music in comparison with his own.  The following retort shows the nobility of genius:  “I, sir?  What would you call the man who would seek to assure you that you were superior to Raphael?” Another acute rejoinder, on the respective merits of Mozart and Cimarosa, was made by the French composer, Gretry, in answer to a criticism by Napoleon, when first consul, that great man affecting to be a dilettante in music: 

“Sire, Cimarosa puts the statue on the theatre and the pedestal in the orchestra, instead of which Mozart puts the statue in the orchestra and the pedestal on the theatre.”

The composer’s hitherto brilliant career was doomed to a gloomy close.  On returning to Naples, at the Emperor Leopold’s death, Cimarosa produced several of his finest works, among which musical students place first:  “Il Matrimonio per Susurro,” “La Penelope,” “L’Olimpiade,” “II Sacrificio d’Abramo,” “Gli Amanti Comici,” and “Gli Orazi.”  These were performed almost simultaneously in the theatres of Paris, Naples, and Vienna.  Cimarosa attached himself warmly to the French cause in Italy, and when the Bourbons finally triumphed the musician suffered their bitterest resentment.  He narrowly escaped with his life, and languished for a long time in a dungeon, so closely immured that it was for a long time believed by his friends that his head had fallen on the block.

At length released, he quitted the Neapolitan territory, only to die at Venice, in a few months, “in consequence,” Stendhal says, in his “Life of Rossini,” “of the barbarous treatment he had met with in the prison into which he had been thrown by Queen Caroline.”  He died January 11, 1801.

Cimarosa’s genius embraced both the tragic and comic schools of composition.  He may be specially called a genuine master of musical comedy.  He was the finest example of the school perfected by Piccini, and was indeed the link between the old Italian opera and the new development of which Rossini is such a brilliant exponent.  Schluter, in his “History of Music,” says of him:  “Like Mozart, he excels in those parts of an opera which decide its merits as a work of art, the ensembles and finale.  His admirable, and by no means antiquated opera, ‘Il Matrimonio Segreto’ (the charming offspring of his ’secret marriage’ with the Mozart opera) is a model of exquisite and graceful comedy.  The overture bears a striking resemblance to that of ‘Figaro,’ and the instrumentation of the whole opera is highly characteristic, though not so prominent as in Mozart.  Especially delightful are the secret love-scenes, written evidently con amore, the composer having practised them many a time in his youth.”

This opera is still performed in many parts of Europe to delighted audiences, and is ranked by competent critics as the third finest comic opera extant, Mozart and Rossini only surpassing him in their masterpieces.  It was a great favorite with Lablache, and its magnificent performance by Grisi, Mario, Tamburini, and the king of bassos, is a gala reminiscence of English and French opera-goers.