Was Jane Austen's aunt a sex worker?: Jane Austen at Home, part 1

Lucy Worsley, Jane Austen at Home: A Biography, 250th Birthday Edition. Hodder & Stoughton, 2024. Image source: Jane Austen Centre, Bath

In December 1786 Jane Austen's widowed Aunt Philadelphia—sister of Jane's father George—together with Aunt Phila's 25-year-old daughter Eliza, and Eliza's 5-month-old son Hastings, came to stay at Steventon Rectory for Christmas.

Aunt Phila had seen much in her 56 years. Early in her life she, George, and their younger sister Leonora had lost their mother Rebecca shortly after Leonora's birth. Phila, the eldest child, was only 3. When their father William died just seven years later, the children were no longer welcome in their home in Tonbridge. They were sent by their stepmother to stay with their bachelor uncle Stephen Austen, a bookseller and printer in St. Paul's Churchyard in the City of London. It was not a happy arrangement for anyone, apparently. George later wrote of Uncle Stephen's "neglect" and his "determination to thwart the natural tastes of the young people." [1]

Let us guess that the natural tastes of the young people inclined towards play, and that Uncle Stephen had a business to run that involved men working with heavy trays of type, using inks that could ruin clothes, and operating presses that could crush little fingers. In any case George was soon sent back to Tonbridge School, and over the next decade he progressed so far in his studies as to matriculate at Oxford.

Meanwhile, after George's departure 11-year-old Phila and 9-year-old Leonora were left behind with Uncle Stephen; no further schooling was planned for them. Instead, they were put to work. In 1745, at 15, Phila was apprenticed to a milliner in Covent Garden, Mrs. Hester Cole. 

In Jane Austen at Home Lucy Worsley quotes Charles Horne's  Serious Thoughts on the Miseries of Seduction and Prostitution (1783): "milliners. . .mantua-makers. . .haberdashers. . .they are actually seminaries of prostitution." [2]

William Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress, Plate 1, fourth state of four, April 1732. Young seamstress Moll Hackabout is solicited to join Mother Needham's establishment. Image source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There were, of course, milliners who did not engage in sex work on the side. And as Worsley points out, it is possible that Hester Cole's shop was perfectly respectable, although Covent Garden was a district notorious for prostitution. However, Worsley has uncovered a very suggestive circumstance. In 1748 John Cleland published the pornographic novel Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. In that novel the 15-year-old heroine comes to London and is offered a position by a milliner in her Covent Garden shop:

Here, at the first sight of things, I found every thing breathe an air of decency, modesty and order.

In the outer parlour, or rather shop, sat three young women, rather demurely employed on millinery work, which was the cover of a traffic in more precious commodities; but three beautifuller creatures could hardly be seen.

After hours the shop turns into a brothel, and the milliner into a madam. The milliner's name? Mrs. Cole:

. . .As soon then as the evening began, and the shew of a shop was shut, the academy opened; the mask of mock-modesty was completely taken off, and all the girls delivered over to their respective calls of pleasure or interest with their men: and none of that sex was promiscuously admitted, but only such as Mrs. Cole was previously satisfied with their character and discretion. In short, this was the safest, politest, and, at the same time, the most thorough house of accommodation in town: every thing being conducted so, that decency made no intrenchment upon the most libertine pleasures; in the practice of which, too, the choice familiars of the house had found the secret so rare and difficult, of reconciling even all the refinements of taste and delicacy, with the most gross and determinate gratifications of sensuality. [3]

Another remarkable coincidence, if it is a coincidence: the main character of the novel is F. Hill. Two Covent Garden millinery shops, two Mrs. Coles, two Phils: was Cleland describing in his novel a real establishment that he had known and frequented?

William Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress, Plate 3, third state of three, April 1732. Moll Hackabout is visited by justice of the peace Sir John Gonson and several bailiffs investigating houses of ill repute. The empty punch bowl, the envelope (probably containing banknotes) in the punch bowl stand's open drawer, the discarded and broken clay pipes on the floor, Moll's crumpled stockings draped over the stretchers of the table next to the bed, and the gold watch she holds (probably picked from the pocket of her client) are all circumstantial evidence of the previous night's assignation. Image source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In January 1752, having turned 21 and her apprenticeship with Mrs. Cole at an end, Phila was shipped out to India by her rich Uncle Francis, William Austen's brother. The object, as everyone understood of a single woman travelling to India, was to find a husband. This may be another piece of evidence about the true nature of Mrs. Cole's establishment: in India, British women and men with wayward lives could wipe clean the slate of the past and reinvent themselves. And since there were so few British women in India, the British men there were less particular about whether their bride possessed a dowry or an irreproachable sexual history.

Two hundred days after her departure from London, after a voyage of 11,000 nautical miles down the coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean, Phila disembarked from the East Indiaman Bombay Castle in Madras (now Chennai) on India's southeast coast. There, probably by design, 22-year-old Phila met the 28-year-old Tysoe Saul Hancock, one of her Uncle Francis' legal clients. [4]

Hancock was a surgeon in the employ of the East India Company, and a bachelor seeking a wife. Six months after their first acquaintance, in February 1753, Hancock married Phila. Since Phila seems to have been sent to India expressly to wed Hancock, we might wonder that it took so long. Perhaps Phila was hoping for a better catch, or perhaps Hancock was exercising prudence and ensuring that Phila wasn't already pregnant when she arrived in India.

Miniature on ivory of Mrs Philadelphia Hancock, by John Smart, ca. 1765–68. Image source: Jane Austen House CHWJA:JAH23

It was evidently not a love-match, certainly not on her side. In 1792, then 16-year-old Jane Austen wrote "Catharine," a story in which a major character, Cecilia Wynne, seems to be based on Aunt Phila:

The eldest daughter had been obliged to accept the offer of one of her cousins to equip her for the East Indies, and tho' infinitely against her inclinations had been necessitated to embrace the only possibility that was offered to her, of a maintenance; yet it was one, so opposite to all her ideas of propriety, so contrary to her wishes, so repugnant to her feelings, that she would almost have preferred servitude to it, had choice been allowed her—. Her personal attractions had gained her a husband as soon as she had arrived at Bengal, and she had now been married nearly a twelvemonth. Splendidly, yet unhappily married. United to a man of double her own age, whose disposition was not amiable, and whose manners were unpleasing, though his character was respectable. [5]

Phila had been sent in quest of a husband to Madras, not Bengal, but in 1759 she and her husband relocated to Calcutta (now Kolkata). There they met Warren Hastings, whose story was as remarkable in its way as Philadelphia's.

Hastings was born in England, and his mother died soon after his birth. Before nine months had passed his father had remarried, abandoned the children and moved to Barbados with his new wife. Hastings was raised by his grandfather Penyston and his uncle Howard Hastings, who sent him to Westminster School in London, where he excelled. He left school prematurely on his uncle's death, and his new guardian arranged for him to join the East India Company as a clerk. When he turned 18 he sailed for Calcutta, arriving there in August 1750. Through sheer ability and drive he rose quickly through the company ranks, and by 1760 he was the right-hand man of the British Governor of Bengal, Henry Vansittart, who had just replaced Robert Clive in that office.

By this time Hastings had also amassed a personal fortune through side-trading. While this would seem to be a blatant conflict of interest, making money by trading on inside information and connections was a common practice among employees of the East India Company, and was likely an expected benefit. [6]

Warren Hastings, by Joshua Reynolds, 1766–67. Image source: National Portrait Gallery London NPG 4445

Hastings befriended Hancock and offered him an opportunity to join him in some of his lucrative dealings. Hastings, who had been widowed within the past year, had also noticed that Hancock had an attractive younger wife, perhaps one reason he brought Hancock in on some of his trades. And perhaps all the money Hancock was suddenly making enabled him to look the other way when Hastings and Phila began an ill-concealed affair. It would not be the first time a complaisant husband tolerated or even encouraged a sexual relationship between his wife and another man in order to reap social and financial benefits for himself.

In the spring of 1761 Phila became pregnant, and in December she gave birth to a daughter. Although it cannot be known for certain, there are many indications that Hastings was the girl's father, not Hancock:

• It was Phila's first pregnancy after eight years of marriage, an unusual circumstance which may suggest a lack of sex between husband and wife, or that Hancock was infertile.
• The girl was named, not after anyone in Hancock's or Phila's families, but after Hastings' infant daughter, who had died within a month of her birth, and who was herself named after Hastings' Aunt Elizabeth, his guardian uncle Howard's wife. 
• Hastings stood as Elizabeth's godfather at her christening. While this was something good friends commonly did for one another's children, it's also true that "natural" fathers, particularly when they had superior social or economic status, would often stand as godfathers for their offspring as a cover for providing support.
  
• In 1772 Hastings created a trust to ensure that Eliza (who was then called "Betsy" or "Bessy") would have financial independence and, should she choose to marry, good prospects. He endowed the girl with £5,000, and then on the death of Hancock three years later, doubled it. The combined sum was enough to give her the very substantial income of £500 a year. Jane Austen's father George was one of the two trustees. To put this income in perspective, when George Austen became rector of Deane in 1773 with a growing family, he received £110 a year. To settle such an enormous sum as £10,000 on a teenaged girl seems like an extravagant gesture to make for a friend's daughter.
• Finally, there is the testimony of Lord Clive. In a 1765 letter to his wife he urged her, "In no circumstances whatever keep company with Mrs Hancock, for it is beyond a doubt that she abandoned herself to Mr Hastings." [7]

Tysoe Saul Hancock and his wife Philadelphia (née Austen) with their daughter Elizabeth and their Indian servant Clarinda, by Joshua Reynolds, 1765–66. Collection: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

At the end of 1764 both Hastings and Hancock resigned their posts with the East India Company, and in January 1765 set sail together for England, along with Phila, Betsy, and Clarinda, the name by which the Hancocks referred to their Indian maidservant. Hastings' son George had been sent on ahead to England as a 4-year-old in 1761 to be raised and educated. 

Hastings expected to reunite with his son, who, he believed, was living with George and Cassandra Austen. Cassandra was the youngest daughter of the Leigh family and had been born in Adlestrop, a town in the Cotswolds on the border of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. The Hastings family lived just a mile away in neighboring Daylesford. When Cassandra became Mrs. George Austen in 1764, she and her new husband had taken in the young George Hastings as a foster child. (Between 1761 and 1764 George had probably been staying with Hastings' sister, who was the wife of John Woodman, the other trustee of Betsy's fortune.) Unfortunately in the fall of 1764 George Hastings had died of "putrid throat," probably diphtheria, and word from the Austens had not reached India before Hastings' departure. [8]

Arriving in London in June, six months after embarking in Calcutta, Hastings and the Hancocks rented homes not far from one another. It's not clear whether the affair continued, but later developments suggest that it did. By 1768 Hancock found that the wealth that had seemed inexhaustible in India did not go nearly so far in London. He decided to return to India to try to restore his fortune, leaving Phila and Betsy behind.

A year later Hastings followed, embarking for Madras in March 1769. He fell ill on board and was nursed back to health by the 22-year-old Maria von Imhoff. She was travelling to India with her husband, Baron Carl von Imhoff, and their oldest boy (a younger son stayed in England). The Baron was joining the East India Company army in Madras as a cadet officer; he was also a painter of miniatures.

Mrs. Imhoff and Child, by by William Dickinson, published by Carington Bowles, after Robert Edge Pine, 1770. Image source: National Portrait Gallery London NPG D36438

Over the long months at sea, the intimacy of the sickroom apparently led to other sorts of intimacy, and Hastings and Maria von Imhoff began an affair which continued at Madras. In late 1770 the Baron resigned his commission in the army and moved to Calcutta, where he set up as a portrait painter. Maria remained in Madras, living in Hastings' house. After a year she joined her husband; four months later in February 1772 Hastings also relocated to Calcutta on his appointment as Governor of Bengal. In March, the Baron received an order from the East India Company to leave British India in consequence of not fulfilling his contracted military service; when the Baron returned to Europe, Maria stayed behind with Hastings.

Hancock wrote to Phila in 1772 that the pretty and vivacious Baroness von Imhoff was Hastings' "favourite among the ladies." [9] No sooner had Phila received this news than she announced to her husband her plan to return to India with Betsy. He responded at length, forbidding her to come. She was obviously concerned that both she and their daughter would be replaced in Hastings' affections by the Baroness and her sons. It was at this time that Hastings set up the trust for Betsy as reassurance that she would not be abandoned.

Warren Hastings, his wife Marian, and an Indian servant at Alipore, 1784, by Johann Zoffany. Image source: Pinterest

Hastings vastly increased his wealth and consequence by his return to India. In 1773 the three governorships of British India (Bengal, Madras, and Bombay) were united under Hastings as governor-general, making him the de facto ruler of all British India—a position he held and profited from for the next 11 years. [10]

Hancock was not so fortunate. His position required him to make hazardous journeys across India. Isolated from the lucrative trading centers for months at a time, and with the country in the grip of a famine, Hancock struggled financially. He wrote to Phila, "All my expectations are vanished like a dream & have left me astonished." [11] On 5 November 1775 he died of disease in Calcutta; 45-year-old Phila and 13-year-old Betsy would have to make their way in the world on their own, assisted by Hastings' remarkable generosity.

Next time: Eliza Hancock de Feuillide, Jane's "outlandish cousin"

---

1. Quoted in Lucy Worsley, Jane Austen at Home: A Biography, St. Martin's Press, 2017, p. 11.
2. Quoted in Worsley, Jane Austen at Home, p. 56.
3. John Cleland, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Penguin, 1985, pp. 131–132.
4. Worsley states that he was "six years older" than Phila (p. 56) at their meeting, which would make him 28, but in Jane Austen: A Life (Knopf, 1997), Claire Tomalin says that he was 42 (p. 17). Most other sources I've found give Hancock's birthdate as 1723, making him six and a half years older than Phila; Tomalin may have been basing her estimate of Hancock's age on Jane Austen's story "Catharine" (see note 5), where Cecilia Wynne's husband is described as "double her own age."
5. Jane Austen, "Catharine," in R.W. Chapman, editor, The Works of Jane Austen, Volume VI: The Minor Works, revised edition, Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 194, 203–205.
6. Hastings would later be impeached in the House of Commons for corruption during his time as Governor-General from 1773 to 1784; he was acquitted in the House of Lords.
7. Quoted in Worsley, Jane Austen at Home, p. 57.
8. James Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen by her Nephew, 2nd edition, 1871, Folio Society reprint, 1989, p. 6. Austen-Leigh states that the George Hastings was sent to stay with George Austen in 1761, three years before his marriage. It seems unlikely that as a bachelor Proctor at Oxford University, as he was then, George Austen would have been able to take on the foster care of a young boy. More likely is the scenario in Tomalin's book: that 7-year-old George Hastings was sent to the Austens shortly after their marriage in 1764 after they had relocated to Deane. He must have been cared for elsewhere from 1761 to 1764.
9. Quoted in Tomalin, Jane Austen, p. 21.
10. Hastings would go on to marry Maria, whom he called Marian, in 1777 after she was divorced by her husband. Their marriage lasted 41 years, until his death at 85 in 1818. Marian lived to be 90, dying in 1837.
11. Quoted in Worsley, Jane Austen at Home, p.58.

Mozart in Italy, part 5: "There is little hope"

Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera. Picador, 2023. 262 pages. Image source: The Hanbury Agency

A continuation of the series on Mozart's Italian journeys; for the previous post please see Mozart in Italy, part 4: "Such useless people".

The successor: Hieronymus Colloredo

On 14 March 1772 Count Hieronymus Colloredo was elected Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg as the successor of Siegmund von Schrattenbach, who had died suddenly in December 1771 just as Leopold and Wolfgang returned from the triumph of Ascanio in Alba in Milan.

Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, artist unknown, 18th century. Image source: Salzburg Museum

Colloredo was well-connected to the Viennese court—his father was Vice-Chancellor of Austria—and he was aligned with the reformist ideas of Joseph II, Maria Theresa's first-born son who had been Holy Roman Emperor since 1765. Joseph II would go on to become Habsburg Emperor on his mother's death in 1780, and play a large role in Mozart's musical life in Vienna in the following decade. It was during the rule of Joseph II that Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Rescue from the Harem, 1783), Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (All women do the same, 1790) were first performed.

Emperor Joseph II (right) with Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, by Pompeo Batoni, 1769. Image source: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

One of Colloredo's first actions after his election was to dismiss his Kapellmeister Giuseppe Francesco Lolli, who was 70 years old. Leopold Mozart was Vice-Kapellmeister and was nearly twenty years younger than Lolli; however, if he had expected to be appointed in his turn as Kapellmeister those hopes were immediately dashed. Instead of promoting Leopold, Colloredo chose Domenico Fischetti, a composer from Naples who had also worked in Vienna and Dresden.

Colloredo didn't entirely overlook the Mozarts, though: in July he appointed Wolfgang to the paid position of Konzertmeister (that is, violinist and occasional composer). Mozart had already been named Konzertmeister by Colloredo's predecessor von Schrattenbach, but in a purely honorary (that is, unpaid) capacity. Under Colloredo the 16-year-old Wolfgang would now be paid 150 gulden a year, about a third of what his father earned as Vice-Kapellmeister.

Despite his son finally receiving pay for his work, being passed over for promotion was a blow to Leopold and indicated that he was unlikely ever to advance in the Prince-Archbishop's service. His 19 months of absences out of the 24 months between the beginning of the Mozarts' first Italian journey in December 1769 and von Schrattenbach's death cannot have helped his cause.

And Colloredo was aware that another absence was imminent. After the success of Mitridate, re di Ponto during the first Italian journey, Wolfgang had received a contract from Maria Theresa's representative in Milan, Count Firmian, to compose the first opera in the 1773 Milan Carnival season. That opera would open on 26 December 1772; as with Mitridate, the recitatives were due in October and Wolfgang would need to be in Milan by November so that he could meet the singers and compose the arias to suit them.

Final journey to Milan and Lucio Silla, 24 October 1772–13 March 1773

Wolfgang and his father departed for Milan on 24 October, arriving twelve days later on 4 November after some winter weather delays and a few brief stopovers with friends along the way.

Their Milan lodgings were comfortable, but that was the only bright spot—things seemed to go wrong from the start. First, Wolfgang had to revise his recitatives: Giovanni De Gammera's libretto had been sent to the court poet Pietro Metastasio in Vienna for review and had been returned with revisions and the addition of a full scene. The opera was Lucio Silla which, like Mitridate, was based on a historical figure—in this case the Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Title page of Lucio Silla, Milan, 1772–73. Image source: Internet Archive

Wolfgang had plenty of time to alter the recitatives, however, because only in late in November did the first of the principal singers arrive, primo uomo Venanzio Rauzzini. Rauzzini was cast as Cecilio, an exiled Roman senator who is loved by Giunia, the daughter of Lucio Silla's murdered political rival, and who loves Giunia in return. However, Lucio Silla wants Giunia for himself, and has placed the lovers under threat of imprisonment and death: Cecilio if he returns against Lucio Silla's orders, and Giunia if she resists his advances.

On 28 November, only four weeks before opening night, Leopold wrote to Maria Anna, "Up to the present very little has been done. Wolfgang has only composed the first aria for the primo uomo, but it is superlatively beautiful and he sings it like an angel." [1] That aria was "Il tenero momento," in which Cecilio, having secretly returned to Rome, anticipates "the tender moment" when he will be reunited with Giunia.

"Il tenero momento," sung by countertenor Valer Sabadus accompanied by Recreation – Großes Orchester Graz conducted by Michael Hofstetter:

https://youtu.be/m6vBPNA5kAA

The prima donna who was to play Giunia, Anna De Amicis, did not arrive from Venice until 4 December. Wolfgang had seen her perform in the title roles of two operas during his first trip to Italy: in Niccolò Jommelli's Armida Abbandonata in Naples in May 1770, and in Giovanni Battista Borghi's Siroe in Venice in February 1771.

On the same day of the good news of her arrival, though, came some extraordinarily bad news about the singer who was to play the title role. On 5 December Leopold wrote to Maria Anna,

Unfortunately poor Cordoni, the tenor, is so ill that he cannot come. So the Secretary to the Theatre has been sent off by special post-chaise to Turin and a courier has been despatched to Bologna to find some other good tenor, who, as he has to play the part of Lucio Silla, must not only sing well, but be a first-rate actor and have a handsome presence. As the prima donna only arrived yesterday and as it is not yet known who the tenor will be, you will realise that the major and most important portion of the opera has not yet been composed; but now great strides will be made. [2]

In the meantime Wolfgang focussed on the arias for De Amicis. On 12 December Leopold wrote to Maria Anna that De Amicis "is very well satisfied with the three arias which she has had so far. Wolfgang has introduced into her principal aria passages which are unusual, quite unique and extremely difficult and which she sings amazingly well. We are very friendly and intimate with her." [3]

Giunia's principal aria from Act II, "Ah se il crudel periglio del caro bel rammento" (Ah, when I think of the cruel peril of my beloved), performed by Sandrine Piau accompanied by Freiburger Barockorchester conducted by Gottfried von der Goltz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AJxNKKVz6o

Leopold wrote to Maria Anna,

De Amicis is our best friend. She sings and acts like an angel and is extremely pleased because Wolfgang has served her extraordinarily well. Both you and the whole of Salzburg would be amazed if you could hear her. [4]

But finding an appropriate tenor was proving difficult. On 18 December, with only four rehearsals to go before opening night, Leopold wrote, "The tenor arrived only yesterday evening and Wolfgang composed to-day two arias for him and has still two more to do. . .I am writing to you at eleven o’clock at night and Wolfgang has just finished the second aria for the tenor." [5]

The cast of Lucio Silla, Milan, 1772–73. Image source: Internet Archive

The tenor was Bassano Morgnoni, a church singer from the town of Lodi who had very little stage experience—clearly a choice made out of desperation. Given the limitations of the singer and the lack of time before opening night, the wise decision was made to cut two of his four arias, and the two that remained were kept short (about two minutes each). Rauzzini and De Amicis would determine the opera's success or failure.

Fortunately Wolfgang gave them some striking music. A key example is the Act I reunion duet of Giunia and Cecilio, "D'Eliso in sen m'attendi ombra dell'idol mio" (The soul of my beloved awaits me in Paradise). Here it is sung by soprano Simone Nold (Giunia) and mezzo-soprano Kristina Hammarström (Cecilio), accompanied by the Danish Radio Sinfonietta conducted by Adam Fischer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WAUDrWNv1A

Miraculously, everything was somehow gotten ready in time. Just before heading to the theatre for the opening night performance, Leopold was optimistic: "The dress rehearsal the day before yesterday went off so well as to give us reason to hope for the greatest success. The music alone, without the ballets, lasts for four hours." [6] As was the standard practice, Wolfgang would lead the first three performances from the harpsichord, except for the ballets which followed each of the three acts, which were written by other composers.

Credits for the ballets following each of the three acts of Lucio Silla, Milan, 1772–73. Image source: Internet Archive

"Several distressing events": First-night disaster

It would be a long night, and it started inauspiciously. "On the first evening several distressing events took place," wrote Leopold afterwards.

Picture to yourself the whole theatre which by half past five was so full that not another soul could get in. On the first evening the singers are always very nervous at having to perform before such a distinguished audience. But for three hours singers, orchestra and audience (many of the latter standing) had to wait impatiently in the overheated atmosphere until the opera should begin.

The delay was due to the late arrival of the Archduke and Archduchess, so that "the performance, which was due to begin one hour after the Angelus, started three hours late, that is — about eight o’clock by German time. Thus it did not finish until two o’clock in the morning."

Francesco Galliari, scene from Act I of Lucio Silla, Milan, 1772–73. Image source: Meisterdrucke.com

Once the opera was able to begin, Morgnoni, the tenor playing Lucio Silla, showed his inexperience by overacting, disconcerting De Amicis:

At the point where in her first aria the prima donna expected from him an angry gesture, he exaggerated his anger so much that he looked as if he was about to box her ears and strike her on the nose with his fist. This made the audience laugh. Signora De Amicis, carried along by her own enthusiasm, did not realise why they were laughing, and, being thus taken aback, did not sing well for the rest of the evening. [7]

Leopold also alleged that Rauzzini had schemed to have the royal couple applaud his first entrance by telling them that he needed encouragement to perform well; and if the royal couple were applauding, of course everyone else had to applaud as well. De Amicis did not receive similar royal applause at her entrance. The Archduke and Archduchess later learned that they had upset the prima donna, and soothed her hurt feelings by inviting her to a private audience and, in future performances, by applauding her arias so enthusiastically that they had to be repeated. 

"An extraordinary success" and an extended run

Evidently ruffled feathers were smoothed, because on 9 January, after the opera had been performed for two weeks and with Wolfgang no longer in the pit, Leopold wrote Maria Anna,

Thank God, the opera is an extraordinary success, and every day the theatre is surprisingly full, although people do not usually flock in large numbers to the first opera unless it is an outstanding success. Every evening arias are repeated and since the first night the opera has gained daily in popularity and has won increasing applause. [8]

Eventually the opera was performed a total of 26 times, with several extra performances added at the end of January (meaning that the second opera, Giovanni Paisiello's Il Sismano nel Mogol, had its run shortened).

"A jewel of a piece": The sacred motet

Lucio Silla went so well that during its run Wolfgang was asked to compose a sacred motet for Rauzzini's spectacular voice. On 17 January, just ten days before Wolfgang's 17th birthday, they performed the work at the Sant' Antonio Abate church in Milan.

Church of Sant'Antonio Abate, Milan. Image source: Cronache Turistiche

Stanley Sadie writes of the motet, "This is a jewel of a piece. . .its music speaks unmistakably of his relaxed high spirits at the time he wrote it and of the elation and confidence that his opera-house success had brought him." [9] The church where it was first performed is as jewel-like and elaborate as Wolfgang's music.

The motet is now one of his most famous and often-performed works. The opening of "Exsultate, jubilate" performed by Amanda Forsythe accompanied by Boston Baroque conducted by Martin Pearlman:

https://youtu.be/2gjcwchj4Cw [opening movement ends at 4:43]

"We still live in hopes": An offer to Florence

On 9 January Leopold wrote to Maria Anna, "Up to the present there is no thought of our leaving here. We may do so at about the end of this month, for we want to hear the music of the second opera." However, in a postscript written in the family's secret substitution cipher, he revealed the real reason for their remaining in Milan: "I hear from Florence that the Grand Duke has received my letter, is giving it sympathetic consideration and will let me know the result. We still live in hopes." [10] (Leopold seems to have used the cipher mainly so that Maria Anna could show the letters to others to explain his and Wolfgang's delay in returning to Salzburg without revealing that they were seeking appointments elsewhere.)

In early January Leopold may have been thinking that the evident success of Wolfgang's opera could result in an appointment at the Archduke Ferdinand Karl's court in Milan. However, the Empress Maria Theresa had quashed that idea the previous year, and the 18-year-old Archduke would not go against his mother's advice. So Leopold now turned to the Archduke's older brother, Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Peter Leopold was a passionate Italian opera fan and the patron of Giovanni Manzuoli, the primo uomo of Wolfgang's Ascanio in Alba.

Archduke Leopold of Austria, Grand Duke of Tuscany, by Anton Raphael Mengs, 1770. Image source: Museo del Prado P002198

On 16 January in another encoded postscript to Maria Anna Leopold baldly stated his desire to leave the Prince-Archbishop's service in Salzburg and find an appointment at another court:

There is little hope of what I wrote to you. God will help us. But do save money and keep cheerful, for we must have means, if we want to undertake a[nother] journey. I regret every farthing which we spend in Salzburg. Up to the present no reply has come from the Grand Duke, but we know from the Count [Firmian]’s letter to [his secretary Herr Leopold] Troger that there is very little likelihood of our getting work in Florence. Yet I still trust that at least he will recommend us. [11]

A week later, Leopold wrote a long letter complaining that he had been kept bedridden from rheumatism, but in cipher reported that he had sent the score of Lucio Silla to the Grand Duke in Florence and was awaiting word. On 30 January he wrote in code,

I have received no further reply from the Grand Duke in Florence. What I wrote about my illness is all quite untrue. I was in bed for a few days, but now I am well and am off to the opera this evening. You must, however, spread the news everywhere that I am ill. You should cut off this scrap of paper so that it may not fall into the hands of others. [12]

But no word came, and the Mozarts continued to wait.

"There is nothing to be done"

For public consumption Leopold continued to pretend that his rheumatism prevented him from travelling, and asked Maria Anna to report his indisposition to the Prince-Archbishop's court to allay anger over their continued absence. As the weeks passed Leopold added concerns about icy roads and avalanches in the Tyrol keeping them in Milan. Finally, however, it became clear that no appointment would be offered by the Grand Duke. On 27 February Leopold wrote to Maria Anna, "As for the affair you know of there is nothing to be done. I shall tell you all when we meet. God has probably some other plan for us. You cannot think into what confusion our departure has thrown me. Indeed I find it hard to leave Italy." [13]

They left Milan a few days later in early March, arriving back in Salzburg on the 13th—just in time to be present for the celebrations commemorating the one-year anniversary of Prince-Archbishop Colloredo's election. Neither Leopold nor Wolfgang would ever return to Italy.

Coda: Jane Glover's Mozart in Italy

This post series was inspired by my reading of Jane Glover's Mozart in Italy. Her book is a highly readable and enjoyable account of Wolfgang and Leopold's travels, and travails, in Italy. Perhaps inevitably there are a number of small errors: as examples, twice (p. 167 and 176) she mistakenly specifies dates in October when she must mean November. And she apparently mistranscribes the title of Giovanni Paisiello's 1773 Carnival opera as Il Sosmano del Mogol; Grove Music Online has [Il] Sismano nel Mogol, a title confirmed by a libretto in the Albert Schatz Collection of the Library of Congress. (A misstep that Glover probably had nothing to do with: the smiling face on the cover is not Wolfgang's, but has been Photoshopped onto a portrait of him at age 13. Why not simply use the affecting image of the actual Mozart?)

More concerning is Glover's tendency to simplify the stories she's telling. For example, from the music Wolfgang wrote for the prima uomo Giovanni Manzuoli and the prima donna Antonia Girelli of Ascanio in Alba she concludes that Manzuoli possessed "vocal gifts no longer at their peak" while Girelli was "the finest singer in Wolfgang's cast." However, reports by Charles Burney indicate that Manzuoli was famous for cantabile (flowing, lyrical singing) rather than fioritura (rapid, agile singing), so it's not surprising that Wolfgang would de-emphasize showy fioritura in his music. And Burney attended a concert by Girelli in London just a few months after her appearance in Ascanio and wrote that "her voice was in decay, and her intonation frequently false." So it doesn't seem possible to come to firm conclusions about the singers' vocal condition solely from the notes on the page.

This tendency to tell a simple (and shorter) story over a more complex one is especially pronounced at the end of the book. There she writes of the sublime music of Mozart's mature Italian operas Idomeneo (1781), Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte that "The roots of all of these were in his Italian experience. . .After the manner of Caesar, he came to Italy, he saw (and heard) it, and he conquered it" (p. 235). But all of these Italian-language operas (oddly, La clemenza di Tito is omitted) were composed years after his final departure from Italy as a 17-year-old. To claim that he "conquered" Italy both ignores the failure to gain a court appointment, and the influence of composers he encountered later in Vienna such as Christoph Willibald Gluck, Vicente Martin y Soler, Antonio Salieri, and Giuseppe Sarti. As I've shown elsewhere on this blog, Salieri's La scuola de' gelosi (The School of Jealousy) influenced Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, and there are echoes of his La grotta di Trofonio (The Cave of Trofonio) in Don Giovanni and Così.

Incidentally, the composer whose opera was delayed by the success of Wolfgang's Lucio Silla in Milan, Giovanni Paisiello, went on to become the most popular opera composer by far in Vienna during Mozart's time there. Between 1783 and 1792, there were 251 performances of Paisiello's operas; Mozart ranks seventh with 63. [14]

Giovanni Paisiello, by Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1791. Image source: Château de Versailles

Mozart in Italy is definitely recommendable, but I found myself turning to Stanley Sadie's Mozart: The Early Years, 1756–1781 (2006) for greater detail, and to Emily Anderson's Letters of Mozart and His Family (1938) to read more of Leopold's and Wolfgang's own words about their experiences. (Unfortunately, Maria Anna's and Nannerl's side of the correspondence has not survived.) But Glover knows how to tell a good story, and Mozart in Italy—in which we see a teenaged musical genius trying to make his way in an adult world of politics, money, favoritism, and social and artistic hierarchies—is packed full of them.

Posts in this series:

• Mozart in Italy, part 1: "We shall not become rich"
• Mozart in Italy, part 2: "We have won the first battle"
• Mozart in Italy, part 3: "The most dangerous place in all Italy"
• Mozart in Italy, part 4: "Such useless people"
• Mozart in Italy, part 5: "There is little hope"

---

1. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 163, 28 November 1772, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, London: Macmillan, 1938, p. 318.
2. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 164, 5 December 1772, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 319.
3. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 165, 12 December 1772, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 320.
4. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 167, 26 December 1772, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 324.
5. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 166, 18 December 1772, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 322.
6. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 167, 26 December 1772, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 324.
7. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 168, 2 January 1773, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, pp. 325–326.
8. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 169, 9 January 1773, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 327.
9. Stanley Sadie, Mozart: The Early Years, 1756–1781, W.W. Norton, 2006, p. 292.
10. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 169, 9 January 1773, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, pp. 327–328. Leopold seems to have used the cipher mainly so that Maria Anna could show the letters to others to explain his and Wolfgang's delay in returning without revealing that they were seeking an appointment elsewhere.
    
11. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 170, 16 January 1773, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 329.
12. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 172, 30 January 1773, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 333. Obviously Maria Anna did not follow his instructions.
    
13. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 176, 27 February 1773, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 337.
14. John Platoff, "Mozart and his rivals: Opera in Vienna," Current Musicology, Vol. 51 (1993), pp. 105–111. Paisiello's Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, 1782—three and a half decades before Rossini's version) received almost as many performances as all of Mozart's operas put together.

Mozart in Italy, part 4: "Such useless people"

Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera. Picador, 2023. 262 pages. Image source: The Hanbury Agency

A continuation of the series on Mozart's Italian journeys; for the previous post please see "Mozart in Italy, part 3: The most dangerous place in all Italy."

Wolfgang and his father would not remain with Maria Anna and Nannerl in Salzburg for long. Arriving home in time for Easter at the end of March 1771, they were due back in Milan by the end of August so that the 15-year-old Wolfgang could compose the serenata for the wedding celebrations of the 17-year-old Archduke Ferdinand Karl of Milan, the fourth born and third surviving son of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa, and the 21-year-old Princess Maria Beatrice d'Este of Modena.

Of course, both Leopold and Wolfgang held positions in the musical establishment of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Siegmund von Schrattenbach, and had been absent for 15 months during their first journey to Italy.

Siegmund III Christoph Graf von Schrattenbach, by Franz Xaver König, ca. 1760s. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Von Schrattenbach lost no time in putting Wolfgang to work, even though his position was unpaid. During the spring and summer he was kept busy composing several sacred works and also a serenata for Salzburg. The celebratory occasion for the Salzburg serenata, a setting of Metastasio's libretto Il sogno di Scipione (The dream of Scipio), was probably the anniversary of von Schrattenbach's consecration on 21 December. Since the Mozarts would not return from Milan until December, Wolfgang needed to compose Il sogno in advance to ensure that it would be ready in time. He also composed the oratorio commissioned by Marchese Ximenes in Padua, La Betulia liberata (Bethulia liberated, the Apocryphal story of Judith and Holofernes).

However, he could not begin work on the wedding serenata for Milan because during the summer the libretto was still being written by the court poet Giuseppe Parini. Even after the libretto was completed it would first be sent to Vienna to receive imperial approval. Wolfgang would have to be in Milan as soon as the approved libretto was available so that he could compose the music to suit the singers, rehearse the work, and have it ready for performance by mid-October. He and Leopold once more received leave from the Archbishop, although somewhat begrudgingly: even though they would be gone only for four months this time, von Schrattenbach ordered Leopold's salary to be stopped. (In the end his full salary was paid after Leopold petitioned for it on his return.)

Return to Milan and Ascanio in Alba, 13 August–15 December 1771

Leopold and Wolfgang left on their second journey to Italy on 13 August. Following the same route south through the Brenner pass as during their first journey, they made excellent time on their dry (and dusty) summer route except when their carriage wound up stuck behind slow farmer's carts on the narrow mountain roads.

They had planned to post the score of the oratorio Betulia liberata to Padua from Verona. They may have left the score with their Veronese host Pietro Lugiati for that purpose, although there is no mention in the letters that they did so. No performances of Wolfgang's Betulia liberata have been documented in Padua or elsewhere, and no libretto crediting him with the music has been found (the oratorio was set by different composers more than 40 times in the 18th century), so whether it was ever performed is unknown.

Swiftly crossing the northern Italian plain and arriving in Milan on Wednesday 21 August—traversing in just eight days the same distance that had taken a leisurely six weeks on their first journey—they discovered that their haste had been in vain. Three days after their arrival Leopold wrote Maria Anna,

I ought to tell you that we have not yet received from Vienna the text which everyone is awaiting with great anxiety, for until it arrives the costumes cannot be made, the stage arranged nor other details settled. [1]

Among those "other details," of course, was Wolfgang's musical setting of the words. The serenata was entitled Ascanio in Alba.

Title page of the libretto of Ascanio in Alba, Milan, 1771. Image source: Internet Archive

Ascanio, in this version of the myth the son of the goddess Venus and the Trojan hero Aeneas, is prompted by his mother to test the fidelity of his promised bride, the nymph Silvia, by appearing in disguise. At first Silvia rejects the idea of marrying Ascanio, whom she has never met, because she has fallen in love with a youth she has seen in a dream. When Ascanio appears undisguised but without identifying himself, she recognizes the figure from her dream but doesn't realize that he is Ascanio. Finally Venus descends from the heavens and sets everything right: Silvia learns that her dream lover is Ascanio, and he is declared the ruler of Alba, where he will found a great city and, with his new wife, produce a dynasty.

Although used for other ruling-class weddings before and afterwards, this story seems to allegorize the betrothal of the Archduke Ferdinand and the Princess Maria Beatrice.

Maria Beatrice d'Este, by Anton von Maron, c. 1770s. Image source: Château de Versailles

In 1753, when she was three years old, Maria Beatrice had been united by treaty to the six-year-old Peter Leopold, the third-born son of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa.

Peter Leopold of Austria, by Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1762. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

But eight years later in 1761, when the Empress's second son Karl Joseph died of smallpox, roles were suddenly shifted. Since Peter Leopold was now second in line to the thrones of both his mother (the Habsburg ruler) and his father (the Holy Roman Emperor), the engagement to Maria Beatrice was broken and he was engaged to the more consequential bride originally intended for Karl Joseph: Maria Luisa, daughter of King Charles III of Spain. [2]

Two years later, in 1763, Peter Leopold's younger brother, 9-year-old Ferdinand, took his place as the fiancé of the now 13-year-old Princess Maria Beatrice. As in Ascanio in Alba, the groom's mother arranged the whole thing, and the couple would never set eyes on one another in person before their nuptial ceremonies.

The parallels make the "testing of virtue" plot of Ascanio seem even creepier. Maria Beatrice had, after all, been betrothed to Ferdinand's brother for eight years; Ascanio in Alba seems designed to reassure Ferdinand and all the courtly spectators that the switch in fiancés accorded with Maria Beatrice's own wishes, that he was her "dream lover." But this was a consoling fiction. Love was a luxury that royal couples did not require, at least in the view of the parents who arranged their marriages. Their job was to produce children: two sons, an heir and a spare, and any number of daughters, to be married off strategically among the European powers for the political advantage of the Habsburg Empire.

Ferdinand Karl of Austria, by August Friedrich Oelenhainz. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The wedding was scheduled for Tuesday 15 October, less than two months away from the time the Mozarts arrived in Milan. On Saturday 31 August Leopold could finally report,

The text has arrived at last [in a postscript to his sister Wolfgang added that it had arrived two days earlier, on Thursday], but so far Wolfgang has only written the ouverture, that is, a rather long Allegro, followed by an Andante, which has to be danced, but only by a few people. Instead of the last Allegro he has composed a kind of contredanse and chorus, to be sung and danced at the same time. He will have a good deal of work during the coming month. [3]

The "rather long Allegro" of the overture to Ascanio in Alba performed by Mozarteumorchester Salzburg conducted by Leopold Hager:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho7xWm8zg10

In a previous letter Wolfgang had written to Nannerl about their Milan lodgings,

Upstairs we have a violinist, downstairs another one, in the next room a singing-master who gives lessons, and in the other room opposite ours an oboist. That is good fun when you are composing! It gives you plenty of ideas. [4]

Wolfgang began with the recitatives and choruses, and then turned to the arias. His task was made even more difficult because he knew only one of the cast members: the exceptional castrato Giovanni Manzuoli, who would play Ascanio. Burney wrote of Manzuoli's first appearance in London in 1764, "Manzoli's voice was the most powerful and voluminous soprano that had been heard on our stage since the time of Farinelli; and his manner of singing was grand and full of taste and dignity." Manzuoli excelled in the cantabile (flowing, lyrical) style of singing; Burney noted, "His voice alone was commanding from native strength and sweetness. . .and as to execution [of rapid coloratura passages and elaborate ornamentation], he had none." [4]

Giovanni Manzoli [Manzuoli] Fiorentino. Image source: New York Public Library.

The Mozarts had first met him when they were in London in 1764, and had renewed their acquaintance in Florence the previous year. The vocal capabilities of the 51-year-old Manzuoli were thus probably known to Wolfgang. At his entrance, Wolfgang gave him time to warm up with a secco dialogue with Venere, followed by an extended accompanied recitative, before his first aria, "Cara, lontano ancora" (Beloved, though you are far away).

"Cara, lontano ancora" performed by Agnes Baltsa accompanied by Mozarteumorchester Salzburg conducted by Leopold Hager:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbg3ayZucsE

Glover writes that in composing the arias for Manzuoli "Wolfgang was manifestly aware of vocal gifts no longer at their peak." [6] Perhaps, but as we saw in Mozart in Italy, part 1, in 1770 Manzuoli was still expecting 1,000 ducats to appear in a Milan Carnival season—ten times what Wolfgang was paid to write an entire opera. Wolfgang later reported that Manzuoli had been paid 500 cigliati, or about 500 ducats, to perform in Johann Adolph Hasse's wedding opera Il Ruggiero, which alternated with Ascanio during the celebrations and which involved the same singers. This is apparently the same rate—there were two operas per Carnival season in Milan—although his contract had not mentioned Wolfgang's serenata, for which he expected to be paid an additional 500 cigliati. In the end he received 700 cigliati and a fine gold snuff-box for both the opera and the serenata; offended, he returned both the fees and the gift. His vocal decline could not have been very apparent, or Manzuoli would not still demand such fees. So we may hear in Manzuoli's Ascanio in Alba arias, not so much a composer attempting to disguise his primo uomo's vocal decline, but one (as was common practice) showcasing his strengths.

But tailoring the arias for the other singers required Wolfgang to meet and work with each of them.

The cast of Ascanio in Alba, Milan, 1771. Image source: Internet Archive

Jane Glover writes that, judging from the score, "The finest singer in Wolfgang's cast was clearly Girelli as Silvia." (This would not be a surprise; she was the prima donna.) "She had splendid coloratura, which Wolfgang readily exploited, but she could also convey the greatest tenderness." [7] In Part II, Silvia's aria "Infelice affetti miei," here performed by Edith Mathis accompanied by Mozarteumorchester Salzburg conducted by Leopold Hager, displays both aspects of her talent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehyw8tpklcY

Time was short, and Wolfgang reported to Nannerl on 13 September that he had "a very heavy cold and a bad cough." Nonetheless he had to compose without rest, because rehearsals in the theater would begin in only ten days. He pressed on, and a week later was able to write to his sister, "I cannot write much, firstly, because I have nothing to say, and secondly, because my fingers ache so from composing. . .There are now only two arias of the serenata to compose and then I shall be finished." The final aria was completed on Monday 23 September, the very day the recitatives were rehearsed for the first time. Wolfgang was, of course, also leading the rehearsals, and so never got a chance to fully recover from his exhausting composing marathon; in the midst of rehearsals ten days before the wedding he reported to Nannerl, "I am quite well, but always sleepy." [8]

Leopold was confident of his son's abilities, and had not only the chance to hear the music as Wolfgang composed it, but also in rehearsal. He wrote to Maria Anna on 28 September,

You will be pleased to hear that I have good hopes that Wolfgang’s work will win great applause; firstly, because both Signor Manzuoli and all the other singers are not only immensely pleased with their arias, but are looking forward even more than we are to hearing the serenata performed this evening with all the instruments; and secondly, because I know how good Wolfgang’s work is and what an impression it will make, for it is more than certain that his composition is excellently adapted both to the singers and to the orchestra. [9]

Il Ruggiero

In addition to Wolfgang's serenata, the Viennese court had commissioned the wedding opera Il Ruggiero from Hasse and the librettist Pietro Metastasio, both now in their 70s.

Title page of the libretto of Il Ruggiero, o vero L'Eroico Gratitudine (Ruggiero, or true heroic gratitude) by Pietro Metastasio, with music composed by Johann Adolph Hasse, Milan, 1771. Image source: Internet Archive

The story was derived from the last three cantos of Ludovico Ariosto's chivalric romance Orlando Furioso, in which the knight Ruggiero finally marries the woman to whom he has been long betrothed, Bradamante. She is the female warrior who, in male disguise, rescued the bewitched Ruggiero from the magic island of the seductive sorceress Alcina. The opera was fitting not only because it ends with a wedding celebration, but also in its choice of source, which honored Maria Beatrice. Her ancestor Alfonso I had been Ariosto's patron, and Orlando Furioso fancifully traces the lineage of the House of Este back to Ruggiero and Bradamante.

Il Ruggiero librettist Pietro Metastasio, attributed to Martin van Mytens II, c. 1740-1750. Image source: Christies.com

In the opera Ruggiero (Manzuoli) has been made prisoner by the Greeks, but is freed from captivity by their ruler Leone (Adamo Solzi, Fauno in Ascanio), who admires his enemy for his bravery. Leone, betrothed to Clotilde (Geltrude Falchini, Venus in Ascanio), decides he wishes to marry Bradamante (Girelli) instead. She sets a condition on anyone who would ask for her hand: first he must best her in single combat. Leone, knowing that he is no match for Bradamante, asks Ruggiero to stand against her in his place. Torn between love for his betrothed and obligation to his liberator, Ruggiero fights her as "Leone" until time expires, winning her for his rival. Leone, abashed by Ruggiero's adherence to his knightly code, admits before the Emperor Carlo (Charlemagne, sung by Giuseppe Tibaldi, Aceste in Ascanio) that Ruggiero fought in his place and that he wishes to honor his prior engagement to Clotilde. Carlo unites the two original couples and a double wedding is celebrated.

The cast of Il Ruggiero in Milan, 1771. Image source: Internet Archive

With its theme of the switching of fiancés and its Este-associated source, Il Ruggiero also seems to deliberately allegorize the situation of Ferdinand and Maria Beatrice. Curiously, it was originally intended (but not completed) for a different wedding the year before, that of Maria Theresa's daughter Maria Antonia with the dauphin of France; the French context is probably the reason it is set on the banks of the Seine near Paris. Maria Antonia and the dauphin would become better known to history as Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

Hasse's opera was performed the day after the wedding of Ferdinand and Maria Beatrice, Wednesday 16 October, and Ascanio followed on Thursday. Ascanio was an immediate success, as Leopold had predicted. Operas were not performed on Fridays, a day of penitence, and no performances had been planned for Saturday or for Sunday, which was the anniversary of the death of the Empress Maria Theresa's father. However, after the enthusiastic reception of Ascanio on Thursday an extra performance was scheduled for Saturday 19 October.

It seems that the response to Hasse's opera was not nearly so positive. On 19 October as he and Wolfgang were "just off to the opera," Leopold paused to dash off a note to Maria Anna: "We are constantly addressed in the street by courtiers and other persons who wish to congratulate the young composer. It really distresses me very greatly, but Wolfgang’s serenata has completely killed Hasse’s opera." [10]

Leopold was probably being sincere about his distress, as the Mozarts and the Hasses knew one another and were on friendly terms; nonetheless, he couldn't help but be gratified at Wolfgang's success, even if it came at Hasse's expense. On 26 October Leopold reported that two nights earlier "their Royal Highnesses the Archduke and Archduchess not only caused two arias to be repeated by applauding them, but both during the serenata and afterwards leaned over from their box towards Wolfgang and showed their gracious approval by calling out 'Bravissimo, maestro' and clapping their hands. Their applause was taken up each time by the courtiers and the whole audience." Wolfgang added in a postscript, "The two arias which were encored in the serenata were sung by Manzuoli and by the prima donna, Girelli, respectively," but did not indicate which they were. [11]

After hearing Ascanio, Hasse is said to have remarked, "This boy will cause us all to be forgotten." [12]

Johann Adolph Hasse by Balthasar Denner, c. 1740. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

No source I have found indicates how many performances of Ascanio were given, but from the evidence of the letters it looks as though there were at least six: 17, 19, 22, 24, 27 and 28 October. As we've seen, the performance on 19 October was added, and that on 28 October also may been added because it breaks the alternating pattern of the two works up to that point, and that Leopold mentions in his letters. [13]

After what may have been the final performance of Ascanio on Monday 28 October, Hasse's opera, which had clearly been intended as the centerpiece of the wedding celebrations (note the difference in the ornateness of its libretto compared with that of Ascanio), continued for a few more performances; Leopold and Wolfgang missed the (final?) Ruggiero performance on 2 November because Leopold had a bout of rheumatism. The Mozarts remained in Milan to have a celebratory meal at Count Firmian's with Hasse on 8 November; there Hasse was presented with a snuff-box and Wolfgang a watch set with diamonds (they both may also have received their fees on this occasion).

Leopold had been planning to leave Milan by mid-November, perhaps stopping off in Padua (could this be when a performance of Betulia liberata might have taken place?). But then suddenly word came from the Milanese court. Leopold wrote Maria Anna,

I hoped to leave for certain on the 18th [of November], but His Royal Highness the Archduke now wishes to speak to us when he returns from [his honeymoon in] Varese in a week’s time. So our stay here will have to be prolonged for more than ten days. . .My head is full and I have more things to think of than you can guess. [14]

Leopold was anticipating that the Archduke, who had clearly been very impressed with Ascanio, would offer both father and son a position at his court. If so, he was disappointed. When the Mozarts were finally received by the Archduke on Tuesday 26 November, he was evidently highly complimentary, but did not extend an immediate invitation to join his court. He may have held out some hope, however, because the Mozarts stayed in Milan for another nine days after their audience. Finally, receiving no definite word from court, they left Milan on 5 December. There was no time to stop off in Padua, and they headed directly back to Salzburg. On 8 December from Ala in the foothills of the Italian Alps Leopold wrote to Maria Anna,

The question which you asked me in one of your four letters which I found in Verona, I shall answer when we meet. All that I can now say is that the affair is not quite hopeless. [15]

The question Maria Anna raised was undoubtedly that of the possibility of an appointment to the Archduke Ferdinand's court in Milan. What Leopold didn't know was that as he and Wolfgang were crossing the Brenner Pass towards Salzburg, a letter from the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna to her son Ferdinand in Milan was crossing in the opposite direction.

Empress Maria Theresa by Anton von Maron, after 1765. Image source: Château de Versailles MV 3859

The Archduke had written to her for advice about finding positions for the Mozarts at his court; her reply, dated 12 December, was blunt:

You ask me about taking the young Salzburger into your service. I do not know why, believing you have no need for a composer or useless people. If however it would give you pleasure I would not hinder you. What I say is so that you do not burden yourself with useless people or giving titles to people of that sort. If they are in your service, it debases the service when such people go about the world like beggars. Furthermore, he has a large family. [16]

The Mozart family, of course, numbered only four, and their purpose in "going about the world" was precisely to obtain a paid court position for Wolfgang. But the Archduke would not go against his mother's wishes, and no appointment was ever offered.

It was now winter; the days were short and the weather and roads were bad, causing delays, but Leopold and Wolfgang arrived in Salzburg on 15 December. The very next day they received the stunning news of the death of their employer, Prince-Archbishop von Schrattenbach. The future for them both was now extremely uncertain.

Next time: The final journey to Milan and Lucio Silla

Posts in this series:

• Mozart in Italy, part 1: "We shall not become rich"
• Mozart in Italy, part 2: "We have won the first battle"
• Mozart in Italy, part 3: "The most dangerous place in all Italy"
• Mozart in Italy, part 4: "Such useless people"
• Mozart in Italy, part 5: "There is little hope"

---

1. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 140, 24 August 1771, in Emily Anderson, editor and translator, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, London: MacMillan and Co., 1938, p. 282.
2. At the 1738 marriage of Maria Luisa's parents, King Charles III of the Two Sicilies and Maria Amalia of Saxony, Vittoria Tesi performed. In 1762, as a six-year-old, Wolfgang met the famous Tesi (by then retired) in Vienna. For more details of their meeting, please see The first Black prima donna: Vittoria Tesi.
3. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 141, 31 August 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 284.
4. Mozart to his sister, Letter 140a, 24 August 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 283.
5. Charles Burney, A general history of music, from the earliest ages to the present period, Vol. 4. London: Printed for the author, 1789, p. 485.
6. Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera. Picador, 2023, p. 164.
7. Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy, p. 163. However, we have a first-hand account of Girelli's abilities around this time which contradicts this picture. Six months after she appeared in Ascanio, Burney wrote of her first appearance in London, "Her style of singing was good, but her voice was in decay, and her intonation frequently false, when she arrived here; however, it was easy to imagine from what remained, that she had been better" (A general history of music, Vol. 4, p. 499). One wonders whether Burney heard her at a time when she was indisposed.
8. Mozart to his sister, Letter 143a, 13 September 1771, Letter 144a, 21 September 1771, & Letter 146a, 5 October 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 288, 291 & 294.
9. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 145, 28 September 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 292.
10. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 148, 19 October 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 296.
11. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 149, 26 October 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 297.
12. William Smyth Rockstro and Donald Francis Tovey, "Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus," Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 18, 1911, p. 950.
13. "On the 16th there will be the opera, the 17th the serenata, on the 18th, 19th and 20th nothing on account of the anniversary of the death of His Majesty the Emperor. On Monday the serenata will be repeated and so forth." As we've seen, a performance of the serenata was added on the 19th. Leopold to his wife, Letter 147, 12 October 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, pp. 295–296.
14. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 152, 16 November 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 301.
15. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 155, 8 December 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 304.
16. Quoted in Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy, pp. 169–170. Translation slightly altered.