Mozart in Italy, part 3: "The most dangerous place in all Italy"

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

This is the third in a series of posts on Mozart's Italian journeys; for the previous post please see Mozart in Italy, part 2: "We have won the first battle."

Milan to Venice, 4 February 1771–12 March 1771

Today it's a four-hour train trip from Milan to Venice. In 1771 in the dead of winter, it took Wolfgang and his father a week to cross the northern Italian plain. They stopped to eat, sleep, and attend an opera buffa in Brescia, but also encountered, as Leopold wrote to Maria Anna, "shocking weather and a violent gale." [1]

When they arrived in Venice on Monday 11 February it was still raining. Their lodgings were in the Casa Ceseletti next to the Ponte dei Barcaroli, midway between the Piazza San Marco and the Teatro di San Benedetto opera house.

Casa Ceseletti, adjacent to the Ponte dei Barcaroli, from the Rio de l'Barcaroli canal. Image source: Google Maps Street View.

Their residence was very near the home of Johannes Wider, a friend and business associate of Johann Hagenauer, the Mozarts' landlord in Salzburg since 1743. The Wider family entertained the Mozarts throughout their monthlong stay in Venice.

In the afternoon of the same day the Mozarts arrived, in fact, Herr Wider and his wife went with them to the opera. It's likely that they attended Antonio Boroni's Le contadine furlane (The Friulian peasant women), a dramma giocoso at the Teatro Giustiniani di San Moisè, just a few minutes' walk from the Casa Ceseletti.

Title page of the libretto of Antonio Boroni's Le contadine furlane, Venice, 1771. Image source: Albert Schatz Collection, Library of Congress.

The following day was Shrove Tuesday, and the Mozarts made the most of the final day of Carnival (and the final night of opera until after Easter):

On Tuesday we lunched with him [Herr Wider] and went to the opera, which began at two and went on until seven. [2]

It's likely that on the final evening of Carnival they saw Giovanni Battista Borghi's Siroe at the Teatro di San Benedetto. Metastasio's libretto was very popular and had been set by many composers, including Antonio Vivaldi (for Reggio nell' Emilia, 1727), George Frideric Handel (for London, 1728), and Johann Adolph Hasse (for Bologna, 1733).

Title page of of the libretto of Giovanni Battista's Siroe, Venice, 1771. Image source: Albert Schatz Collection, Library of Congress.

The prima donna of Borghi's Siroe was Anna De Amicis, a soprano the Mozarts had met in Mainz during their European tour in 1763, and had encountered again in May 1770 in her native city of Naples when she performed the title role in Jommelli's Armida Abbandonata. (Wolfgang had written of her Armida, "De Amicis sings amazingly well." For more on Jommelli and the opera, please see Mozart in Italy, part 1.) In Siroe De Amicis played Emira, who spends most of the opera in male disguise as "Idaspe." Originally seeking revenge against King Cosroe for the death of her father, Emira soon falls in love with the King's son and heir Siroe, and he with her. The two must foil the machinations of the King's mistress Laodice, whose love for Siroe is unrequited, and of Siroe's younger brother Medarse, who wants the throne for himself. De Amicis would later perform in Wolfgang's opera Lucio Silla during his third Italian journey in 1772-1773.

The interior of the Teatro San Benedetto, Venice, with the 1782 ball in honor of the 'Conti del Nord.' Image source: Christies.com

After attending the opera, the Mozarts wanted to enjoy, in the company of Herr Wider and his family, the pleasures that would be suspended just a few hours later when Ash Wednesday dawned.

We dined with him afterwards and about eleven or twelve o'clock by German time we were on the Piazza San Marco on our way to the Ridotto. We said to one another that at that moment both of you would probably be with Herr Hagenauer and would be little thinking that we were talking about you on the Piazza San Marco. [3]

Piazza San Marco, by Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), late 1720s. Image source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Ridotto was a casino located in the Palazzo Dandolo, just to the east of the Piazza San Marco. Although ostensibly public (it was run by the Venetian state), the stakes were high and masquerade dress was required (Leopold had been irritated by the expense of the cloaks and cowls he and Wolfgang had to have made to order for Carnival in Milan a year earlier). As a result the Ridotto was frequented by the nobility and the nobility-adjacent, such as rich merchants like Herr Wider. 

In the painting by Canaletto immediately below, the Palazzo Dandolo is the large building to the right, directly above the blue and red cloths shading the deck of the boat in the far right foreground:

The Molo, Venice, from the Bacino di San Marco, by Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), ca. 1730s. Image source: Christies.com.

Another view by Canaletto of the Palazzo Dandolo, in the right center to the east of the Doge's Palace, the Prigioni (prisons), and a group of smaller buildings:

View of the Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice, by Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), ca. late 1730s. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

An 18th-century depiction of the interior of the Ridotto filled with revellers in maschera:

The Ridotto in the Palazzo Dandolo at San Moisè, attributed to Francesco Guardi, ca. 1746. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Wolfgang, who had turned 15 in late January, seems to have thoroughly enjoyed his time in Venice—particularly when that time was spent in the household of Herr Wider, who had six daughters. Wolfgang wrote to Johannes Hagenauer, the son of their Salzburg landlord,

The particularly splendid pearl [Catarina Wider, the eldest daughter] and all the other pearls too [the five younger daughters] admire you very greatly. I assure you that they are all in love with you and that they hope that like a Turk you will marry them all, and make the whole six of them happy. I am writing this in Herr Wider’s house. He is a fine fellow, as you told me in your letter. Yesterday we wound up the carnival at his house, dined with him and then danced and went with the pearls to the new Ridotto, which I liked immensely. . .I am charmed with Venice. [4]

After Lent had begun the Mozarts and Widers continued to spend time together in sometimes ribald games. A week after the letter quoted above Wolfgang wrote his sister Nannerl,

Tell Johannes that Wider’s pearls, especially Mademoiselle Catarina, are always talking about him, and that he must soon come back to Venice and submit to the attacco, that is, have his bottom spanked when he is lying on the ground, so that he may become a true Venetian. They tried to do it to me—the seven women all together—and yet they could not pull me down. [5]

There was also time for sightseeing and attending performances at the ospedali, the famous all-female orphanages of Venice. Leopold wrote to Maria Anna,

Later on I shall tell you in detail how I like the Arsenal, the churches, the ospedali and other things, in fact Venice as a whole. Meanwhile I shall content myself with saying that beautiful and unusual things are to be seen here. [6]

In their travel notes the Mozarts mention the composer Ferdinando Bertoni, the organist at the Basilica di San Marco and the musical director of the Ospedale di San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti; the Mozarts may have attended services at both places. Like Antonio Vivaldi earlier in the century, in addition to his musical duties at an ospedale, Bertoni was also an opera composer.

Ferdinando Bertoni by Angelo Crescembeni. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Earlier in the 1771 Carnival season (December and January) Anna De Amicis had appeared as Cleofide in Bertoni's setting of Metastasio's Alessandro nell' Indie at the Teatro di San Benedetto. Charles Burney reported that the opera "has been universally applauded; particularly a duet, sung by Signora de Amicis and Signor Caselli."

Burney attended a service at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti, and described what it was like to hear the all-women chorus, soloists and orchestra perform behind the metal screens which partially hid them from the lustful eyes of the men in the audience:

. . .I went to the hospital de' Mendicanti, for orphan girls, who are taught to sing and play, and on Sundays and festivals they sing divine service in chorus. Signor Bertoni is the present Maestro di Capella. There was a hymn performed with solos and chorusses, and a mottetto à voce sola, which last was very well performed, particularly an accompanied recitative, which was pronounced with great force and energy. Upon the whole, the compositions had some pretty passages, mixed with others that were not very new.

Burney described how Bertoni composed for a chorus made up entirely of women:

The girls here I thought accompanied the voices better than at the [Ospedale della] Pietà: as the chorusses are wholly made up of female voices, they are never in more than three parts, often only in two; but these, when reinforced by the instruments, have such an effect, that the full complement to the chords is not missed, and the melody is much more sensible and marked, by being less charged with harmony. In these hospitals many of the girls sing in the counter tenor [range] as low as A and G, which enables them always to keep below the soprano and mezzo soprano, to which they sing the base; and this seems to have been long practised in Italy. [7]

Venice, the Rio dei Mendicanti looking North with the church of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, by Francesco Guardi, ca. 1780. Image source: Christies.com

The Mozarts weren't only cultural tourists; they were also in Venice to further Wolfgang's career. Virtually every day they were invited to one or another noble's house for a meal (and, probably, an "impromptu" performance by Wolfgang). Leopold wrote Maria Anna that he and Wolfgang

are only sorry that we cannot remain here longer. It is indeed a pity, for we have got to know very well the whole nobility; and everywhere, at parties, at table, and, in fact, on all occasions we are so overwhelmed with honours that our hosts not only send their secretaries to fetch us and convey us home in their gondolas, but often the noble himself accompanies us on our return; and this is true of the greatest of them, for instance, the Cornaro, Grimani, Mocenigo, Dolfino, Valieri and so forth. [8]

All of the patrician families Leopold names are significant—the current Doge was Alvise Giovanni Mocenigo—but one stands out in particular in the context of Venetian opera history: the Grimani family. The family had built no less than four opera houses in Venice. These included the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, built in 1638, where Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Ulysses' return to his homeland, 1640) and the scandalous L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea, 1642) had their first performances. In 1678 the Grimanis built the lavish Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, where Handel's wickedly entertaining Agrippina (1709), with a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, had its première. The Grimanis' latest opera house was the Teatro di San Benedetto, built in 1755, where the Mozarts had just seen Anna De Amicis sing; although the Grimanis had ceded the theatre to a group of its boxholders in 1766, they probably still had significant influence there. In any case, Glover states that "there was early discussion with the Teatro San Benedetto of a possible commission for Wolfgang, for November 1772." [9]

On 5 March Wolfgang gave a "big concert" at the Palazzo Maffei, but nothing is known about what was played, who attended, or its reception. [10] A week later the Mozarts left Venice; neither of them ever had an opportunity to return.

Northern Italy to Salzburg, 12 March–28 March 1771

In the journey to Padua, rather than take a carriage from Fusina on the mainland, Leopold decided to take the more comfortable and more scenic route by sailing down the Venetian lagoon and hiring a burchiello (barge) on the Brenta Canal. This also enabled the Mozarts to prolong their visit with the Widers.

I took a barcello for ourselves and Wider, his wife and his two [eldest] daughters, Catarina and Rosa; and the Abbate [Giovanni Maria Ortes, a rich opera lover] too came with us as far as Padua. They brought food and drink and all other necessaries and we cooked and ate on board. [11]

A View of la Porto del Dolo on the Brenta Canal, by Francesco Guardi. Image source: Sothebys.com

In Padua they had a busy 24 hours: Wolfgang gave two performances in private houses and played the organ at the church of San Giustino. He also received a commission from the Marchese Giuseppe Ximenes of Aragon for an oratorio setting of Metastasio's libretto Betulia liberata. 

From Padua, Leopold and Wolfgang went on to Vicenza, while the Widers and Ortes returned to Venice. On hearing that the son of a Salzburg acquaintance was travelling to Venice, Leopold wrote to Maria Anna, "Herr Kerschbaumer. . .ought to entrust his son too to Johann Wider. . .I know what is good and what is bad for young people, especially in Venice, the most dangerous place in all Italy." [12] 

After a day in Vicenza, where Mozart performed at the house of their host, the bishop, the Mozarts travelled on to Verona. There they stayed with Pietro Lugiati, who a year earlier had commissioned a portrait of Wolfgang (to view the portrait please see Mozart in Italy, part 1), and received some excellent news. A letter from Milan, probably from Count Karl Joseph von Firmian, let them know that they would soon receive the formal contract for the first opera of the 1772–73 Carnival season there, and also announced that on their return to Salzburg they should expect to receive another commission. Leopold wrote Maria Anna that the new commission "will not only fill you with amazement but will bring our son imperishable honour." [13] It was from the imperial court, for a wedding serenata to be performed in the coming autumn during the marriage celebrations for the Archduke Ferdinand Karl, the fourth son of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa and Governor of the Duchy of Milan, and Princess Maria Beatrice d'Este of Modena.

The Mozarts left Verona on 20 March and travelled by carriage to Rovereto and then across the Brenner Pass into Austria. On 25 March Leopold wrote to Maria Anna from Innsbruck, "We arrived here this evening in a violent gale, in snow and horribly cold weather." [14] Undeterred by the unpleasant conditions, the next day they pressed on, and reached Salzburg on Maundy Thursday, 28 March. As he embraced his mother and sister, though, Wolfgang already knew that he would be returning to Italy twice more without them.

Next time: Mozart's second Italian journey and Ascanio in Alba

Last time: Mozart in Italy, part 2: "We have won the first battle"

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1. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 132, 13 February 1771, in Emily Anderson, editor and translator, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, MacMillan and Co., 1938, p. 266.
2. Same as note 1.
3. Same as note 1.
4. Mozart to Johannes Hagenauer, Letter 132b, 13 February 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 267.
5. Mozart to his sister, Letter 133a, 20 February 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 269.
6. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 134, 1 March 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 270.
7. Quote on Alessandro nell' Indie: Charles Burney, The present state of music in France and Italy, Becker, 1771, p. 190. Quote on  the performance at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti: Burney, The present state of music in France and Italy, pp. 141–142. The article on Bertoni by George Truett Hollis in Grove Music Online states that while in Venice "Mozart and his father may have heard Anna de Amicis sing in Bertoni's Alessandro nell' Indie (Venice, Teatro S Benedetto)," but the letter Burney quotes on Alessandro dated 25 January 1771 confirms that "At the same theatre we have at present Il Siroe riconosciuto, composed by Signor Borghi, which is generally disliked." The Mozarts went to the Teatro di San Benedetto on 11 or 12 February.
8. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 135, 6 March 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 272.
9. Glover, Mozart in Italy, p. 138.
10. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 134, 1 March 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 271.
11. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 136, 14–18 March 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 273.
12. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 136, 18 March 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 274.
13. Same as note 11.
14. Leopold Mozart to his wife, Letter 137, 25 March 1771, Letters of Mozart and His Family, Vol. 1, p. 275.