?
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