Gli Orazii e I Curiazii was premiered at La Fenice Opera House in Venice on 26 December 1796 at the height of turmoil caused by Napoleon's successful military campaign in Italy. Antonio Sografi based his libretto on a tragedy by Corneille, which in itself is an indication of the spirit of the age. Indeed, he and Cimarosa were following a trend towards the glorification of the republican virtues of ancient Rome in the wake of the French revolution and the spread of its beliefs. Gli Orazii e I Curiazii shows that, somewhat like Rossini, Cimarosa moved with ease between the subjects of comic and of serious opera. Cimarosa's vocal writing is exemplary in its attention to the singers' breathing and to the development of the music and avoids excessively high notes, long vocalizations, vocal acrobatics and over-heavy embellishments.

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This comic opera tells the story of Geronimo, a wealthy citizen of Bologna, who is trying to arrange aristocratic marriages for his two daughters, Carolina and Elisetta. What he doesn�t know is that his youngest daughter Carolina is already secretly married to Paolino, his young secretary. Through a series of humorous situations the young couple confess their marriage and all ends well. Giovanni Antonini conducts the Wallonie Royal Opera Orchestra for this performance of Cimarosa's two-act comic opera 'Il Matrimonio Segreto' ('The Clandestine Wedding'), recorded live at Liege in February 2008. Soloists include Cinzia Forte, Priscille Laplace and Damiana Pinti. Directed by Stefano Mazzonis Di Pralafera. Starring Cinzia Forte, Alberto Rinaldi, Damiana Pinti. Language: Italian Subtitles: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish

A prolific composer of exceptional talent, Domenico Cimarosa was one of the leading composers of 18th-century Italian opera, greatly admired throughout Europe. Today he is known mainly for Matrimonio Segreto, but his output of operas numbers almost one hundred works, which were performed to resounding success anywhere there was a theatre and a company of singers. In his long and successful creative life, Cimarosa also wrote a series of sonatas for keyboard, generally very short but full of interest and worthy heirs to Domenico Scarlatti's 555 harpsichord sonatas. A first collection of the Cimarosa Sonatas was published by Felice Boghen in Paris in 1925. Bohen's collection consisted of 32 sonatas, and almost all performers used that publication. In 1971, two Italian pianists, Vincenzo Vitale and Carlo Bruno, made a new edition based on the Cimarosa manuscripts of the Conservatory of Florence, adding 31 new sonatas. Andrea Coen recently published the complete 88 Sonatas in two books. After a first album featuring 44 of the works, pianist Dario Canela now concludes the project with this second release. He tackles these works with the nuanced virtuosity and lyricism that only an heir to the great Neapolitan piano school can deliver, such as he is.

Domenico Cimarosa was a prolific composer of church and instrumental music, but his reputation rests principally on his operas. During the second half of the 18th century, and until the arrival of Rossini, he was the most successful and performed operatic composer in Europe, and one of the last exponents of the Neapolitan School. His bracing and vivacious overtures in this final volume include the hugely popular Il convito ('The Banquet'), a triumph in Venice and Florence, as well as some examples of his expressively moving overtures for oratorios. Michael Hal�sz's first engagement as a conductor was at the Staatstheater am G�rtnerplatz, Munich, where, between 1972 and 1975, he directed all operetta productions. Many engagements as a guest conductor followed and in 1977 Dohn�nyi took him to the Staatsoper Hamburg as principal Kapellmeister. From 1978 to 1991 he was GMD (general music director) of the Hagen Opera House and in 1991 he took up the post of resident conductor at the Wiener Staatsoper for 20 years. Michael Hal�sz's recordings for Naxos include ballets by Tchaikovsky, operatic excerpts of Wagner, symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert and Mahler, Rossini's overtures, three volumes of Liszt's symphonic poems, Fidelio, Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberfl�te, and a pioneering recording of Schreker's opera Der ferne Klang.

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Domenico�Cimarosa's�operas were remarkably successful, being staged and re-staged in opera houses all over Europe. Success in his�hometown�of Naples led to court appointments and royal commissions, including his best-known work Il�matrimonio�segreto�('The Secret Marriage') composed for Austrian emperor Leopold II. Other hits include�L'impegno�superato�('The Broken Engagement'), an instant success and soon to become one of the most frequently performed of�Cimarosa's�comic works, and Penelope that was produced as far away as London in 1817. The Cantata per Ferdinando IV was, however, written as an act of repentance,�Cimarosa�having made the mistake of backing the failed republican government in 1799.

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These little sonatas by Domenico Cimarosa were originally written for the fortepiano; they are transcribed for guitar here by the present performer, Claudio Giuliani. They're a bit unusual to hear on guitar, an instrument historically associated with an individual performer's virtuosity: these pieces are technically simple, playable by an advanced beginner on either instrument. Yet Giuliani's recording is welcome. This isn't familiar music in any setting, and these are delightful miniatures, among the few examples of music of the late 18th century that shows little influence from either Haydn or Mozart. They stand outside the whole line of development of pieces called sonatas. Each one poses itself a little formal problem and solves it, departing from and returning to its tonic key through a unique coordination of harmonic motion (without recourse to chromatic harmony) and thematic material. The combination of extreme technical simplicity and formal sophistication draws the listener into what might at first seem an undifferentiated series of short pieces. Sample the Sonata in G minor, C. 22 (track 14) for a demonstration of Cimarosa's melodic economy, on a par with Bartók's Mikrokosmos pieces, and for Giuliani's clean playing, which gives these deceptive finds their full measure of worth. Dutch label Brilliant Classics, not known for audiophile engineering, delivers fine guitar sonics here from a studio in Rome.

-- James Manheim, AllMusic.com

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CIMAROSA: Overtures