Overture to 'Oreste'

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. The year 1784 was a busy one for Cimarosa with commissions for opere buffe arriving from Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Teatro della Pergola in Florence, Teatro Regio in Turin, and Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples, and a request for an opera seria for the ‘opening of the (Eretenio) theatre of Vicenza 1784’ on 10 July. While the composer responded with five different operas based on five different stories and librettos, he made one overture serve three operas. The sinfonie are exactly the same for Il mercato di malmantile, L’apparenza ingana osia La villeggiature, and L’Olimpiade. And to confuse matters further, a number of publications list Il mercato di Malmantile (The Market of Malmantile) under the title La vanità deluse simply because the opera is better known in our own time under this name. The first performance of Il mercato di Malmantile took place at Teatro della Pergola in Florence in the spring of 1784. Information on subsequent performances of La vanità delusa are unsubstantiated, but it is likely that this comedy was performed in Paris in 1805. The overture, like all of Cimarosa’s overtures, is remarkable for its vitality, melodic invention and assured handling of the orchestra.