Overture to 'La vergine del sole'

Domenico Cimarosa was the most famous and popular Italian opera composer of the second half of the 18th Century. In the course of a brilliantly successful career he composed more than 65 operas as well as a significant body of instrumental music and works for the church. His operas were performed all over Europe, both in Italian and in translation. A number of Cimarosa’s operas continued to enjoy occasional stagings during the 19th Century, and his most famous work, Il matrimonio segreto, is one of only a handful of operas of the period never to have left the repertory. La vergine del sole (The Sun Virgin) is a dramma serio which Domenico Cimarosa wrote for performance at the Russian Court during his tenure in St Petersburg as Maestro di cappella. Premiered in 1788 at the Hermitage Theatre, this highly dramatic opera, to a libretto by Ferdinando Moretti, revolves around the invasion of Peru (after the Mexican conquest) by the Spanish. Because of the opera’s dramatic story line, Cimarosa made full use of the St Petersburg orchestra, scoring the overtures for pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons and horns in addition to timpani and strings. The exotic nature of the plot led the composer to write an overture much more dramatic and chromatically coloured than anything he had written before. In addition, he included loud bursts of strings and timpani, possibly to suggest the forthcoming volcanic eruption and earthquake, and his unusual use of the timpani suggests the native Peruvian sacrificial drums.