Mozart's Women

by Glover, Jane

  IF INDEED IT was a spirit of happy confidence in Mozart, supported as he was by the loving warmth of all his Munich friends, which propelled him into taking such monumental steps into operatic maturity with Idomeneo, it was an altogether different environment which was to challenge him in Vienna. A far cry from the almost cosy, family-oriented artistic milieu of Munich, that of the Austrian capital was a cut-throat world of competition, self-promoting intrigue and machination, and huge individual egos. Dominated by, but by no means limited to, activities at Court, Viennese music-making involved a large assembly of personalities, tightly contesting and jealously guarding their territories. Political manoeuvre, and the corruptions habitually associated with power, were rife and effective.

  The central figure in all this was the Italian wunderkind, Antonio Salieri, who, only six years older than Mozart, had at the age of twenty-four (in 1774) been appointed as Composer at Court, and also as Director of Opera. Later, in 1788, he would succeed Giuseppe Bonno in the illustrious position of Kapellmeister. For the rest of Mozart’s life these two composers would dance around each other in a complex relationship: Salieri did seem to block the path of his new rival, and possibly also to stir up cabals against him. But superficially at least they remained on the most courteous of terms; and beyond all the suspicion and mistrust there was unquestionably mutual respect, and, in the long run, affection too. And when in the spring of 1781 Mozart came to Vienna from Munich, he was unperturbed as he met head-on the challenges of this wholly different environment. For he was young, energetic, very noticeable, and above all extremely able; and there were abundant opportunities to be seized.

  As the unfinished Zaïde had perhaps shown, Mozart had long had in his sights Joseph II’s German National Theatre company at the Burgtheater. Since 1776, when this former real-tennis court and later home of French opéra-comique and Italian opera seria had come under the direct control of the Court, it had presented that thoroughly German theatrical art-form, singspiel, or comic opera in German with spoken dialogue. When Mozart arrived in Vienna, the director of the German National Theatre was Gottlieb Stephanie; and it was he who commissioned Mozart to write Die Entführung aus dem Serail, to his own adaptation of Bretzner’s play. With both Zaïde and Idomeneo, Mozart had made significant contributions to the work of the librettist, exercising in collaboration first with Schachtner and then with Varesco his own supreme musico-theatrical instincts, and helping therefore to fashion a text that best served the musical and emotional development of the drama. Here in Vienna, he took this collaboration one step further, working literally beside Stephanie to set the musical structure and enable real development of character. And he found this process intensely satisfying. He wrote to Leopold, ‘[Stephanie] is arranging the libretto for me – just as I want it, in fact – to a hair.’35 Mozart the musician and Mozart the dramatist were from now on inseparable.

  The story of Die Entführung aus dem Serail concerns the unrequited love of an oriental potentate, the Pasha Selim, for his female prisoner Constanze; her attempted but foiled rescue by her lover Belmonte; and their eventual pardon by the magnanimous Selim. In addition to these three principal characters, there are their servants. Constanze’s maid, Blonde, and Belmonte’s manservant, Pedrillo, provide cheerful contrast to the nobility and seriousness of their masters. The overseer of the harem, Osmin, is ostensibly a cruel and unyielding figure, but he is smitten with love for Blonde and therefore, especially in the hands of Mozart, rendered truly multidimensional: human, tender, even vulnerable. And the cast that Stephanie assembled to perform this singspiel was of exceptional quality. After the uneven standards of the singers in Mozart’s previous operas in Munich and even in Italy, the consistently high level of expertise in Vienna must have been for him an unprecedented delight.

  At the time of Die Entführung’s commission and preparation, Mozart was lodging with Frau Weber, courting Constanze and rebuilding his bridges with Aloysia. It is tempting to speculate that he might have wanted Aloysia to assume the all-important role of Constanze. But, had he even thought to suggest her, it is unlikely that she would have been able to take part, for she was rapidly producing children (her first daughter was born in May 1781, and by the beginning of 1782 she was pregnant again). And in fact a singer whose profile was even higher than Aloysia’s was available. The twenty-six-year-old Caterina Cavalieri was the toast of Vienna. Trained by Salieri, and now his mistress too, she had made her debut in Vienna at the age of twenty in Anfossi’s La finta giardiniera at the Kärntnerthor-Theater in 1775. In 1778 she had joined the singspiel company, and continued to sing in both Italian and German operas. She was a huge catch, and Mozart must have been thrilled to haul her in. Their relationship would continue long after Die Entführung aus dem Serail: she would go on to create Madame Silberklang in Der Schauspieldirektor in 1786, to sing Donna Elvira in the first Viennese production of Don Giovanni in 1788, the Countess in the 1789 revival of Figaro, and, in concert, in Davidde Penitente and Mozart’s reworking of Handel’s Acis and Galatea. Socially too she and the Mozarts remained close, visiting one another regularly. Wolfgang’s final letter, to Constanze in October 1791, described with relaxed confidence how Cavalieri and Salieri sat in his box at a performance of Die Zauberflöte, along with his mother-in-law and young son, all in the greatest amity. They had become among his closest acquaintances.

  The tenor cast as Belmonte was older: Johann Valentin Adamberger was over forty. He had studied in Munich under the renowned teacher Giovanni Valesi (who had just created for Mozart the small but magisterially important role of the High Priest in Idomeneo, and whose later pupils would include Constanze’s cousin Carl Maria von Weber). In 1780 Adamberger had joined the German National Theatre; and by the spring of 1781 he was already central to Viennese musical activity, both theatrically and socially, gracing many an aristocratic salon in addition to the operatic stage. He too, together with his actress wife Maria Anna, would become close to Wolfgang and Constanze, exchanging visits and advising one another on their political manoeuvres at Court. For Adamberger, Mozart wrote not just Belmonte, but also the tenor aria ‘Per pietà, non ricercate’, K420, to be inserted into Anfossi’s opera Il curioso indiscreto in 1783 (when Aloysia sang her two arias, K418 and 419). In the event, Salieri, probably indeed trying to sabotage Mozart’s brief exposure in Anfossi’s opera, persuaded Adamberger that it would be inappropriate for him to sing this extra music (though Aloysia loyally and courageously went ahead and sang hers), and Adamberger’s friendship with Wolfgang temporarily faltered. ‘Now he is sorry, but it is too late,’36 wrote Wolfgang to Leopold, relating the whole incident. But on numerous other occasions Adamberger did perform Mozart’s music, and their mutual affection was restored.

  Wolfgang would have been delighted that two old friends were also to be in his cast. He had known both Therese Teiber and Ludwig Fischer, respectively Blonde and Osmin, since the summer of 1773, when he and his father had made their rather fruitless visit to Vienna. Therese Teiber came from an extremely musical family: her father Matthias was a violinist at Court, her two brothers became celebrated as a violinist and an organist, and she and her elder sister Elisabeth would have successful careers as singers. Matthias Teiber had lent Wolfgang a violin in 1773, and, united perhaps by the fact that both he and Leopold were fathers of remarkable offspring, the families had spent time in each other’s company. One day that summer, when both Wolfgang and Therese were in their teens, they had all gone together on a visit to Baden as guests of the promising young bass Ludwig Fischer. And now both these singers were to appear in Wolfgang’s new opera. At twenty-two, Therese was the youngest of the cast, but had already been a member of the German National Theatre at the Burgtheater for three years, and would continue there, specializing in the soubrette repertory, for a further ten. She would also continue her association with Mozart, performing Giunia’s ‘Parto, m’affretto’ from Lucio Silla in a concert of his at the Burgtheater in March 1783, and, later, taking over some perf
ormances of Zerlina in the first Viennese production of Don Giovanni in 1788.

  At the time of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Ludwig Fischer was in his mid-thirties, and extremely popular with audiences – ‘he has the whole Viennese public on his side,’37 Wolfgang wrote approvingly to his father in September 1781. His voice had developed most splendidly in its lower register, and Wolfgang was to exploit this fully (‘I have allowed Fischer’s beautiful deep notes to glow’38). He even seriously considered rewriting the role of Idomeneo for him, for Fischer was clearly a formidable actor as well as a distinguished and popular singer. Nothing ever came of that idea; but Mozart did revel in every aspect of Fischer’s talent, and in his long-standing familiarity too with Therese Teiber, as he created the theatrically glorious relationship between Blonde and Osmin. Eventually Fischer would move to Paris, and Wolfgang helped him get established there by writing him letters of introduction. But he hated losing his charismatic friend, and wrote to Leopold in February 1783, ‘The Viennese are making the foolish mistake of letting a man go who can never be replaced.’39

  Contemporary with Fischer was the tenor and actor Johann Ernst Dauer, who was to take the role of Pedrillo. He too was enormously popular at the Burgtheater, where he specialized in lighter roles and remained a favourite with audiences for over thirty years. If his talents were more as an actor than as a singer (on the evening before the opening of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, he appeared in a German version of Sheridan’s A School for Scandal), he was by no means a musical passenger; and in addition to his many contributions to ensembles, both comic and serious, Wolfgang rewarded him with a fine and heroic aria, ‘Frisch zum Kampfe’. Finally, the non-singing but enormously important role of the Pasha Selim was taken by the fifty-year-old actor Dominik Joseph Jautz, who was a stalwart of the Burgtheater in both plays and singspiels. (He had performed the part of Horatio in the first Viennese production of Hamlet in 1773.)

  There was thus not a single weak link in the cast: there was no Dal Prato, nor any last-minute replacement by a local church singer. And, for the first time in Mozart’s operas, the ages of the performers were absolutely perfect. No longer did he have singers in their forties playing women in their twenties: rather, there was real dramatic verisimilitude in lustrous addition to vocal distinction. Mozart had largely shaped the libretto himself, with his natural instincts for characterization, pacing and structure, so recently refined in Idomeneo; and his own passions were energized by his freedom from Salzburg and his infatuation with Constanze Weber. All this would lead to another giant leap for him as he created his Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

  Just as he had done when writing Idomeneo in Munich, Wolfgang kept his father informed of the whole process of composition. (His motive was perhaps now slightly ulterior: as Leopold disapproved so ferociously of all his current activities, he was determined at least to retain his obsessive interest in his music.) ‘I thought it would afford you pleasure,’ he wrote on 26 September 1781, ‘if I gave you some idea of my opera.’40 He described his work on the text with Stephanie, his preoccupation with key relationships, his specific use of ‘Turkish’ music (involving percussion and piccolos) in the overture, the choruses and some of Osmin’s music, and, quite unselfconsciously, his effortless ability to write extremely good counterpoint in such a way as actually to enhance the dramatic moment. Of the trio ‘Marsch, marsch, marsch’ for the three men, for instance, he wrote:

  Now for the trio at the close of Act I. Pedrillo has passed off his master as an architect – to give him an opportunity of meeting his Constanze in the garden. Bassa Selim has taken him into his service. Osmin, the steward, knows nothing of this, and being a rude churl and a sworn foe to all strangers, is impertinent and refuses to let them into the garden. It opens quite abruptly – and because the words lend themselves to it, I have made it a fairly respectable piece of three-part writing.

  But above all, Mozart’s letter to his father demonstrates new depths of maturity and his ability to read a psychological state of mind and represent it in the music. He describes, for example, the acceleration in Osmin’s final rage aria ‘O wie will ich triumphiren’ (claiming with modest confidence, ‘this is bound to be effective’), and gives Leopold his wholly articulate reasons for deploying it:

  Just as a man in such a towering rage oversteps all the bounds of order, moderation and propriety and completely forgets himself, so must the music too forget itself. But since passions, whether violent or not, must never be expressed to the point of exciting disgust, and, as music, even in the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear but must please the listener, or in other words must never cease to be music, so I have not chosen a key foreign to F (in which the aria is written) but one related to it – not the nearest, D minor, but the more remote A minor.

  Wolfgang has reached new levels of sophisticated human understanding, and found the means to achieve what he wants in his music.

  All his characters are therefore well defined, and, for Fischer and Adamberger he wrote music that was challenging and greatly rewarding. For Therese Teiber he created the first in a series of roles that would develop later with Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Despina in Così fan tutte, and, most especially, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. Blonde’s adorable perkiness and abundant common sense are perfectly expressed in her music. Her two arias are mainly syllabic, indicating both a matter-of-fact defiance in her dealings with Osmin and a beguiling and straightforward sweetness in her relationship with Pedrillo. But since Teiber evidently had a marvellous agility in her upper register, which Wolfgang exploited as happily as he did Fischer’s low notes, Blonde has in her opening aria, ‘Durch zärtlichkeit’ (With tenderness) spectacular melismatic flourishes on the word ‘entweicht’ (banished), taking her far above the stave as she confidently brushes aside Osmin’s boorish commands (‘mürrisches Befehlen’). The duet between them, ‘Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir’ (I’ll go, but take my advice and stay away), is a brilliant piece of subtle comedy for Wolfgang’s two old friends. He delights in allowing Blonde to mimic Osmin’s low notes, taking her way below her normal tessitura before springing her back up again over two octaves. In the central andante section, Blonde weaves a manipulative ornamental line above Osmin’s bemused and syllabic bass line. And in the final allegro, ‘Nun troll dich’, which she constantly leads, she firmly threatens to scratch his eyes out (‘Es ist um die Augen geschehen’) in music which appropriately taunts and stabs. Not only is all this hilariously effective in clarifying Blonde’s upper hand over Osmin, and hugely entertaining too as the two characters play off each other; it is also a perfect foil for what immediately follows, Constanze’s most tragic aria, ‘Traurigkeit’.

  For indeed it is the music for this noble central character, as interpreted by the most distinguished singer of the day, which truly encapsulates Mozart’s new depths of maturity. At Constanze’s first appearance, in an exchange of dialogue with the Pasha Selim, they both behave impeccably while neither loses ground (he loves her passionately; she sweetly and apologetically desists); and when he begs her to explain what is holding her back, suddenly out of nowhere appears the plangent sound of a solo oboe, sustaining a single note. And tentatively, hesitatingly, Constanze begins to tell him her story: she loves another man, whom she has lost (‘Ach ich liebte, war so glücklich’ – I was in love, and so happy). Her sentences are broken, as if with the emotion of the narrative, and as ever Mozart reflects her tension in the orchestra too, whose repeated semiquavers at different dynamic levels suggest a world of deep unhappiness. As she rises to the full confession of her punchline (‘gab dahin mein ganzes Herz’ – I gave him my whole heart), pausing for a sad little ornament on ‘ganzes’, she can restrain her passion no longer, and pours it all out in a highly strung allegro: ‘Doch wie schnell schwand meine Freude’ (But how quickly my joy vanished). Pairs of woodwind instruments float beside her; syncopated strings throb beneath her. And then Mozart unleashes Cavalieri’s amazing vocal skills, with hig
h, controlled and sustained passages of formidable coloratura. ‘I have sacrificed Constanze’s aria a little to the flexible throat of Mlle Cavalieri,’ Wolfgang wrote admiringly to his father. The aria is unquestionably extremely demanding. But as it was Mozart’s first presentation to, and of, Caterina Cavalieri, it was a real expression of her gifts, and of his respect for them as he deployed them so effectively.

  By contrast, Constanze’s soliloquy in the second act, ‘Traurigkeit’, is an almost slow-motion expression of her pain. Coming as it does after the fiery duet between Blonde and Osmin, the opening orchestral bars of its accompanied recitative immediately arrest the pace, and dissolve into the desolation of a simple vocal line (‘Welcher Kummer herrscht in meiner Seele’ – What sorrow dwells in my heart). The strings of the orchestra sigh for her in fragmented semiquavers, and lead into the aria itself, where four pairs of winds (flutes, oboes, basset horns and bassoons) now provide contrasting texture and colour. And here Constanze seems to be locked into her grief: in the course of this long aria, her music hardly ever settles on to a perfect cadence, but continues in relentless and unresolved misery, punctuated instead by frozen silences, where her sorrow prevents her from uttering anything at all. Again, Cavalieri’s technique allowed her to sustain this immensely challenging aria, in the course of which Mozart at a stroke turned the high comedy of the previous scene into lonely anguish.