Yet, actually, Cimarosa’s success at the time helps us understand Mozart's one today. The three operas of the Da Ponte trilogy (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte) were highly sulphuric, erotically intense, socially dangerous and morally questionable, besides being requested and used by Leopold’s brother and forerunner, Joseph II, for his shady and ultimately disastrous reform policy, also in cultural affairs. Cimarosa was, with what has always been considered as his master piece and, not by chance, is his sole opera which has constantly kept its place in the repertoire up to the present times, much more reassuring, respectful of rules and civilly good-natured. Since times gone by, it is the usual secret marriage of a young tenor and a soprano, handsome but penniless. His employer is obviously short and funny and harbours nouveau riche pretensions, while her sister is also looking for a husband. To cap it all an English “gentleman” is visiting Bologna (that is where the opera takes place, a warm, pleasure-seeking city, little introspective like this opera) and there is an old aunt too. It is an affair which is destined right from the beginning to the most predictable happy end and spiced with a loveable, impelling, soft, frequently delightful and ever fast moving music overlaid with a certain vocal affection which was the hallmark of the Neapolitan school. “Prima che spunti in ciel l’aurora”, Paolino’s aria, is ready to enter the hit parade of the tenor seductions, where it has actually always remained.
It is then not surprising that Cimarosa was better liked than Mozart, that only a few months before had, with La clemenza di Tito, composed the last dizzying yet “difficult” master piece precisely intended for Leopold, who had just been adorned with one of so many crowns, as King of Bohemia. Cimarosa, and with him but less than him (other than Paisiello) all his dedicated fellow travellers throughout the European Enlightenment of Italian opera buffa, were decidedly more peaceful, serene and “simple”. And so much more charming that two full centuries after, we are still being seduced with an unchanging enjoyment.

Alberto Mattioli