whose "Eunuchus" was performed twice on the same day.

Yet the same Viennese public, six years before, had actually hissed
Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," which shares with Rossini's "Il Barbiere"
the greatest rank in comic opera, and has retained, to this day, its
perennial freshness and interest. Cimarosa himself did not share the
opinion of his admirers in respect to Mozart. A certain Viennese painter
attempted to flatter him, by decrying Mozart's music in comparison with
his own. The following retort shows the nobility of genius: "I, sir?
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, Grétry, 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.