Master of all he surveys
Robin Holloway
Culpable (and unwonted) incuriosity to have gone so far through life placing Mozart's four canonical operas — the three da Ponte collaborations and the Magic Flute — at the summit of Parnassus, with Idomeneo and Seraglio only a little below, without exploring the path by which such heights were reached.
In the last few weeks I've been making this omission good. Not counting the extra two, indispensable classics only since the second world war, there are 16 theatre pieces before Figaro in 1785-6: they range from full-length operas (four seria, four buffa) to shorter serenatas, occasional works; even a school show in Latin (Apollo et Hyacinthus — first in the long line, written at age 11). One, Zaide, though unfinished, is so substantial, and inspired, that it's not possible now to imagine doing without it. Thamos, King of Egypt, also impressive, only ever consisted of incidental choruses and orchestral interludes; two others, both begun in the wake of Idomeneo, are too fragmentary for rescue.
I've heard almost all, with wonder and delight, comingled with many a yawn. At the very least there is the reward for diligence in watching the prodigious boy then teenager learning the ropes — not just how to master the conventions, get the thing moving, build through complement and contrast, characterise, but how to cope equally with singers' recalcitrance, vanity, stupidity as with their spectacular endowments; how to respond at speed to chal lenges and emergencies of every kind (including positives, like some exceptionally accomplished instrumentalist); how to get on with and if necessary around his librettists. Plus plentiful exposure to the messy machinations endemic to theatrical life then as now, but then compounded by the politics of Court, Church, Nobility, lying at the heart of the ancien regime.
From the vantage point of the later masterpieces it's obvious that his comic genius will be Mozart's most fruitful way forward. Not, though, to the young composer hungry to succeed and bursting with ideas. For him the greatest aspiration was opera seria in all its, to us, frigid panoply of unreal people in stilted situations exercising impossible clemency or villainy. Of course the characters and situations of comedy are just as stereotyped to begin with: but it's with them that the future lies. Or with a mixture. And while there's no doubt that there's more pleasure and value in Mozart's earlier stage — endeavours on the buffa side, and that all the worst longueurs are seria — what one sees is the progressive breakdown and intermingling of these seemingly watertight separations. Ahead by a very few years lie the co-existence in Figaro of high and low equalised in the exigencies of desire and the cunning needed to fulfil it; the tragic nobility and the rustic peasantry who dance obedient to the tune of master and man in Don Giovanni; the invasion in Cosi fan tutte of absurdity and parody by real, sharp, painful emotion. All this is being tried out already in the earlier pieces; sometimes the connection is tenuous; more often it is so strong as to induce a shock of precognition.
Tedium first. Mitridate, re di Ponte was written for Milan in 1770 when Mozart was 14; so successful was it that Ascanio in Alba was requested the following year. Neither provides much joy, though there's always something in seeing the boy's unfailingly immaculate technical competence. Arias are routine (except one in Mitriclate with a last-minute addition of a sensational virtuoso horn part, and another wherein the heroine dallies with a goblet of poison); there's more promise in moments of accompanied recitative. In Ascanio the choruses (one for shepherds, one for nymphs) come round so often that one wants to blow up the whole Arcadian scene. I've not yet been able to hear its successor Lucio Si/la, also for Milan the year after. Commentators agree that it marks a sudden advance.
But the Singspiel in German and opera buffa in Italian are ahead from the start. Even silly little Bastien und Bastienne is more alive and alert: and La finta semplice, its contemporary (1768 — Mozart was 12) has many charms. This 'Supposed Female Simpleton' is all very well and can give real pleasure, but it is wholly eclipsed by its near namesake of six years later, in finta giardiniera ('the Supposed Female
Gardener"), with a plot of giddy convolution involving universal madness (genuine and feigned) as well as the usual crossed desires, cross-dressing (made worse to disentangle because of the castrato roles), complicit servant and outwitted old fool of a master. Parallels with situations, characters, music to come lie vividly all around; and the finales to Acts I and H are astonishing in their ambitious continuity, and their sheer length. The second, if the four linked numbers before it are included, makes a larger structure than the otherwise longest (and greatest), the celebrated Act II finale of Figaro. Both are as yet stiffjointed and formulaic; fluidity of movement, the sense of constant forward evolution as the story takes new twists and the cast constantly re-groups, simply isn't possible when, as in the first finale, all seven characters are onstage throughout. Yet the audacity, and its handling, are already breathtaking. After them Act III is a poor little runt (48 pages; the other two together come to 225). But before it runs out of steam this piece is full of pleasure eminently typical of their composer.
And so to Zaide (1779-80; aged 23-4): two acts completed which no commission brought into being, for which no libretto has survived. The music to this stock sample of the Turkish/Algerian, so exotic and sexy to its times, is ravishing — by no means surpassed by the familiar, directly comparable Seraglio, which followed in 1781-2 (they are separated by the incomparable Idomeneo). Both contain an Osminl In fact I believe that if only Zaide were finished it would be seen as a better balanced and more beautiful work. The experimental melodramas — mix of music and speech are fascinating in themselves and more interesting than the norm of secco recitative in Italian operas or unmediated spoken dialogue in the German Singspiel. The arias can achieve penetrating beauty — witness the piece's one famous number, the heroine's ruhe sanft. The orchestral sonority is especially lovely even by Mozart's high standard. And the ensembles — Act I ends with a trio, Act II with a quartet — are the best evidence of all that the prodigy is now a master of all he surveys.
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