NON-SERIES CONCERT 2: Mozart by Candlelight

Mozart’s first collaboration with the Jewish poet and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (Mozart’s most distinguished librettist) was based on the play by Beaumarchais that was banned in Vienna because of its revolutionary sentiments of class warfare.

Composed by Mozart at the age of thirty, Le Nozze di Figaro first met with such excitement that nearly every movement was encored taking twice the length to perform.  It was later treated with mixed reception by Mozart’s peers and their jealously had the opera withdrawn from performances.  After the opera moved from Vienna to Prague, it has never fallen out of favor.  Today, Figaro is regarded as one of the finest of all comic operas as well as one of the most universally popular – perhaps the most loved.

As a child prodigy, Mozart was immediately recognized as an unprecedented musical genius in every way.  Under his father’s tutelage, the young Mozart became a virtuoso performer on the keyboard and violin.  By the age of eight, he had composed his first symphony and had toured most of Europe, performing for dignitaries, royalty, and other prominent composers of the day, who were simply in awe by the youth’s abilities and imagination.

No other composer has ever mastered every musical form as Mozart did, and with such great ease.  For him, it almost seemed to be a nuisance or even a waste of time to transcribe his musical imagination onto paper.  Like Handel, although to an even higher degree, Mozart would develop and achieve perfection in his thoughts before his hand ever began to write.  Whereas most composers, even the great Beethoven, would go through countless drafts and revisions before competing a work.  For Mozart the first draft was the final draft.

In nearly 36 years of life, Mozart composed well over 600 works, including dozens of operas (both comedies and dramatic operas), many mass settings, choral works, songs, ballets, 41 symphonies, divertimentos, instrumental dances, marches, serenades, sonatas, 31 piano concertos, 8 violin concertos, and other concertos for flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, even a new arrangement of Handel’s Messiah, and a Requiem, his final work.

Born into the Age of Enlightenment, the era of the American and French revolutions, and when liberty and fraternity were the centers of thought, Mozart’s scores exhibit an order, balance, and structure associated with the Classical era that was led and fathered by composer Franz Joseph Haydn.

Le Nozze di Figaro is no exception.  From the opening moments of the overture, Mozart establishes this charming and witty work using the Classical structures of melody, dynamic balance, and harmony that draw the listener into an engaging story of comedy and intrigue.

Moreover, no opera composed before Figaro can be compared with it for development of ensemble, charm and novelty of melody, richness and variety of orchestration, and yet Mozart did this in a month’s time.  The result is a comedy, yes, but more importantly a work with such musical prose that the sparkle of the comedy alternates with deeper sentiments of affection.

Figaro, as a narrative, combines elegance and subtlety with the more earthy elements of good theatre.  The delineation of character is more vivid and revealing than had ever been encountered before in comic operas.  The characters of the quick-witted Figaro, the wise and loving Susanna, the formidable Count, and the unhappy Countess spring to life in the music.  Not surprisingly, just as Mozart raised dramatic opera to new heights five years earlier with his dramatic opera Idomeneo, so did he transcend the Italian comic opera formula in Le Nozze di Figaro.

The story of Le Nozze di Figaro is the sequel to another Beaumarchais play – The Barber of Seville, which Rossini would later set to an opera thirty years later, making the latter story in a sense a prequel for audiences.  In The Barber of Seville, Count Almaviva, with substantial help from Figaro, wooed and won the lovely Rosina away from her crusty old ward and would-be husband, Bartolo.

Beaumarchais wrote his play La Folle Journé, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day of the Marriage of Figaro) only two years before Mozart and da Ponte would collaborate on the opera.  No longer a barber, Figaro is now the Count’s valet in a castle outside Seville.  The Count has been long marriage to Rosina, now the Countess, but their marriage has soured because of the Count’s philandering.  Engaged to Susanna, Figaro spends the entire day trying to keep his fiancée away from the lecherous Count while the Countess and Susanna plot to catch the Count in his adulterous behavior.  Old Bartolo is back to seek revenge on Figaro for taking Rosina away from him, with the help of the slimy music teach, Don Basilio.  Adding to the fun are an amorous teenage boy, a scheming old maid, a drunken gardener, and a silly young girl.  From mistaken identities and misunderstandings to newly discovered parents, much happens on a single “crazy day.”

With a brilliantly crafted libretto by da Ponte and one of Mozart’s most astonishing masterpieces, the result is a witty yet profound tale of love, betrayal, and forgiveness.  The Overture captures spirit of fun and even silliness wrapped in the elegance of the time.  It remains one of the most recognizable overtures in all of music, and one of hallmarks of Mozart’s music.

1781 was a critical year for Mozart.  Setting out for Vienna, Mozart severed his ties to the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg, and more importantly, he freed himself from the provincial watchful eye of his father, Leopold.  Within a year, the 26-year-old composer married Constanze Weber, although he originally hoped to marry her old sister and talented soprano, Aloysia.  Although Leopold vehemently objected to the marriage, Mozart traveled to Salzburg to present his bride to his father.  After a fairly unpleasant visit, the Mozart’s traveled back to Vienna.

During their travels, the couple stayed over in Linz, Austria’s third largest city.  There they received a wonderful welcome, and a concert was arranged for Mozart to present his works.  Mozart immediately began composing a new work with fury inspiration, and within five days (an incredibly short amount of time even for Mozart), he created his Symphony No. 36.

For the first time, Mozart opens the Linz Symphony with a slow introduction, which became the trademark of Haydn’s later symphonies.  After the more serious slower introduction, the first movement launches into a vibrant ride typical of Mozart’s first movements to a symphony.  With another first for Mozart, the second movement includes trumpets and timpani, giving a mood of tragedy and drama to the elegant and traditional slower second movement.

The minuet of the third movement also has more characteristics of Haydn’s heavier minuets, including a more celebratory feel by a sturdy dance-like tempo and the use of fanfares with the brass and timpani.  Finally, Mozart concludes his gift to the city of Linz with a spirited, brisk finale wrapped in boundless energy and wonderful good humor.

While the Linz Symphony was an incredible feat of quick creativity, the work is some of Mozart’s most finely polished writing (and his longest symphony at the time).  The work also proved to be a nice respite from the disappointing visit with his father.  More importantly, Mozart proved to himself (and his father) of his stature as an artist.