Il maestro di cappella
Intermezzo for baritone and orchestra
Orchestration from the surviving piano score by Martin Pearlman
1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
Il maestro di cappella (The music director), like Mozart's The Impresario, is a parody of the music business. This short comic intermezzo casts the baritone soloist as an aggressive, pompous leader of an orchestra with very little to say about the music he is rehearsing. The occasion for its composition is not known. It is thought to date from between 1786 and 1793, during most of which time Cimarosa was serving as maestro di cappella at the court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg. While he was there, the music budget was severely cut, and the resident Italian opera company was reduced to only a few singers. A solo work such as this would certainly have fit the budget, although it perhaps more likely served as a comic intermezzo between acts of a full-length opera.
Under the austere circumstances at the Russian court, it is hardly surprising that Cimarosa would leave to accept an invitation to be Kapellmeister (maestro di cappella) at the court of Leopold II in Vienna. He arrived to take up his new post in 1791, the year of Mozart's death. The following year, his most famous opera, Il matrimonio segreto, was premiered with such success that the emperor ordered it to be repeated the same evening. However, one year later, his patron Leopold died, and Cimarosa returned to his native Naples. There his politics got him into trouble. His sympathies for the short-lived republic landed him in prison, and only through the intercession of friends did he escape a death sentence. On his release, he returned to Vienna, where his health soon deteriorated and, in January of 1801, he died. With rumors circulating that he had been poisoned for political reasons, the government was forced to issue a medical report certifying that he had died of natural causes.
Late in his life and even for a time after his death -- until the advent of Rossini -- Cimarosa was the most popular of Italian opera composers. Haydn conducted many of his operas at Esterháza, and Goethe translated his impresario opera, L'Impresario in angustie. Stendhal wrote of the "rarest shades of emotion" found in the music of Cimarosa and Mozart.
Unfortunately, Il maestro di cappella survives only in a piano reduction that was copied out shortly after Cimarosa's death, although originally the soloist would doubtless have been accompanied by an orchestra, since throughout the work the soloist "conductor" sings about each instrument in the orchestra, complaining about how they play, telling them what to do, and trying initially with little success to teach them their music. Early in the twentieth-century, the surviving piano score was orchestrated and published. But, although that edition commendably made the work known to the music world, its orchestration reflects later tastes and includes some wind passages that do not fit on the instruments of Cimarosa's time. Structurally it somewhat alters the shape of the work by making cuts in some places and adding repeats in others. For that reason, I made this orchestration for Boston Baroque performances based on the surviving piano score. It presents the full work as it appears in the piano score and is orchestrated to suit the instruments of Cimarosa's time.
Performance Edition by Martin Pearlman
Below are preview photos from the edition. You can download or view a PDF of the full edition here.
If interested in purchasing the performing parts for this work, please contact Boston Baroque at info@bostonbaroque.org.
© Boston Baroque 2022
Boston Baroque Performances
Il maestro di cappella
December 31, 2021 & January 1, 2022
GBH’s Calderwood Studio, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloist:
David McFerrin, baritone
December 31, 2014 & January 1, 2015
Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloist:
Andrew Garland, baritone
December 31, 2009 & January 1, 2010
Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloist:
David Kravitz, baritone
May 11 & 13, 2000
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloist:
Michael Dean, baritone
October 11, 1991
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloist:
David Evitts, baritone