Overture to 'La donna sempre al suo pegger s'appligia'

Domenico Cimarosa was the most famous and popular Italian opera composer of the second half of the 18th Century. In the course of a brilliantly successful career he composed more than 65 operas as well as a significant body of instrumental music and works for the church. His operas were performed all over Europe, both in Italian and in translation. A number of Cimarosa’s operas continued to enjoy occasional stagings during the 19th Century, and his most famous work, Il matrimonio segreto, is one of only a handful of operas of the period never to have left the repertory. La donna sempre al suo peggior s’appiglia (Women Should Be Taken at Their Worst), a commedia per musica in three acts, received its prima at the Teatro Nuova in Naples as the third opera of the 1785 season. Although there is an 18th-century manuscript copy of the full score in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris which suggests that a performance took place in Paris, there is no record of any production of the opera other than its initial performance in Naples. La donna sempre al suo peggior s’appiglia shares its overture with the later Cimarosa opera, La felicità inaspettata (Unexpected Bliss), a work from the composer’s Russian period. In spite of the opera’s apparent lack of success, the overture, like all of Cimarosa’s overtures, is remarkable for its vitality, melodic invention and assured handling of the orchestra.