Secret Marriage

On February 7, 1792 an event unique to the opera world occurred at the premiere of Domenico Cimarosa’s The Secret Marriage. The performance was such a success that Emperor Leopold II ordered an encore of the entire piece after a short dinner break. Composed just two months after Mozart’s death and a few days shy of Rossini’s birth, Cimarosa’s most famous stage work occupies a significant place in the development of the operatic genre. Employing the wit and musical conventions mastered by Mozart, and looking ahead to the buffo style of Rossini, The Secret Marriage is a charming stage work based on a mid-18^th century play by David Garrick and George Colman the Elder, inspired by a Hogarth painting entitled Marriage a la Mode. The English playwrights and Bertati, Cimarosa’s Italian translator and librettist, stripped bare the convention of marriage arranged between cash-poor, titled noblemen and wealthy non-aristocrats, contrasting it with a picture of true love. The two protagonists, Carolina and Paolino, secretly married without consent of her wealthy social-climbing father, Geronimo, navigate a minefield of absurd situations involving a stuffy, love-smitten Count, Carolina’s vain, petty sister Elisetta and Fidalma, Geronimo’s rich, widowed sister. The opera’s centerpiece is its first act finale, which, like Mozart and Rossini ensembles, develops organized chaos over a range of emotions and bewildering situations.