Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as revealed in his own words | Page 9

Museum on the occasion of
the death of the famous Field Marshal Laudon. The dominant mood of
sorrow prevails in the first movement; the Allegro is in Handel's style.)

CONCERNING THE OPERA

When he was twenty-two years old Mozart wrote to his father, "I am
strongly filled with the desire to write an opera." Often does he speak
of this ambition. It was, in fact, his true and individual field as the
symphony was that of Beethoven. He took counsel with his father by
letter touching many details in his earlier operas, wherefore we are
advised about their origin, and, what is more to the purpose, about
Mozart's fine aesthetic judgment. His four operatic masterpieces are
imperishable, and a few words about them are in place, particularly
since Mozart has left numerous and interesting comments on "Die

Entfuhrung aus dem Serail." This first German opera he composed with
the confessed purpose of substituting a work designed for the "national
lyric stage" for the conventional and customary Italian opera. Despite
its Hispano-Turkish color, the work is so ingenuous, so German in
feeling, and above all so full of German humor that the success was
unexampled, and Mozart could write to his father: "The people are daft
over my opera." Here, at the very outset, Mozart's humor, the golden
one of all the gifts with which Mother Nature had endowed him, was
called into play. With this work German comic opera took its beginning.
As has been remarked "although it has been imitated, it has never been
surpassed in its musically comic effects." The delightfully Falstaffian
figure of Osmin, most ingeniously characterized in the music, will
create merriment for all time, and the opera acquires a new, personal
and peculiarly amiable charm from the fact that we are privileged to see
in the love-joy of "Belmont" and "Constanze" an image of that of the
young composer and his "Stanzerl."
After "Die Entfuhrung" (1782) came "Le Nozze di Figaro" (1786),
"Don Giovanni" (1787), and "Die Zauberflote" (1791). It would be a
vain task to attempt to establish any internal relationship between these
works. Mozart was not like Wagner, a strong personality capable of
devoting a full sum of vital force to the carrying out of a chosen and
approved principle. As is generally the case with geniuses, he was a
child; a child led by momentary conditions; moreover, a child of the
rococo period. There is, therefore, no cause of wonderment in the fact
that Italian texts are again used in "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Don
Giovanni," and that another, but this time a complete German opera,
does not appear until we reach "Die Zauberflote."
Nevertheless it is possible to note a development towards a climax in
the four operas respecting Mozart's conception of the world. It has been
denied that there is a single red thread in Mozart's life-work.
Nevertheless our method of study will disclose to us an ever-growing
view of human lift, and a deeper and deeper glimpse into the emotional
and intellectual life of man, his aims and destiny. From the almost
commonplace conditions of "Die Entfuhrung," where a rascal sings in
the best of humor of first beheading and then hanging a man, we reach

a plane in "The Marriage of Figaro," in which despite the refinement
and mitigation of Beaumarchais's indictment we feel the revolutionary
breeze freshly blowing. In "Don Giovanni" we see the individual set up
in opposition to God and the world, in order that he fulfill his destiny,
or live out his life, as the popular phrase goes today. Here the
tremendous tragedy which lies in the story has received a musical
expression quite without parallel, notwithstanding the moderation
exercised in the employment of means. In "Die Zauberflote," finally,
we observe the clarification which follows the fermentation. Here we
breathe the pure, clear atmosphere of heaven, the atmosphere within
which he can live who has freed himself from selfish desire, thus
gaining internal peace, and who recognizes his ego only in the
happiness and welfare of others.

22. "I have an unspeakable desire to compose another opera....In Italy
one can acquire more honor and credit with an opera than with a
hundred concerts in Germany, and I am the happier because I can
compose, which, after all, is my one joy and passion....I am beside
myself as soon as I hear anybody talk about an opera, sit in a theatre or
hear singing."
(Munich, October 11, 1777, to his father, reporting an expectation of
making a position for himself in Italy.)
23. "I beg of you do your best that we may go to Italy. You know my
greatest longing--to write operas....Do not forget my wish to write
operas! I am envious of every man who composes one; I could almost
weep