CIMAROSA, DOMENICO, a celebrated composer of music, was born at Aversa, in the kingdom of Naples, in 1754, and died at Venice on the 11th of January 1801. A priest, named Porzio, taught him the elements of music; and he learned singing under Aprile, and composition under Fenaroli in the Conservatory of Loretto. In 1773 he began to compose operas for the Italian theatres, and was eminently successful, even although he had to contend at Naples with the popular Paesiello. In 1787 he was engaged by the court of St. Petersburg, where he composed several operas, a mass, and a cantata, besides about 500 detached pieces. His health suffering from the climate, he left Russia in 1792, and went to Vienna. There he composed, in 1792, his best opera, Il Matrimonio Segreto—full of beauty and originality. He returned to Naples in 1793. The style of this great artist is distinguished by facility, elegance, and simplicity. His fecundity was prodigious. His works consist of 69 operas, a mass, two requiems, one dicit, several litanies, a Te Deum, four oratorios, and three cantatas, besides the 500 detached pieces above mentioned. In his opera Il fanatico per gli antichi Romani, composed in 1775 for the Teatro dei Fiorentini at Naples, he was the first to introduce vocal trios and quartetts in the course of the action.