United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Cimarosa was a prolific writer, the number of his operas reaching the formidable total of seventy-six; but, save for 'Il Matrimonio Segreto, they have all been consigned to oblivion. Although he was born only seven years before Mozart, and actually survived him for ten years, he belongs entirely to the earlier school of opera buffa.
Furberia e Puntiglio, which is a second-hand imitation of GOLDONI. The music, by Signor MARCELLO DI CAPUA, is agreeable, particularly a quartetto and a cavatina. RAFFANELLI shines in this piece as a first-rate actor. Il Matrimonio Secreto, the chef-d'oeuvre of CIMAROSA, and of its kind, perhaps, the most charming opera extant.
"At this time," we are told by Laf age, "Cherubini had two distinct styles, one of which was allied to Paisiello and Cimarosa by the grace, elegance, and purity of the melodic forms; the other, which attached itself to the school of Gluck and Mozart, more harmonic than melodious, rich in instrumental details."
To an admirer who was one day burning incense before him, Rossini said, in the spirit of Cimarosa quoted elsewhere: "My 'Barber' is only a bright farce, but in Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro' you have the finest possible masterpiece of musical comedy."
Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Paesiello, Cimarosa, Haydn, and certain secondary geniuses, developed in their souls a passionate emotion which never passed beyond the chaste enclosure of their breasts, though it permeated that other creation through which, in spirit, they winged their flight.
And so, by force of circumstance, it came about that Cimarosa, Paesiello, and Rossini fed the mystic, melancholy little boy, who was more than a little intoxicated by his draughts of the Asti spumante poured out for him, instead of milk, by these bacchanalian Satyrs, and the two lively, ingenuously, lasciviously smiling Bacchante of Naples and Catania Pergolesi and Bellini.
Paisiello and Cimarosa, in their style and processes of work, seem to have more nearly caught the mantle of Piccini than any others, though they were contemporaries as well as successors. Giovanni Paisiello, born in 1741, was educated, like many other great musicians, at the conservatory of San Onofrio.
The composer's hitherto brilliant career was doomed to a gloomy close. On returning to Naples, at the Emperor Leopold's death, Cimarosa produced several of his finest works, among which musical students place first: "Il Matrimonio per Susurro," "La Penelope," "L'Olimpiade," "II Sacrificio d'Abramo," "Gli Amanti Comici," and "Gli Orazi."
The music of Mozart and Cimarosa, Boïeldieu and Eossini, Cherubini and Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer, furnished in equal measure the mold into which her great powers poured themselves with a sort of inspired fury, like that of a Greek Pythoness.
We think this book will become a favorite with our people. It contains sketches, legends, and traditions of many of the great musicians. Bach, Gluck, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Pergolesi, Schubert, Scarlatti, Weber, Paganini, Gretry, Catalani, Malibran, Handel, Anderle, Haydn, Boieldieu, Cimarosa, Beethoven, Lully, Berger, etc., float pleasantly through its fanciful pages.
Word Of The Day