Mozart in Italy, part 1: "We shall not become rich"
Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera. Picador, 2023. 262 pages. Image source: The Hanbury Agency
You've probably never heard of the composer Wolfgang Mozart. Today he is known, if at all, primarily for his church music. Only 18th-century specialists are aware of his operas, all centered on mythological or classical figures: Mitridate, Lucio Silla, Idomeneo. Despite their musical riches, Mozart's operas languish in obscurity.
This is because, on his third trip to Italy as a 19-year-old, Mozart received an appointment at a provincial court. Largely cut off from musical developments and audiences elsewhere in Europe, he composed music to please the somewhat old-fashioned tastes of his aristocratic patrons as well as his own inclinations: the conventions of Metastasian opera seria allowed Mozart to write the elaborate, florid vocal music he delighted in. But by the 1810s the gradual disappearance of castrati, the rise of Rossinian comedy, and the accession of a new patron who was uninterested in music combined to bring Mozart's opera career to a close. When Mozart died at the age of 76 in 1832, he had not composed an opera for more than twenty years.
We can only speculate about what might have happened had Mozart left Salzburg instead for an imperial capital such as Vienna, Paris, or London. He might have formed partnerships with talented librettists, absorbed and refined new developments in opera, introduced his own innovations, and achieved the recognition that his genius deserved. Who knows? If he had ever tried his hand at comedy, some of his works might now be among the most popular operas in the repertory. Alas, it was never to be.
Fortunately for us if not for him, this counterfactual alternate history is not the life that Wolfgang Mozart lived. However, as a young man he did make three journeys to Italy with his father Leopold, and sought permanent employment there. He ultimately failed to find the court appointment he sought; had he succeeded, the history of music would be profoundly different.
The first journey: 13 December 1769 – 28 March 1771
The first trip was the longest: leaving Salzburg in mid-December 1769, Wolfgang and his father did not return until late March 1771, more than 15 months later. Wolfgang, just 13 years old when they left, celebrated his 14th and 15th birthdays in Italy while separated from his mother and sister. The purpose of the trip was to present concerts at various Italian courts, meet significant musical figures, familiarize Wolfgang with the latest developments in Italian opera, and solicit commissions for future compositions.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at age 13 in Verona, Italy, portrait commissioned by Pietro Lugiati and attributed to Giambettino Cignaroli or his nephew Saverio dalla Rosa, with sittings on 6 and 7 January 1770. Image source: Christie's.com via the Wayback Machine
Overall, the trip was a tremendous success. Wolfgang and Leopold met with influential courtiers such as Count Karl Joseph Firmian, Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa's representative in Milan; Count Giovanni Luca Pallavicini, governor-general of Lombardy; and Count Franz Xavier Orsini-Rosenberg, high chamberlain for Maria Theresa's second son Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Such men provided introductions for entry into the social world of aristocratic patrons, who arranged and hosted the concerts that Wolfgang gave at practically every destination. Wolfgang would meet Count Rosenberg again in Vienna a little more than a decade later, where the Count had been appointed director of the court theatres under Emperor Joseph II. There Orsini-Rosenberg would commission from Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Rescue from the Harem, 1783) and ensure that Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786) reached the stage.
Leopold Mozart by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, c. 1766. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
The travellers also took in opera wherever they could, and met with many significant composers, such as Johann Adolph Hasse, Niccolò Jommelli, Josef Mysliveček, Giovanni Paisiello, and Niccolò Piccini. Attendance at opera houses wasn't just for pleasure, of course: Wolfgang was absorbing the latest musical developments and becoming familiar with the qualities of different singers. This was knowledge that he would put to use in any Italian commissions he received.
Milan, 23 January – 15 March 1770: After pausing three days in Rovereto for Christmas, two weeks in Verona around the New Year, and nine days in Mantua (Wolfgang performing at concerts in each city), the Mozarts reached Milan on 23 January. There they would spend the final month of the Carnival season and two weeks of Lent.
As a welcoming gift, Count Firmian gave the young composer a bound set of Pietro Metastasio's libretti in nine volumes. This was a gift with an ulterior motive: Wolfgang was asked to set to music three arias from Metastasio's Demofoönte (1733) to display his compositional skill for the voice. In Demofoönte, the King of Thrace must sacrifice a virgin annually to gods. He orders Dircea, the daughter of the nobleman Matusio, to be the next sacrifice. Dircea cannot save herself by revealing that she is married to Timante, the son of the king, because the ceremony was held in secret. And as the moment for her death grows near, there's a revelation: although raised by Matusio, she is actually the daughter of Demofoönte—but does this mean her marriage to Timante is incestuous? [1]
It's likely that Wolfgang composed the three arias for singers associated with Milan's Teatro Regio Ducale opera house. An aria for Matusio, "Ah piu tremar non voglio," was probably sung by the primo tenore Guglielmo d'Ettore. An accompanied recitative and aria for Timante, "Misero me!. . .Misero pargoletto" was probably sung by the primo uomo castrato Giuseppe Aprile. And an aria for Dircea, "Se tutti i mali miei," was probably sung by the prima donna Antonia Bernasconi.
"Se tutti i mali miei," performed by Edita Gruberová accompanied by the Wiener Kammerorchester conducted by György Fischer:
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Se tutti i mali miei io ti potessi dir, divider ti farei per tenerezza il cor. In questo amaro passo sì giusto è il mio martir, che se tu fossi un sasso ne piangeresti ancor. |
If I could tell you all my sorrows, your tender heart would break in two. In this bitter plight of my innocent martyrdom, even if you were a stone you would weep. |
On 12 March the three arias were performed in concert. The compositions must have passed the test, because on 13 March Leopold wrote to his wife Maria Anna, "Wolfgang has been asked to write the first opera here for next Christmas." As Jane Glover notes, "This was an astonishing honour for a fourteen-year-old from Austria, to be invited to open the season in one of the most important opera houses in Italy, the country which had invented the art form." [2]
This commission is remarkable due to Wolfgang's extreme youth, but perhaps not so much because of his nationality. Northern Italy was ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs, and other opera composers from north of the Alps such as Christoph Willibald Gluck, Hasse, and Mysliveček had success there. And as Alfred Loewenberg points out, opening the season was a mixed honor: "As a rule two operas were produced in the course of one Carnival season, the first on St. Stephen's Day [26 December], and this was, as we know from the Mozart letters, the less desirable proposition for a composer, as in most cases the houses were not really good before the Carnival came into full swing in January and February. The second opera was produced whenever the first ceased to draw." [3] It is perhaps not surprising that the teenaged, inexperienced Mozart would be given the less desirable slot in the Carnival season; that way, if his opera failed, the second opera could quickly replace it.
Count Karl Joseph Firmian. Image source: Dipartimento di Culture e Civiltà dell'Università degli Studi di Verona
Count Firmian was instrumental in procuring Wolfgang's commission for the opera and probably himself ultimately selected the libretto to be set, Mitridate, re di Ponto (Mithridates, King of Pontus), by Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi, after Jean Racine's play Mithridate (1673). This was also a prudent choice: the libretto had been set three years previously in Turin by Quirino Gasparini; if Mozart's music did not please the singers, Gasparini's could be substituted easily. Count Firmian recognized the young Mozart's talent, but also was careful to minimize the risk involved in asking a 14-year-old, no matter how gifted, to compose an opera.
Although the choice of libretto would not be made until the following summer, a contract (scrittura) was signed. For writing the music Wolfgang would receive 100 ducats, a sum roughly equal to Leopold's yearly salary as vice-Kapellmeister of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. (In comparison, the castrato Giovanni Manzuoli's asking price for performing in the opera was 1000 ducats. He was not hired, but his fee shows how much more valued were star singers than composers.) Wolfgang and his father would also be lodged for free during the weeks of preparation and rehearsal in Milan the following fall. This was no small benefit; Leopold had written to Maria Anna shortly after their arrival in Milan, "You will easily understand that we shall not become rich in Italy and you will admit that we shall do well enough if we earn our travelling expenses. . .although there are only two of us, the expenses are not small, and I fear that we have paid out about seventy ducats. It is already six weeks since we left Salzburg." [4]
South to Naples, 15 March – 14 May 1770: Payment for the opera would be made after the production of the finished work. In the meantime Wolfgang and his father headed south from Milan through Parma to Bologna, arriving there on 24 March.
In Bologna they presented a letter of introduction from Count Firmian to Count Pallavicini, who organized a concert by Wolfgang at his estate for the very next evening. The concert began at half-past seven and continued for four hours; it included performances by Giuseppe Aprile and another castrato, Giuseppe Cicognani. As gifts after the concert Wolfgang received 205 lire (it's hard to find a currency conversion, but perhaps this is about 22 ducats) and Leopold an additional 20 zecchini (about 20 ducats). Although Leopold had complained about the expense of their inn—where "we have also the honour of paying a ducat a day," he wrote to Maria Anna—their brief stay in Bologna enabled the Mozarts to do quite a bit better than just covering their travel expenses. [5]
They also met the famous castrato Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli, now in his mid-60s and retired from the stage; the renowned musical pedagogue Padre Giovanni Battista Martini; and the 33-year-old Czech composer Josef Mysliveček, in Bologna for a production of his opera La Nitteti, set to a libretto by Metastasio and scheduled to be performed the following month. The connections with Pallavicini, Martini, and Mysliveček would later turn out to have important contributions to the success of the Mozarts' journey.
Continuing south, after a days' journey father and son arrived in Florence on 30 March. In Florence they encountered the 13-year-old musical prodigy Thomas Linley. [6] Like Wolfgang, he was the son of a musician, teacher, and composer, and had come to Italy to further his musical education. Thomas's father, Thomas Linley the elder, was a composer of songs and theatre music, and director of the orchestra at the Assembly Rooms in Bath. Thomas's older sister Elizabeth, a singer and actress of renowned beauty, two years later at age 17 would elope with the 20-year-old playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Elizabeth and Thomas Linley by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1768. Image source: Clark Art Institute, 1955.955. At the time this portrait was painted Elizabeth was 13 or 14, and Thomas 11 or 12.
Thomas was a violin virtuoso who had been studying for almost two years with the violinist and composer Pietro Nardini (the rest of Thomas's family remained in England). In a letter home to his wife and daughter, Leopold described Thomas and Wolfgang's instant rapport:
In Florence we came across a young Englishman, who is a pupil of the famous violinist Nardini. This boy, who plays most beautifully and who is the same age and same size as Wolfgang, came to the house of the learned poetess, Signora Corilla, where we had come on the recommendation of M. De L'Augier. These two boys performed one after the other throughout the whole evening, constantly embracing each other. On the following day the little Englishman, a most charming boy, had his violin brought to our rooms and played the whole afternoon, Wolfgang accompanying him on his own [violin]. On the next day we lunched with M. Gavard, the administrator of the grand ducal finances, and these two boys played in turn the whole afternoon, not like boys, but like men! Little Tommaso accompanied us home and wept bitter tears, because we were leaving on the following day. [7]
Wolfgang Mozart [at the harpsichord] and Thomas Linley [on violin] in the family of Gavard des Pivets in Florence, painter unknown, 1770. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Like Wolfgang, Thomas Linley would have a tragic end and die young. In 1778 Thomas drowned in a sailing accident on an English lake at age 22.
Armed with twenty letters of introduction from Count Pallavicini, the Mozarts continued south to Rome for Easter, arriving on Holy Wednesday, 11 April. They immediately attended mass in the Sistine Chapel, where they heard Gregorio Allegri's famous nine-voice setting of Psalm 51, Miserere mei, Deus. The score, according to Leopold, was a closely guarded secret:
. . .[it] is so greatly prized that performers in the chapel are forbidden on pain of excommunication to take away a single part of it, to copy it or to give it to anyone. But we have it already. Wolfgang has written it down. . . [8]
On a first hearing, Wolfgang memorized and, after the service, copied down the nine-part harmonies of this 12-minute-plus-long work. Within a short time it became common knowledge that he had done so. But far from excommunicating Wolfgang, Pope Clement XIV would, just a few months later on the Mozarts' return trip through Rome, grant him a papal knighthood for his contributions to the glory of the church.
The Mozarts remained in Rome during most of the Easter season. Between 19 April and 7 May Wolfgang performed at eight concerts before the Roman aristocracy and church leaders, including Cardinal Lazaro Opizio Pallavicini, the Count's cousin, who would nominate Wolfgang for the papal honor.
On 8 May they left for Naples. The further south they travelled the more dangerous the roads became, but they arrived in Naples on 14 May without incident. There they renewed their acquaintance with the British ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, whom they had met in London in 1764.
Sir William Hamilton by George Romney, 1783-84. Image source: National Gallery of Art
Leopold reported that Hamilton's musically talented wife Catherine "plays the clavier with unusual feeling and is a very pleasant person. She trembled at having to play before Wolfgang." [9]
On 28 May Wolfgang gave a concert at the home of the Habsburg ambassador to Naples, Count Ernst Kaunitz, organized by Kaunitz's wife Marie, together with Lady Catherine Hamilton and several other aristocratic women. The Mozarts realized at least 150 zecchini in gifts from the concert, roughly equal to 165 ducats. They were beginning to show a significant profit from the journey.
The chief composer in Naples, Niccolò Jommelli, had just returned there the year before after spending 15 years as Hofkapellmeister to Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg at his court in Stuttgart. Charles Burney called Jommelli a "truly great composer, who is indisputably one of the first of his profession now alive in the universe," ranked him first among "living composers of Italy for the stage," and wrote that "Jomelli's works are full of great and noble ideas, treated with taste and learning." [10]
Wolfgang and Leopold attended a rehearsal at the Teatro di San Carlo of Jommelli's new opera Armida abbandonata (Armida Forsaken), with Anna De Amicis as the Saracen-allied sorceress Armida and Giuseppe Aprile in the role of her bewitched Crusader lover Rinaldo. On 29 May Wolfgang wrote his sister Nannerl that "the day before yesterday we were at the rehearsal of Signor Jommelli's opera, which is well composed and which I really like." But after returning to see its première on 30 May, Wolfgang wrote in his next letter that the opera "is beautiful, but too serious and old-fashioned for the theatre. De Amicis sings amazingly well and so does Aprile, who sang in Milan. The dances are wretchedly pompous. The theatre is beautiful." [11] One wonders whether the reaction of the audience, the opinions of his father, or Wolfgang's own reassessment on a second hearing influenced the "too serious and old-fashioned" comment.
Niccolò Jommelli. On meeting him in October 1770 Charles Burney wrote, "He is extremely corpulent, and, in the face, not unlike what I remember Handel to have been, yet far more polite and soft in his manner." [12] Image source: musicologie.org
Jommelli invited the Mozarts to his home, where he introduced them to the Teatro di San Carlo's general manager, the castrato Giovanni Tedeschi, known as Amadori. Leopold wrote to his wife that "the impresario Signor Amadori, who met and heard Wolfgang at Jommelli’s house, made him an offer to write an opera for the Teatro Reale San Carlo, which, on account of our Milan engagement [for Mitridate], we could not accept." [13]
After a month's stay in Naples Leopold wanted to travel back to Rome in the company of Count Kaunitz—it would probably be the safest and most comfortable way to make the journey. While waiting for confirmation, he and Mozart toured the sights around Naples: temples dedicated to Venus and Diana, sacred grottos, Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii and Herculaneum (which had only begun being systematically excavated since the mid-18th century), Nero's baths, the sepulchre of Agrippina, and Virgil's tomb. Jane Glover notes that Wolfgang's visiting of ancient sites in Rome and Naples may have had an effect on his later operas about ancient figures both historical (Pontian king Mithridates and his Roman opponent Lucius Cornelius Sulla) and mythological (Ascanius, grandson of Venus, and Idomeneus, Cretan King at the time of the Trojan War). She writes, "the classical heroes whose stories he knew and who were the subjects of his Metastasio texts all now assumed a human dimension." [14]
Return north to Bologna, 25 June – 20 July 1770: Confirmation from Count Kaunitz never came, and so father and son headed back to Rome once again on 25 June using the fastest mode of travel available: the mail coach. The distance that had taken them five and a half days to cover on the way south would be traversed in just one day on the return. However, what they gained in speed was lost in comfort; Leopold reported that "we had only slept for two out of the twenty-seven hours" of the jouncing journey. (Modern passengers on red-eye flights may sympathize.)
They also encountered another common hazard of carriage travel: an accident. Leopold reported to Maria Anna,
During the last stage to Rome the postillion kept on lashing the horse which was between the shafts and therefore supporting the sedia. Finally the horse reared, stuck fast in the sand and dirt which was more than half a foot deep, and fell heavily on one side, pulling down with him the front of the two-wheeled sedia. I held back Wolfgang with one hand, so that he should not be hurled out; but the plunge forward pulled my right foot so violently to the centre bar of the falling dashboard that half the shin-bone of my right leg was gashed to the width of a finger. . .On the following day my injury seemed rather serious, as my foot was very much swollen; and I have spent the greater part of yesterday and to-day in bed.
Of course, in pre-antibiotic days a danger of receiving such a wound was that, in addition to painful bruising and swelling, it might easily become infected, with potentially fatal consequences. Leopold's leg would continue to give him trouble for many weeks of their journey, and when he was able to walk he could only "limp about very slowly." [15]
In Rome they had an audience with the Pope and on 5 July Wolfgang was inducted into the papal Order of the Golden Spur. He signed a postscript to his sister Nannerl, "Mademoiselle, j’ai l'honneur d'etre votre très humble serviteur et frère Chevalier de Mozart." Despite the joking tone (which he regularly took with his sister) Wolfgang remained very proud of this honor; seven years later at age 21 he would have his portrait painted in Salzburg while wearing the insignia of the order.
"Cav[aliere] Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart, Accad[emia] Filarmon[ica] di Bologna e di Verona," painter unknown, 1777. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
A copy of the portrait was sent as a gift to Padre Martini in Bologna, and can still be seen there (the original no longer survives). Leopold wrote to Martini, "The painting is of no great value as a work of art, but I assure you that it is an excellent likeness. My son is exactly like that." [16]
In Rome Leopold's injury restricted the number of visits and pleasure jaunts they could make. On 10 July father and son left the city, travelling northeast across the boot of Italy to Loreto on the Adriatic coast. Without pausing long anywhere, they headed northwest up the coast through Rimini and, as the coast bent northward, continued northwest overland to Bologna, arriving on 20 July.
At this point Leopold was in significant distress. The swelling and pain in his leg had only gotten worse in the 10 days of hard travel to reach Bologna. The injury prevented him from leaving his room for three weeks; he wrote Maria Anna, "It is no fun being ill at an inn." [17]
When Count Pallavicini heard about Leopold's confinement, he invited the Mozarts to stay at his country estate. They eagerly accepted, and thanks to the Count's extraordinary hospitality, spent the next seven weeks in luxurious surroundings. Leopold wrote to Maria Anna, "I need not send you a description of all the fine things here. . .At last we have now slept our fill. Our sheets are of finer linen than many a nobleman's shirt, everything is of silver. . .everything is fresh, cool and pleasant." [18]
And while Leopold was recuperating, the libretto and cast list for the Milan opera arrived. Wolfgang did not yet begin composing, because the recitatives were not due until October, two months away, and as for the arias, he wanted to wait to compose them until he could work with the singers in person. However, he could now begin to plan the most momentous composition of his young career.
Next time: Return to Milan and Mitridate, re di Ponto
- Spoiler alert: No. Timante is revealed to be the true son of Matusio (!). Before that revelation, though, Timante yields the succession to the throne to his younger "brother" Cherinto. As a result, in the obligatory happy ending, the marriage of Timante and Dircea is openly acknowledged, and Cherinto succeeds to his rightful throne with his bride Creusa.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 83, 13 March 1770, in Emily Anderson, editor and translator, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, MacMillan and Co., 1938, p. 174. Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera. Picador, 2023, p. 63.
- Alfred Loewenberg, "Some Stray Notes on Mozart: III. Opera at Milan, 1770-1773." Music & Letters, Vol. 24 No. 1, 1943, pp. 48–50. https://www.jstor.org/stable/728611
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 77, 26 January 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 159.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 84, 24 March 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 177.
- Glover states that at the time of their meeting in early April 1770 they were two "fourteen-year-old boys." Wolfgang had celebrated his 14th birthday in Milan in late January, but Linley's 14th birthday wouldn't take place until 7 May.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 88, 21 April 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, pp. 191–192. "Corilla Olimpica" was the pseudonym of Madalena Morelli-Fernandez, court poet and hostess of a renowned salon.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 87, 14 April 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 185.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 92, 19 May 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 197. Hamilton's wife died in 1782, and in 1791, after five years of keeping her as his mistress, the 61-year-old Sir William Hamilton married 26-year-old Emma Hart, who became the second Lady Hamilton. Seven years later she would begin a famous affair with Lord Nelson, which ended with his death at Trafalgar in 1805. Hamilton died in 1803, and Emma died heavily in debt in 1815 at age 49.
- Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in France and Italy, Becket, 1771, p. 319. "Jomelli" is an alternate spelling of "Jommelli."
- Mozart to his sister, Letters 95a and 96a, 29 May and 5 June 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, pp. 208, 211.
- Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in France and Italy, p. 316.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 99, 27 June 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 215.
- Jane Glover, Mozart in Italy, p. 98.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 100, 30 June 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, pp. 214–215.
- Leopold Mozart to Padre Martini, Bologna, Letter 266, 22 December 1777, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 2, p. 639.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 105, 28 July 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 222.
- Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 107, 11 August 1770, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 228.
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