nificent patroness, who was no less
passionately fond of art than she was great as a ruler and dissolute as
a woman, because the severe climate affected his health, for he was a
typical Italian in his temperament.

He was arrested in his southward journey by the urgent persuasions of
the Emperor Leopold, who made him chapel-master, with a salary of twelve
thousand florins. The taste for the Italian school was still paramount
at the musical capital of Austria. Though such composers as Haydn,
Salieri, and young Mozart, who had commenced to be welcomed as an
unexampled prodigy, were in Vienna, the court preferred the suave and
shallow beauties of Italian music to their own serious German school,
which was commencing to send down such deep roots into the popular
heart.

Cimarosa produced "Il Matrimonio Segreto" (The Secret Marriage),
his finest opera, for his new patron. The libretto was founded on a
forgotten French operetta, which again was adapted from Garrick and
Colman's "Clandestine Marriage." The emperor could not attend the first
representation, but a brilliant audience hailed it with delight. Leopold
made amends, though, on the second night, for he stood in his box, and
said, aloud:

"Bravo, Cimarosa, bravissimo! The whole opera is admirable, delightful,
enchanting! I did not applaud, that I might not lose a single note of
this masterpiece. You have heard it twice, and I must have the same
pleasure before I go to bed. Singers and musicians pass into the next
room. Cimarosa will come, too, and preside at the banquet prepared for
you. When you have had sufficient rest, we will begin again. I
encore the whole opera, and in the mean while let us applaud it as it
deserves."

The emperor gave the signal, and, midst a thunderstorm of plaudits, the
musicians passed into their midnight feast. There is no record of any
other such compliment, except that to the Latin dramatist, Plautus,
whose "Eunuchus" was performed twice on the same day.

Yet the same Viennese public, six years before, had actually hissed
Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," which shares with Rossini's "Il Barbiere"
the greatest rank in comic opera, and has retained, to this day, its
perennial freshness and interest. Cimarosa himself did not share the
opinion of his admirers in respect to Mozart. A certain Viennese painter
attempted to flatter him, by decrying Mozart's music in comparison with
his own. The following retort shows the nobility of genius: "I, sir