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. Two of his works were directed by Goethe at Weimar, and amongst other 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.

The libretto of I due baroni was by Giuseppe Palomba, whose prolific work over a period of sixty years was set by most of the prominent Italian composers of the period; he wrote more than thirty scripts for Cimarosa. His libretti have frequently been criticised for their clumsy and incoherent plots and the limitations of the characters, typical perhaps of the type of work Mozart was despairing of in 1783 at the time of L'Oca del Cairo. I due baroni epitomises a genre of opera buffa which, tried and tested, provided endless entertainment for the audiences of the late eighteenth century: the matrimonial chase, temporarily frustrated but ultimately resolved, the possibility that wily servants might play games with their masters, multiple disguises and deceptions – these are the staple ingredients of a genre which has its roots in the commedia dell'arte tradition and which was to receive its most elevated treatment in Lorenzo da Ponte's Così fan tutte. It is preposterous of course that Fiordiligi and Dorabella can be taken in for one moment by the Turkish moustaches of their lovers, just as Totaro and Demofonte must be dense indeed to be duped by the proliferation of the women firstly into gypsy fortune-tellers and then into the sorceress Alcina.

I due baroni was one of the eight opere buffe Cimarosa wrote for the Teatro Valle in Rome, where they were termed intermezzi. All were two-act operas (in contrast to the usual three-act opera buffa), for five singers – all men, as women performers were forbidden by papal edict. Francesco Benucci, one of the finest singer-actors of his day, who went on to première Figaro and Guglielmo, created the role of Baron Demofonte. Cimarosa's 1778 Valle offering, L'italiana in Londra had already proved a great triumph, and rapidly became popular in many leading European theatres. I due baroni, first given at the Valle during the Carnival on 8 February1783, enjoyed comparable success, although its première included interpolated music by Angelo Tarchi "at the unanimous request of the nobility". Performances followed at Florence, Monza, Como, Crema (with an additional character, Dorinda), La Scala Milan, Ferrara (with another new role, Giannino), Fermo, Palermo and Padua: it only reached Cimarosa's home-town of Naples in 1793 with further new characters and scenes inserted by the librettist to conform to Neapolitan taste. Amongst significant foreign productions were those at Madrid and Barcelona. During Cimarosa's ultimately unsuccessful sojourn in St Petersburg from 1787-91 as Maestro di Capella to the imperial court, I due baroni was adjusted and performed in Russian. On both outward and return journeys to Russia, Cimarosa enjoyed the admiration and patronage of the Viennese Emperor Joseph II (famed for demanding the after-dinner encore of the whole of Il matrimonio segreto immediately after its première in 1792). For the Vienna performance of I due baroni at the Burgtheater in 1789, where Louise Villeneuve (the first Dorabella) sang Laura, Mozart – who appropriately at the time was working on Così fan tutte - replaced at her request Cimarosa's dramatic aria Alma grande e nobil core – arguably the finest number in the opera – with his own version (K578).

The King's Theatre, Haymarket, London presented a production opening on 3 January1803. The correspondent in The Post disliked the humour, but admired the music: 'Its airs, its recitatives, have both a power that seems to equal the praise of the musical composer with that of the noblest of poets. Tenderness, grace, airy lightness, elegance of artifice and a comic expression…are the most eminent characteristics of this music.' The critic in The Times concurred, but The Chronicle found much to displease: 'unsufferably long, frigid and unmeaning'! Although Cimarosa's works were generally popular in London, I due baroni did not succeed, and was not revived after its run of five performances. It appears never to have been performed in this country since.

In recent times, the opera has been given in Italy at Fermo in 1989 and Palermo in 1989 and 1991, the latter being recorded for Bongiovanni. Our own performance uses the 1971 edition published by Otos, but with some additions based on the Palermo version, and reinstating Cimarosa's magnificent Alma grande rather than Mozart's.

The music of I due baroni is typical of the best of Italian opera in the period: deft, elegant and light, Cimarosa overcomes the poetic and dramatic infelicities of the libretto through fluent melody, rhythmic and dynamic accompaniment and a sense of forward movement which is infectious and entertaining. The music, unlike Mozart's, is unashamedly diatonic, with simple harmonic sequences and regular metres. Never hesitant or dull, it is not difficult to understand Cimarosa's wide appeal to the audiences of his day. From the witty opening quartet which plunges directly into the comic intrigue, it soon becomes obvious that - as with so many of Cimarosa's works - I due baroni is primarily an ensemble opera: Laura's showpiece arias apart, the solo numbers take second place. Nearly all the music is fast, and as the story unfolds in virtual real-time, there is little place for ponderous reflection. The vivacious large-scale chain finales – an invention of the Italian opera composers in the mid-century associated with Goldoni - reflect alternating moods of confidence, bewilderment, anger and reconciliation with brilliant wit and humanity. Especially appealing is the mock seriousness of the handwriting test which the women undergo at the end of Act I, entertained by a song by Demofonte (with calming horn obbligato) 'to help their concentration': but even that lyricism is short-lived as all the characters work up to angry frenzy, concluding the act in emotional turmoil. The fear of the Barons as they approach 'Alcina' (near the end of the opera) shows Cimarosa's ability to use the simplest repeated rhythms to hilarious pictorial effect, as they tiptoe forward, their hearts beating loudly. As with Così, the eventual unmasking of deception leads to unlikely reconciliation with quite incredible speed, leaving only the manipulative Franchetto (unlike his equivalent, Don Alfonso) unrewarded.

Cimarosa's contemporary, Antonio Sacchini, once argued the typical Italian attitude as opposed to the German: 'In the theatre one must be clear and simple: one must touch the heart but not disturb it, and one must make oneself comprehensible to less practised ears. The composer who can write contrasting arias without changing key shows far more talent than the one who changes it every few moments.' Mozartians may disagree, but, whilst I due baroni may not be a profoundly great opera, it is musical entertainment at its very best: delicious, accomplished and hilarious.

'No other composer displays this ... expressiveness and sense of what is appropriate, this joy and tenderness and, especially, this pervasive leaven that enhances all the other qualities -- incomparable elegance, elegance to express tender sentiments, elegance to convey humour, elegance to indicate gentle pathos ...'

So which late eighteenth century composer might that be? 'Pretty obvious', I'm sure you're thinking, but I'd be willing to venture a substantial wager that you're wrong. Not only is Eugene Delacroix, the perpetrator of those honeyed words referring to Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), but he goes on to find a certain Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wanting by comparison. In time, of course, true values will out, and Cimarosa no longer graces the dizzy heights of the musical Premier League that his contemporary so unassailably occupies. But the fact that, in his own lifetime and beyond, he very much did, makes the prospect of hearing what all the laudatory fuss was about a tantalising one.

Once again, Bampton Classical Opera put us in their debt by affording us the opportunity of hearing an excellent and meticulously prepared performance of a forgotten rarity of the eighteenth century, their specialist field of restorative evangelism. Cimarosa's I due baroni di Rocca Azzurra (1783) was the suitable case for treatment they brought with them to London on 18 September 2003 from a sunny terrace in Gloucestershire.

What, then, is your critic's assessment of this present exhumation? Firstly, and quite simply, it has to be said that both the work and the performance it received made for a hugely enjoyable evening. Cimarosa certainly had his work cut out, though. Giuseppe Palomba, his librettist, was no Lorenzo da Ponte, and even given the artifice of opera, it would be difficult to imagine a dafter or more implausible plot. It carried all the conviction of a politician being sincere and all the probability of porcine aviation, but in the sparkling and witty translation by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray, it was an absolute hoot. True farce at its best is not in the business of being believable, but of being entertaining and richly funny. This show was just those things. QED.

The Two Barons is a five-hander, with a scenario that is not a million miles away from that of Cosi fan Tutte, which is a sublime opera, for sure, but likewise a very silly one. Amalgamate the latter's Dorabella and Despina into the single character of the former's Sandra and the resemblance is almost uncanny, with manipulative schemings and machinations, mistaken identity, disguise, impersonation and a not altogether convincing uniting of the 'right' partners at the end. There's even a 'magic' scam, involving not one, but two Alcina impersonators, who ask us to believe that the celebrated enchantress of Handel's opera, has downgraded and relocated from her magic island to the local baronial summerhouse. I won't attempt any further elucidation, but I think it would be true to say that the plot is thinnest when it thickens!

All that we really need to know is that Demofonte and Totaro, the two barons in question, uncle and nephew respectively, are not the sharpest tools in the box. Their enjoyments include fine wining and dining, but not rocket science. The nephew is, after all, engaged to a girl he's never met. And thereby, of course, hangs the whole tale. If you never give two suckers an even break, anything can happen, and most of it does.

As may be imagined, musical considerations apart, if such a piece is to come off, it needs team-players of the highest order who can achieve just the right degree of gesture and comic timing, and really strike sparks off each other. Anyone who has seen previous Bampton productions will know that ensemble playing is one of their greatest strengths. The singers have mostly worked together many times before, and their rapport is enviable. Many more glamorous organisations would be hard put to deliver such spontaneity. But they are all fine singers, too, and very much need to be if they are to meet Cimarosa's often extreme demands.

Despite this production being so much a team effort, special praise must go to Fiona Harrison, for her triumphant assumption of the part of Laura, the intended betrothed of Totaro. Cimarosa makes huge demands here, in a series of extended virtuoso arias which lift the opera beyond the enjoyable but merely frivolous froth it otherwise might have been. Laura's part transcends the comic-strip and requires heroic/dramatic singing in the manner and range of Mozart's Fiordiligi. Harrison's performance was a veritable tour de force, not only in a technical sense, but in its range of emotions also. Such a predominantly frivolous piece surprises when it engages the heartstrings, and Harrison, looking and sounding majestic gave it her all. Every aria she sang was a highlight, not least the formidable Act 1 scena which can hold up its musical head in the exalted territory of Come scoglio or Martern aller Arten, where the great master himself is at his most demanding. The assumption had its comic pay-off, though. Why would such a formidable lady choose to end up with an air-headed wimp like Totaro?

Thomas Guthrie, and Mark Saberton, played the hapless and gullible barons in fine comic style, and were in good voice incorporating a subtle and intuitive assumption of true buffo playing. Although their characters were too silly to command much of our sympathy, one pitied their being eaten for breakfast by the spouses they won, in the hard world of 'ever after'.

Betsabée Haas as Sandra was also impressive in the vocal pyrotechnics required of her, and drew a glorious comic character as a scheming, opportunistic social climber. This was a rich and energetic assumption with some fine ensemble playing. She was an excellent foil for Andrew Kennedy, who played Franchetto, her scheming brother, the man with all to play for, but who ultimately, like most weakest links, left with nothing. Kennedy had a pleasing voice and pleasing presence and manner. Perhaps it was just too pleasing for such a sly dog of a character. Or was this a double bluff? I think I would probably have bought a used car from him, and perhaps that's the point!

The classical splendour of St John's Smith Square was an ideal arena for the required noble setting, and the production was witty, slick and involving, in its occasional use of the whole auditorium. Energetic comic business was set alongside classic pose to delightful effect. St John's also provided excellent acoustics. The small period band of fourteen accomplished players never sounded undernourished, and the playing was alert, lively and accomplished. A few misfired notes from the natural horns could be readily forgiven when Cimarosa asks so much of them for so long.

David Owen Norris, directing from the harpsichord gave a fine and truly classical account of the score. The music itself? Charming, disarming, and, especially in Laura's arias, where we were reminded that Cimarosa was considered as a master of opera seria also, often rather more than that. It was good music, and, for all of the opera's quite considerable length, never dull and always involving. Mozart it was not (how could it be?) but it spoke very much the same language, if with more simplicity. Above all, it gave me a great deal of pleasure, and an eagerness to hear more of these ambitious and rewarding offerings that Jeremy Gray and his Bampton team unfailingly and generously continue to provide for us.

A final rallying call to all music lovers. A good house enjoyed The Two Barons, but there was plenty of room for more. An enterprise offering so much enjoyment and musical revelation deserves the support of all of us. Let's get behind Bampton and similar pioneering enterprises and not only keep them alive, but thriving, as well as enjoying and learning from the considerable riches they offer us.

It’s a fine thing to be easily amused – and clearly a facility in the 18th century possessed in spades. Cimarosa’s ‘comic interlude’ is just about the silliest thing you could possibly imagine, give or take a few hundred similar works churned out by him and his contemporaries in the relentless Neapolitan opera buffa tradition.

But Cimarosa’s music has a sweetness that is deeply seductive, and turns even this comedy of slowly developing situations into a joy. Two thicko country barons, awaiting the arrival of the younger’s fiancée Laura from Milan, are outwitted by a pair of social mountaineers, Franchetto and his sister, Sandra, who impersonates the intended bride. Various attempts to distinguish the two girls meet little success, and eventually a double marriage takes place that leaves everyone happy.

Bampton’s latest discovery, apparently not seen in England since 1803, is performed with their usual carefree ensemble, a product of regular singers who work well together and a relaxed atmosphere. The delightful little overture, a serenade-like affair with delicate twiddly string lines pointed up with sparing woodwind, leads to an undemanding succession of ensembles and arias.

Mark Saberton’s exasperated Demofonte and Thomas Guthrie as his brainless nephew Totaro do most of the work – both natural comic actors, the latter’s hangdog innocence making the most of his fatuous relish of the situation (bedtime will be quite demanding/with a wife on either side,’ he muses). But the voice of the evening was Andrew Kennedy’s Franchetto, an extraordinarily clear and sweet tenor, possibly over-cultured for this Figaro-like schemer.

Judith Gardner Jones was a good, strong, slatternly Sandra, particularly effective in a Dibdinesque, opera-seria-parody episode where she appears as, yes, a gypsy fortune-teller. Fiona Harrison’s Laura brought pathos to the role of the wan, rejected bride, and gets the best tunes: a tremendous rage aria and surprisingly chromatic, Mozartian complaint that suited her rather better.

David Owen Norris conducted the small ensemble, who began with insouciant, bouncy cultivation but became slightly wayward as the frost descended – a matter of blue fingers and numb lips. The most important thing is to keep things moving and not to give the audience a chance to reflect too deeply on the flummery in front of them, and that is exactly what they did.

The Gods must favour Bampton Classical Opera: an hour before its latest ingenious open-air offering began, clouds lowered, rain splattered, and Tornadoes roared overhead from the air tattoo at nearby RAF Fairford. Then, hey presto, enter the sun, no wing-tipping, and all the decibels came from David Owen Norris's spirited and chirpily Italianate direction of a much-improved cadre of Bampton strings.

They favoured Cimarosa, too, who narrowly missed beheading in 1799 for composing a Napoleonic revolutionary hymn. Cimarosa's I due baroni de Rocca Azzurra has enjoyed only one English staging: a five-evening run at London's King's Theatre in 1803, where its zany comic thrust and witty score were praised by The Times, only to be dismissed by The Chronicle as "unsufferably long, frigid and unmeaning".

To judge by Bampton's typically entertaining spoof, directed with aplomb by Jeremy Gray, the truth lies somewhere between. Amid fairly static keys, one denouement wrench felt distinctly odd, and you longed for clarinets; but the recitative in Gray's chirpy translation (quips about Betjeman, Madonna and Raymond Blanc) is brisk and entertaining, powered by Norris's flowing continuo, and amid some glorious arias, Cimarosa makes fine use of Rossini-anticipating ensembles to move Palomba's contorted tale forward.

Without the added variety of chorus, the weight falls heavily on the shoulders of the five leads, for which Bampton amassed a terrific cast. I feared initially for Fiona Harrison as Laura, the prim lass who almost loses her bloke but dons disguises, as gypsy and medium, to outwit her scheming lower-class rival : her "Questa grata auretta amica" felt thin; but she delivered her big aria, "Alma grande e nobil core", superbly – Gray bravely spurning Mozart's revamp to restore Cimarosa's challenging coloratura original.

With the rest, it's a laugh a minute. As the two gullible "barons", uncle and nephew, Mark Saberton and Thomas Guthrie – both wildly amusing comics who set each other off, the former bizarrely bluff, the latter slyly fidgety – offer the bonus of two superbly coupled voices. Amid the welter of Cimarosa's thrusting trios and set-piece arias, it was when the duo paired off that they impressed particularly: both are able soloists, and Guthrie has now branched into Lieder, yet their sound melds to terrific, punchy effect.

The schemers were also the vocal plums. Judith Gardner Jones (Sandra) has real power, but also a marked variety and vocal range. The Uppingham and Cambridge-honed tenor Andrew Kennedy (Franchetto), the RCM's recent London Handel prizewinner, is one of the best golden hopes among young British opera singers – a real find for Bampton. His "Figuratevi un tantino" was out of this world.

Here is a work still coated (in 1783) in the often dire fall-out left by the commedia dell’arte tradition, full of matrimonial pretensions, disguises, mistaken identities. An inauspicious additive is a libretto by Palumbo, scarcely an inventive chap, who over two acts merely tinkers with a basic joke while the smile on your face congeals. Jeremy Gray’s Bampton Opera production, mounted in the deanery garden last weekend, largely succeeds however. Sung in Gray’s translation it eludes Palumbo’s dead hand by means of sympathetic casting, and through some well-judged in-jokes with the audience.

Granted, the bottom line is Cimarosa’s score. This may hardly justify Stendhal’s determination to be hanged before he could choose between Cimarosa and Mozart, but it is at least elegant and breezy; the composer’s liking for ensembles, and sectional rather than da capo arias, has some prophetic spice as well. No rasping chromatics, of course, or excessive colour. The orchestra’s chief job is to accompany the on-stage folk, and keep the fleetly moving rhythms in the air. That, anyway, is how David Owen Norris and his players seemed to read it, and who need argue? The sound was delicate, shot through with subtle tints.

Meanwhile, Palumbo’s longeurs were dashingly offset by some nudge-wink jokes, which leaned on cultural and linguistic incongruity. Most of these worked well. To hear someone called (repeatedly) ‘bonkers’ in the cadential phrases of a baroque aria is really quite piquant. When Don Totaro, planning a feast, warns Raymond Blanc to mind his laurels, we smile. Impish cultural cross-dressing this, which found its witty apogee, perhaps, in the vexed question of Laura’s portrait, a picture serving as vital proof of her identity. It was in fact an expressionist nightmare no matter which way up it stood. Cheek of this kind kept the pot boiling and the onlookers happy.

The work was also imaginatively cast. In whatever range, the voices matched and balanced, ensuring lustre in the frequent ensembles. In particular, Judith Gardner Jones and Thomas Guthrie explored their roles with splendid artistry always amid a general effort, though, to engage us with the thought that if the tale were thin, at least the characters were not.

Fiona Harrison, as the statuesque Laura (at times a thrilling singer), Andrew Kennedy and Mark Saberton, all finished performers, threw themselves equally into this united mission. If events misfired, they seemed to say, it would not be their fault. Blame it on Palumbo.

Bampton Classical Opera’s directors, Jeremy Gray and Gilly French, take neglected 18th-century repertoire, dust it down, arm it with highly capable young professional singers and let them articulate the case. An intelligent, quirky sense of humour, an eye for detail and directorial tautness have informed all Gray’s recent stagings. Enter I due baroni di Rocca Azzurra by the 33-year old Domenico Cimarosa, written in 1783 for the stipulated five-character casts of Rome’s Teatro Valle, from whom his librettist, Giuseppe Palomba, wrings numerous variations to keep a cheerful, slight plot boiling.

The London Handel Society prizewinner Andrew Kennedy acquitted himself gamely as the tenor Franchetto, whose schemes to marry his lower-class sister into the (here patently crass) aristocracy provide the fun. His ‘Figuratevi un tantino’ and ‘Chi vuol veder del mondo’ were beautifully delivered: so was much of Cimarosa’s snappy recitative and arioso interchange. Judith Gardner Jones as the conniving, sexually fluttering sister (Sandra) made a fine job of ‘Che bel piacer’; Fiona Harrison (the defrauded Laura, who caps her rival’s disguises) shone in Cimarosa’s fine original ‘Alma grande, e nobil core’, preferred over Mozart’s Vienna replacement. Gray’s punchy, updated translation caught many of the arty jokes. David Owen Norris conducted a serviceable Bampton orchestra with aplomb and sensitivity.

The bulk of the bourgeois gentilhomme fun came from baritones Mark Saberton and Thomas Guthrie (also assistant director) as the two buffoonish counts, rapierish in banter: Saberton (in the role created by Francesco Benucci, Mozart’s Figaro and Guglielmo) aptly buffo for ‘La sposina s’attendeva’; Guthrie artful in ‘Madamina, deh volgete’ and twinkling in the trio ‘Passegiando con la sposa’. An eerie Act 2 quartet and splendidly built Act I finale confirmed the Bampton team’s qualities at their slickest.