and Catalani added largely to her reputation in the part of _La
Frascatana_. Several of Paisiello's comic operas still keep a dramatic
place on the German stage, where excellence is not sacrificed to
novelty.


VI.

A still higher place must be assigned to another disciple and follower
of the school perfected by Piccini, Dominic Cimarosa, born in Naples
in 1754. His life down to his latter years was an uninterrupted flow of
prosperity. His mother, an humble washerwomen, could do little for her
fatherless child, but an observant priest saw the promise of the lad,
and taught him till he was old enough to enter the Conservatory of
St. Maria di Loretto. His early works showed brilliant invention and
imagination, and the young Cimarosa, before he left the Conservatory,
had made himself a good violinist and singer. He worked hard, during a
musical apprenticeship of many years, to lay a solid foundation for
the fame which his teachers prophesied for him from the onset. Like
Paisiello, he was for several years attached to the court of Catherine
II. of Russia. He had already produced a number of pleasing works,
both serious and comic, for the Italian theatres, and his faculty of
production was equaled by the richness and variety of his scores.
During a period of four years spent at the imperial court of the North,
Cimarosa produced nearly five hundred works, great and small, and
only left the service of his magnificent 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.