Mozart's Women

by Glover, Jane

  There were major anxieties too about the casting of Idamante. The castrato Vincenzo Dal Prato, exactly the same age as Mozart, had just been hired by Munich, where he would remain in service for twenty years. But before they even met, Wolfgang had his doubts about him, telling Leopold that he had heard reports of Dal Prato being unable to sing long phrases. Once Dal Prato arrived, Wolfgang’s misgivings were confirmed. He was ill-prepared, unimaginative both musically and dramatically, and seemed short of attention and concentration. Even Wolfgang’s legendary patience with his colleagues was sorely tried, and eventually he reported in exasperation to Salzburg that Dal Prato was ‘utterly useless’.33 So, as ever, Wolfgang cut his musical coat according to the cloth of Dal Prato’s vocal abilities, again transferring much of the musical energy to the orchestra. But his disappointment was exacerbated by the fact that Idamante was a role very close to his heart. The whole father–son relationship between Idomeneo and Idamante was something to which he was ever sensitive; and although for the rest of his life he continued to look back on the period of Idomeneo in Munich as one of his happiest, he was always affected by the paternal and filial tensions in the opera. As Constanze reported, in the course of a normal evening of domestic music-making at the Tanzmeisterhaus, during their visit to Salzburg in 1783, the assembled group launched into the quartet from Idomeneo, in which the passionate love between father and son is at its most disturbed by the vicissitudes of circumstance; and Wolfgang fled from the room in tears.

  If Wolfgang was experiencing frustration, therefore, at the casting of the two central male roles, the women who played Ilia and Elettra delighted him on every level, for these were the wives of his great friends, the Wendling brothers. Dorotea Wendling had married the flautist Johann Baptist when she was sixteen, in 1752, had produced their daughter Elisabeth Augusta in the same year, and, with her husband, had joined the musical establishment at Mannheim. In 1777, when Wolfgang and his mother had spent the winter in Mannheim, they had been regular guests of Johann Baptist and Dorotea, and, as Maria Anna had reported to Leopold, ‘Wolfgang is a tremendous favourite with them.’34 Dorotea was now, at forty-six, to take the role of the young Trojan princess Ilia. If Wolfgang had any misgivings at all about her ability to portray a woman half her own age, he never expressed them (any more than he had when the forty-year-old Anna De Amicis had sung Giunia in Lucio Silla). Rather, he would have been thrilled that an artist for whom he had already written a dramatic concert aria (‘Basta, vincesti’, K486a, in 1778, to a text which she herself had chosen) and whose voice he therefore knew completely, would now be in his opera.

  Dorotea’s sister-in-law, Elisabeth Augusta, was married to Johann Baptist Wendling’s violinist brother Franz Anton. She was the younger by ten years, had joined the Mannheim Court at the age of fifteen in 1761, and married her husband in 1764. She too had produced a daughter, who would in due course also become a singer, and had named her Dorotea after her talented aunt. (That one Wendling brother had a wife Dorotea and a daughter Elisabeth Augusta, and the other a wife Elisabeth Augusta and a daughter Dorotea, has remained a challenge to admirers of Karl Theodor’s musical establishment for centuries.) Elisabeth Augusta was cast in the dramatically thrilling role of Elettra. The educated Munich audiences, well versed like Leopold and Wolfgang in classical literature, would have been thoroughly familiar with this damaged product of the House of Atreus. So Elettra’s presence in this story of Idomeneo, although potentially an ultimate irrelevance, was an added strand of violence, suffering, devotion and insanity. And, through Elisabeth Augusta Wendling, Wolfgang was to exploit all these emotions brilliantly.

  Mozart’s increasingly sophisticated methods of breaking the rules of opera seria, in order to give continual momentum to dramatic and emotional narrative, are immediately apparent at the end of Idomeneo’s energetic, tensely syncopated overture. Rather than coming to a resounding conclusion, inviting therefore the customary applause, the music subsides into soft and reflective string chords, out of which emerges the voice of Ilia: ‘Quando avran fine mai l’aspre sventure mie?’ (Will my harsh sufferings never end?). For the first time Mozart has let the orchestra take the audience directly into the body of the opera, and into the mind of this unhappy young woman; and the tumult of the overture has therefore been hers. As Ilia continues her soliloquy, she imparts essential narrative information: she has been shipwrecked in a storm, lost her father and brothers, been rescued by Idamante whom she believes loves Elettra, and has fallen for him. She expresses homelessness, grief, loss, bereavement, new amorous passion, and jealousy (of Elettra); and the orchestra follows her every mood-swing, supplying emotional commentary to Ilia’s desolate story. Eventually she settles into a mournful, utterly beautiful aria, ‘Padre, germani, addio’ (Farewell my father and brothers), where again it is the orchestra which shadows Ilia’s emotional fragility, in agitated syncopations, little stabbing forte-piano emphases, and, like a male dancer lifting his female partner, with supportive accompaniment as she soars through her long final melisma. After such an opening soliloquy, an audience might again have been expected to break into applause; and once more Mozart removes any possible opportunity to do so by not actually bringing her scena to a conclusion, but by cross-fading it directly into what follows. Idamante approaches, and the accompanying texture gradually unwinds into string-accompanied recitative, and then into simple recitative. It is a staggering opening to the opera. At a stroke, Mozart has put the audience firmly into the narrative picture, naming all the principal characters and establishing the relationships between them. He has issued firm instructions about not applauding, even for musicians of such quality. And with this initial scene of emotional intensity and music that is both beguiling and arresting, he has launched his friend Dorotea Wendling into her magnificent role of Ilia.

  At the beginning of the second act Ilia has a most touching scene with the returned Idomeneo. (She is as yet unaware of his appalling conflict, nor of the decision therefore that he has made, to send Idamante back to Argos with Elettra.) She expresses her own sweet gratitude that he has been returned safely to his people, saying in her aria ‘Se il padre perdei’ that she now looks upon him as a father, since she has lost her own. And here, in the aria about a new family and peace of mind, Mozart wrote not only for Dorotea’s glorious sustained singing, but for her husband Johann Baptist Wendling and his other friends in the orchestra too: ‘Se il padre perdei’ is enriched with solo instrumental lines for flute (Wendling), oboe (Friedrich Ramm), horn (Franz Lang) and bassoon (Georg Ritter) – the very same combination of instruments, and indeed players, for whom he had written a sinfonia concertante in Paris in 1778. The enhancement of the vocal line by these other solo strands gives the music a special sense of repose and transparency at this intimate expression of political reconciliation and personal gratitude. That it was, literally, a ‘family’ moment for the original protagonists is indicative of the intensity of Mozart’s own gratitude to his dear friends, and a real gift to them as they all shared in it.

  By the time Ilia reappears at the beginning of the final act, Neptune has thwarted Idomeneo’s wild attempt to slide out of his vow, and sent his storm and monster to wreak havoc in Crete. But she is concerned only with her feelings for Idamante, wrestling with her deep desire to confess her love to him. In another aria for Dorotea Wendling’s sustained cantabile singing, so admired by Mozart, Ilia invites gentle breezes (‘Zeffiretti’) to fly to her beloved and make her confession for her. Again this opening scene is enfolded by accompanied recitative, so there are no rigid divisions between the distillations of her thoughts; and the orchestra contributes emotional counterpoint to her longings, supporting and mirroring her own vocal lyricism. Ilia and Idamante at last confess their passionate love for each other, in a scene which Mozart builds from simple recitative to accompanied recitative, and eventually into the most tender of duets; and these two voices of equal range (if not ability) intertwine, blend and share. United now in thirds, they move i
nto a rapturous allegretto, only to have their euphoria – and their duet – interrupted by the arrival of Idomeneo and Elettra. As Idomeneo insists that Idamante flees from Crete and seeks safe refuge elsewhere, four unhappy people then sing the most remarkable music in the whole opera, the quartet. Whereas in Lucio Silla Mozart’s trio had been a duet-plus-one, and in Zaïde his quartet was a duet-plus-one-plus-one, here in Idomeneo the quartet consists of four separate voices expressing four separate miseries, united only by the fact that each of them is suffering: they come together to sing the lines ‘Ah il cor mi si divide! / Soffrir più non si può’ (My heart is breaking; there is no worse suffering). With brilliant control, Mozart focuses first on one character and then on another, bringing his or her musical line into sharp relief against the background of those of the others, and the audience thus has the impression of hearing and comprehending four strands of wretchedness at the same time; and the moments of shared suffering are heart-stopping. This utterly extraordinary quartet ends, as it began, with Idamante’s framing line, ‘Andrò ramingo e solo’ (Alone I shall wander in the wilderness).

  In spite of Idamante’s triumphant slaughter of Neptune’s monster, Idomeneo is persuaded by his High Priest and his own people that, for the sake of his country, he must go ahead with his avowed sacrifice; and in distress he at last discloses the identity of his victim. The ceremony begins, and Idomeneo prepares to kill his own son, in public view. But at the very moment of sacrifice, Ilia rushes in to interrupt it, arguing with admirable logic that Idamante is innocent, that the gods wish to rid Greece of its enemies not its sons, and that therefore she, as the daughter of Priam, is the one who should die. And, as in the tightly controlled exchanges of dignity and courage between Idomeneo and Idamante, this self-sacrificing speech is set entirely in accompanied recitative, with the orchestra as ever pointing and releasing every nuance of Ilia’s dramatic utterance. Her offer to die for the man she loves, the finest and most noble gesture available to any human being, mollifies the gods, and Neptune now intervenes with his instructions for peace at last in Crete.

  Dorotea Wendling’s final appearance on stage in Idomeneo thus propelled the opera towards its dramatic denouement, and at the same time gave a superb conclusion to her role. Ilia is one of Mozart’s first truly great creations, a thoroughly rounded character of sweetness, intelligence and courage, whose essential attributes would reappear, first, in Constanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and then, a decade later, in Pamina in Die Zauberflöte. All the while that Wolfgang had been complaining in his letters to Leopold about the inadequacies of his male singers, he never breathed a word of criticism against his sopranos. Rather, he reported to Salzburg that Dorotea Wendling was ‘arcicontentissima’ with her music, implying therefore that he felt the same about her; and the double superlative speaks volumes. At the end of her career, she had received from her good friend a true gift of a role, and she had risen magnificently to the challenges, both musical and dramatic, within it.

  But if Dorotea’s character encapsulated all the nobility and goodness of human behaviour, her sister-in-law Elisabeth Augusta’s was its complete opposite. The unstable Elettra, Wolfgang’s only encounter with operatic insanity, is a startlingly original and utterly compelling role. From her very first appearance Mozart shows in the music that this woman is disturbed. She comes upon Idamante freeing the Trojan prisoners, and berates him for protecting the enemy; and then, after hearing of the supposed death of Idomeneo, she has her own first monumental soliloquy. Everything, she now believes, is conspiring against her: Idamante loves another, and will dispose of his heart and his realm as he pleases; a Trojan slave will share his throne and his bed, rather than herself, the daughter of a king; and in her jealous rage she hears the tormented cries of the Furies in Hades (the family problem), egging her on to seek her vengeance.

  Elettra’s soliloquy begins with a long accompanied recitative, where the opening six bars of agitated orchestral energy and her cry of ‘Estinto è Idomeneo?’ are immediately repeated, but, with spectacular musical verisimilitude, down a semitone, as if she herself is literally losing her grip. And Mozart continues in the same vein, using every advantage of accompanied recitative to convey the disjunct state of her mind: there are sudden changes of dynamic and tempo, of pace and rhythm, and a real collapse (musically represented in a chromatically sliding descent) at the words ‘più non resisto’ (I can bear it no longer). By the time therefore that Elettra launches into her aria, ‘Tutte nel cor mi sento / Furie del crudo averno’ (Within my heart I feel all the Furies of dismal Hades), the audience is in no doubt that she is completely unhinged. And the aria itself continues to characterize all her tensions and neuroses in the music. There are breathless arpeggios on a flute, like elusive fragments of thought. There are hysterical semiquavers in the violins, with sudden forte stabs appearing at irregular intervals, dispelling any confident assumption of the metrical security of the bar-line. There are wild leaps in Elettra’s vocal line, and quasimindless repetitions (‘vendetta e crudeltà’). And the most astonishing aspect of all comes as the aria seems to be approaching a da capo, with the return of the hysterical semiquavers and the displaced fortes. She arrives at a fermata on a diminished chord, and then does indeed repeat her opening music, but in a totally unexpected key. Even if a listener is unaware of what precisely has happened (the music is now in C minor, where it should be in D minor), the aural effect is as shocking as if one has suddenly stumbled off a pavement. Mozart then allows Elettra in the next fourteen bars to claw her way harmonically back to where she should have been. And as she rushes from the stage, the music of her mental storm hurtles straight into the real storm of Idomeneo’s shipwreck. Elettra’s first soliloquy is thus a scene of unprecedented musico-dramatic brilliance; and Elisabeth Augusta Wendling must have been an actress of fierce presence and intensity to enable Mozart to have created it for her.

  But Elisabeth Augusta was not just a fiery performer. Like her sister-in-law, she could provide Mozart with what he so admired, a good cantabile singing line. In the second act, Elettra has a brief reprieve from her jealous insanities, for, when Idomeneo decides to send Idamante away, she becomes the beneficiary: she will be taken home to Argos by the man she adores. So her second soliloquy could not be in greater contrast to her first, as she now joyfully counts her blessings, and resolves to charm Idamante into forgetting her rival, Ilia, and loving her. Her string-accompanied recitative is gentle and confident, with delicate undulations from the orchestra: she seems completely healed by her rapture. And her aria (‘Idol mio’), retaining its string-only accompaniment as if the orchestra too is stripped to its simplest, is a sweetly lyrical love-song, allowing Elettra her moment of serenity. Yet there is still something subliminally disturbing about it: the phrase lengths are made irregular by the seemingly arbitrary, even mindless, repetition of single bars (the fifth and tenth bars, for instance, of the introduction). If Mozart wanted subtly to undermine Elettra’s temporary repose, he succeeded with a characteristic piece of musical prestidigitation. And again, as with so many arias in Idomeneo, her ‘Idol mio’ leads straight into the next music, here a march, which announces the imminent departure of her ship, and she hurries away to join it. At the port the assembled sailors and warriors of Argos and Crete sing a gentle departing chorus, ‘Placido è il mar, andiamo’ (The sea is quiet, let us leave), in the middle of which Elettra exhorts the gentle breezes (‘Soavi zeffiretti’) to calm the rage of the recent storm winds and spread love everywhere; and again Mozart deployed Elisabeth Augusta’s immaculately controlled cantabile singing.

  Elettra’s radiant euphoria continues as Idomeneo and Idamante appear and bid each other taut farewells. At first she rides over their tensions in the ensuing trio, maintaining her calm line of contentment. But eventually she senses their mutual distress, and has a premonition of disaster (‘Oh dio, che sarà?’), which moves the music from its gentle andante into an anxious allegro con brio; and here all three characters sha
re a prayer to the fates to bring peace to everyone. But as they approach the ship, the storm flares up, the monster appears, and the act – together with Elettra’s oasis of calm – ends in climactic disarray.

  The third and final act of Idomeneo sees Elettra’s inevitable return to insanity. Together with Idomeneo, she interrupts the tender love duet between Ilia and Idamante; and her contributions to the ensuing quartet call once more for vengeance. She joins with the others only for the communal line of suffering (‘Soffrir più non si può’), but otherwise seems already to be consigned to the outer reaches of the central story. She witnesses the sacrifice scene, and therefore Ilia’s heroic martyrdom; and, along with everyone else, she hears the voice of Neptune as he issues his decree. That she is utterly excluded from the happy resolutions pushes her firmly back over the edge, and she imagines herself in Hades along with the Furies and her brother Orestes. And here Mozart wrote a scene which, in that first Munich production, he was eventually obliged to cut: perhaps in the end Elisabeth Augusta Wendling could not maintain the stamina required for such a scena, for it is hugely demanding. Elettra shrieks at the Furies, at their serpents, at her brother, and at her own total grief, in repeated, fractured sentences and, finally, in manic laughter. This is another uncannily thorough musical treatment of insanity, and severely unsettles the composure of the audience at this stage of the opera. That Mozart simplified it for those first performances, leaving Elisabeth Augusta with a short accompanied recitative with which to rush distractedly from the stage, does suggest that, like Raaff in his central aria, she could not do the scene full justice. But there is still no doubt at all of Elettra’s state of mind, and Mozart has created for another dear friend a role of spectacular and unforgettable dramatic intensity.