and sheer vitality.