Overture to 'L'infedeltà fedele'

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. Domenico Cimarosa’s commedia per musica L’infideltà fedele (Faithful Infidelity) - his fifteenth opera - occupies a unique place in the annals of opera history on account of his librettist’s decisionto write a text which mixed elements of opera buffa with those of opera seria for the opening of King Carlos’s newly built Teatro del Fondo on 20 July 1779. The only known performance outside the opera’s prima in Naples was given in Dresden at the court theatre under the title Treu in der Untreue on 5 October 1782. 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.