The Two Barons of Rocca Azzurra
(I due baroni di Rocca Azzurra, 1783)
Although subject in his lifetime to the fickle nature of public taste and shifting politics, Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) was one of the most successful of the troop of Italian opera composers (amongst them Gazzaniga and Paisiello) whose works formed the staple of opera houses from London to St Petersburg in the closing years of the 18th century. His operatic works were regular features at all the major European houses, and especially at the great court centres of Vienna, where he replaced Salieri as Kapellmeister, and Eszterháza, where Haydn conducted 13 of his works between 1783 and 1790. Unlike many of his compatriots, his reputation held good well into the nineteenth century, founded especially on continued performances of his two acknowledged masterpieces, Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage) and the revolutionary opera seria Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi. Amongst influential voices who rated him even above Mozart were the painter Delacroix and the novelist Stendhal. Indeed such was his reputation in France that his bust was prominently placed on the façade of the most opulent of all theatres, the Paris Opéra, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.
Press
a pioneer enterprise... ambitious and rewarding Music and Vision, September 2003
a sweetness that is deeply seductive... The Times, 23 July 2002
The Gods must favour Bampton Classical Opera The Independent, 25 July 2002
splendid artistry... The Oxford Times 26 July 2002
Bampton at its slickest Opera, September 2002
