Cimarosa, Concerto for Two Flutes in G Major (G. 1077)

As I was considering something by Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) for a performance pick, I searched the Professor Carol website to see what we might have already said about him. As it turns out, he’s in the course on Russian music.

Russian? Cimarosa was thoroughly Italian. From a poor background, he attended school at a monastery near Naples and went on to study at the Music Institute in Naples. By the age of 25, he was enjoying success as an opera composer. He would write some eighty operas over his lifetime.

You would expect Cimarosa to have various posts in places like Rome and Florence and Venice, which he did. But he was also invited by Catherine the Great to set up shop in St. Petersburg. He stayed there from 1787 to 1792. The arts in Russia at the time focused on styles from Western Europe, a trend established as Peter the Great began a process of Westernizing Russia.

Catherine, known as a great patron of the arts, brought numerous artist to her court from across Europe. To find the most prominent musicians of the time, one looked to Italy. And so Catherine’s court was populated by composers like Baldassare Galuppi, Vincenzo Manfredini, and Giuseppi Sarti (who founded the Russian Conservatory of Music in 1793).

All of this corresponds in time with the careers of Haydn and Mozart. But even in Vienna, it was the Italian Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) who dominated musical life. The enormous popularity of opera kept the Italians in the forefront. In fact, Cimarosa left St. Petersburg in 1792 to go to Vienna at the invitation of Leopold II. It was there that he wrote this Concerto for Two Flutes.