Overture to 'Allessandro nell'Indie'

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. Alessandro nell’Indie (Alexander in India) was Cimarosa’s first opera to a text by Pietro Metastasio, a tale of confrontation between Alexander the Great and Porus based on Arrian and Curtius Rufus. Cimarosa’s setting of this venerable libretto was first presented at Teatro Argentina in Rome on 2 January 1781. Though the opera was later produced in Warsaw in the summer of 1792, it did not enjoy the success of many of the composer’s other operas. Nonetheless, the overture, like all of Cimarosa’s overtures, is remarkable for its vitality, melodic invention and assured handling of the orchestra.