Zoroastro. This work was also successful, and the fame of the young composer began to spread all over Italy. In 1774, he was invited to Rome to write an opera for the stagione of that year; and there he produced another comic opera called L'italiana in Londra. In 1777 he married Constanza Suffi, who died the following year. Successful composer In the 1770s and 1780s Cimarosa wrote numerous operas for the theatres of Italy. He was best known for his comedies, but wrote serious works from time to time, including Caio Mario (1780) and Alessandro nell'Indie (1781). As well as stage works he wrote church music. He was appointed supernumerary organist of the Neapolitan royal court in November 1779, and by the early 1780s he was a visiting maestro at the Ospedaletto di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. For Rome, he composed operas for three different theatres in the late 1780s and early 1780s; these works included Il ritorno di Don Calandrino, L'italiana in Londra, Le donne rivali, Il pittore parigino and for La Scala, Milan, following the success there of a revival of L'impresario in angustie, he composed La Circe, a dramma per musica in three acts, with a story loosely based on the Odyssey. At some point in the 1780s Cimarosa married for the second time; his wife, Gaetana, née Pallante, was Constanza's step-sister; she and Cimarosa had two sons. She died in 1796. In 1787, Cimarosa went to St Petersburg at the invitation of Empress Catherine II. He was one of a succession of Italian composers engaged by the Russian court over the years; others were Vincenzo Manfredini (from 1762 to 1769), Baldassare Galuppi (1765–1768), Tommaso Traetta (1768–1775), Giovanni Paisiello (1776–1784), and Giuseppe Sarti (1785–1801). He composed a serious opera, Cleopatra, and revised two of his existing comic pieces Le donne rivali and I due baroni di Rocca Azzurra. Other compositions for Catherine's court included a Requiem, in G minor (1787). Cimarosa was less successful in St Petersburg than some of his compatriots; the works of his subordinate, Martin y Soler, gained more favour with the empress, and this, combined with economies that meant losing most of the Italian singers, and Cimarosa's dislike of the severe Russian winters, led him to leave Russia in June 1791. After spending three months in Warsaw, Cimarosa arrived in Vienna. His music was already popular there, and the emperor, Leopold II,