Domenico Cimarosa (; 17 December 1749 – 11 January 1801) was an Italian composer of the Neapolitan School and of the Classical period. He wrote more than eighty operas, the best known of which is Il matrimonio segreto (1792); most of his operas are comedies. He also wrote instrumental works and church music.
Cimarosa was principally based in Naples, but spent some of his career in various other parts of Italy, composing for the opera houses of Rome, Venice, Florence and elsewhere. He was engaged by Catherine the Great of Russia as her court composer and conductor between 1787 and 1791. In his later years, returning to Naples, he backed the losing side in the struggle to overthrow the monarchy there, and was imprisoned and then exiled. He died in Venice at the age of 51.
Life and career
Early years
Cimarosa was born in Aversa, a town near Naples. His family name was Cimmarosa, which is how he is recorded on his baptismal record. He appears to have been an only child. His father, Gennaro, was a stonemason, and within days of Domenico's birth the family moved to Naples where Gennaro found employment on the construction of the Palace of Capodimonte. His teachers were Gennaro Manna and Fedele Fenaroli for composition and Saverio Carcais, the maestro de violino. He was a capable keyboard player, violinist and singer, but composition was his primary concern as a student; in 1770 he, Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli and Giuseppe Giordani were senior students in the composition class. The opera, performed at the Burgtheater on 7 February 1792, was so successful that Leopold had it played again the same evening in his private chambers – "the longest encore in operatic history" as one critic put it. They were performed in Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, London, Prague and Stockholm, as well as Saint Petersburg, Vienna and all the main Italian cities. Between 1783 and 1790 Haydn conducted performances of thirteen Cimarosa operas for his employers at Schloss Esterházy and many of the pieces were given several times.
Three weeks after the premiere of Il matrimonio segreto the emperor Leopold died suddenly. His successor, Francis II, was less interested in music than Leopold had been, and in 1793, Cimarosa returned to Naples. In 1796 he was appointed principal organist of the royal chapel, and he continued to produce new operas and revise older ones. He reworked L'italiana in Londra and I due baroni, adapting them for local taste by adding sections in Neapolitan dialect. The most important new works from this last phase of his career were Le astuzie femminili (1794) and two serious operas, Penelope (1794) and Gli Orazi e i Curiazi (1796); the first two of these were composed for Naples, and the last for La Fenice in Venice.
Works
Although Cimarosa wrote a considerable quantity of instrumental and church music, he was, and remains, best known for his operas.
Cimarosa avoided the rigidity of the traditional da capo aria, and wrote solo numbers consisting of more flexible divisions, with changes of tempo, metre and key to reflect the words of his librettists. Johnson and Lazarevich comment that this freedom of form conveys spontaneity and flexibility. Cimarosa's arias often speed up for the closing section, in the style of cabalettas. Providing contrast to the vocal display pieces, he often wrote quite simple arias in the manner of cavatinas. A feature of his scores is the sustained writing for concerted voices. In the words of the Grove article: