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Constructing Le nozze di Figaro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Daniel Heartz
Daniel Heartz*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Lorenzo Da Ponte is our main witness as to how he and Mozart put together their three operas. His memoirs, first published in 1823, mystify the topic more than they illuminate it. Some additional light is shed by an earlier publication entitled An Extract from the Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, with the history of several dramas written by him, and among others, II Figaro, II Don Giovanni e La Scuola degh Amanti set to music by Mozart. Whoever translated this from Da Ponte's original Italian worked from a text different in many details from what was published four years later as the Memorie. The well-known passage about how the poet must rack his brains in order to invent situations for the buffo finales will be familiar to most readers from its version in the memoirs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 112 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 77 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1987

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References

1 For an introduction to this article see Heartz, Daniel, ‘Setting the Stage for Figaro’, The Musical Times, 127 (1986), 256–60Google Scholar

2 (New York, 1819) I am indebted to John Stone of London for calling my attention to this early form of a part of the memoirs, which remains unknown to the specialist literature on Mozart His annotated edition of the Extract is eagerly awaitedGoogle Scholar

3 Da Ponte's memoirs have undergone many modem editions and translations. To be preferred is the annotated critical edition of the Memorie by G Gabarin and F Nicolmi (Bari, 1918) in the senes Scrittori d’ItaliaGoogle Scholar

4 Tutte le opere di Carlo Goldoni a cura di Giuseppe Ortolani (Milan, 1935–56), i, 688, in the Mémoires (Pans, 1789), Goldoni adds to his list ‘Il faut consulter le peintre-décorateur’ (i, 258).Google Scholar

5 Hodges, Sheila, Lorenzo Da Ponte. The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist (London, 1985), 201.Google Scholar

6 Rudolf Payer von Thurn, Joseph II als Theaterdirektor Ungedruckte Briefe und Aktenstücke aus den Kinderjahren des Burgtheaters (Vienna and Leipzig, 1920), 70, letter of 29 September 1786 to RosenbergGoogle Scholar

7 See Heartz, Daniel, ‘Three Schools for Lovers. The Mozart–Da Ponte Trilogy’, About the House. The Magazine of the Friends of Covent Garden (Spring 1981), 18. ‘Da Ponte claimed in his memoirs, written four decades after the fact, that he was the one who selected the Don Juan legend, but this does not jibe with other facts, or with Mozart's clear precedence over his partner, even in literary matters.’Google Scholar

8 Thurn, Von, Joseph II als Theaterdirektor, 60Google Scholar

9 Ignaz von Mosel, Ueber das Leben und die Werke des Anton Sahen, K k. Hofkapellmeisters (Vienna, 1827), 93Google Scholar

10 Mozarts Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ed. W A. Bauer and O. E Deutsch (Kassel, 1963), iii, 443–4Google Scholar

11 Irmgard Leux-Henschen, Joseph Martin Kraus in semen Briefen (Stockholm, 1978), 310 The letter is written to the composer's sister Marianna in Frankfurt-on-MainGoogle Scholar

12 Roger Fiske in his article on Nancy Storace in the The New Grove Dictionary of Music (London, 1980), xviii, 182, says that the part of the Countess was intended originally for Storace, on the basis of what evidence we know not. Since Storace was more experienced than Laschi, and more highly paid, it seems reasonable to believe that she had her pick of either role.Google Scholar

13 Joseph II und Graf Ludwig Cobenzl Ihr Briefwechsel, ed A Beer and J von Fiedler (Vienna, 1901), i, 370, cited in H C Robbins Landon, Haydn Chronicle and Works (Bloomington and London, 1976–80), ii, 413, noteGoogle Scholar

14 Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Vienna, 1806), 377 The treatise was written in the 1780sGoogle Scholar

15 Steblin, Rita, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, 1983), 70 and 107.Google Scholar

16 Bruce Alan Brown, ‘Christoph Willibald Gluck and Opéra-Comique in Vienna, 1754–1764’ (dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1986), 345–6.Google Scholar

17 Our reading of the duettino No 1 parallels to some extent that of Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago, 1983), 75–7, but does not stem from itGoogle Scholar

18 For a Venetian example of 1745 see Heartz, Daniel, ‘Vis Comica: Goldoni, Galuppi and L’Arcadia in Brenta’, Venezia e il melodramma nel settecento, ed M. T Muraro (Florence, 1981), 37.Google Scholar

19 Reminiscences of Michael Kelly (London, 1826), i, 255–6Google Scholar

20 Sabine Henze-Dohring analyses the music and dramatic action of Act 1, part i, in Opera Sena, Opera Buffa and Mozarts Don Giovanni. Zur Gattungsconvergenz in der italienischen Oper des 18 Jahrhunderts (Laaber, 1986), 104–10 She shows that Paisiello matches music with stage action here in a manner that before this time had been found only in finalesGoogle Scholar

21 Edward J Dent, Mozart's Operas A Critical Study (London, 1947), 108–9 Speaking of Paisiello, Dent says ‘The influence of his music on Figaro is apparent mainly in Voi che sapete, which was very probably intended as an improvement on the serenade of Count Almaviva at the beginning of Il Barbiere di Siviglia’ Dent argued (p 112) that ‘the supreme moment ol the opera is the sextet in act III’ It is odd that he did not note its technique of passing short motifs from voice to voice in a rising sequence adumbrated in the quintet No. 14 of Il barbiere For the best argument that can be made against Dent, see Allanbrook, Wye J, ‘Pro Marcellina The Shape of “Figaro” Act IV’, Music and Letters, 63 (1982), 69–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Tyson, Alan, ‘Le Nozzc di Figaro Lessons from the Autograph Score’, The Musical Times, 122 (1981), 459Google Scholar

23 Dent, Mozart's Operas, 110. One scholar who has pursued links between Paisiello and Mozart further is Frits Noske, in The Signifier and the Signified. Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi (The Hague, 1977), 26 Noske also effectively contradicts Abert by showing that the second finale of Figaro ranks equally with the first (pp. 16–17)Google Scholar

24 Kunze, Stefan, Mozarts Opern (Stuttgart, 1984), 245, maintains that Rosina was not noble by birth, that the Count's one unconventional deed was to marry a ‘Bürgermädchen’. Beaumarchais intended otherwise, in Act 4, scene viii of Le barbier de Séville the Count says of his future wife: ‘Mademoiselle est noble et belle’ The two soprano parts for Rosina and Susanna in Figaro were so equal as to be exchangeable in the ensembles, a question explored by Alan Tyson in his article ‘Some Problems in the Text of Le nozze di Figaro Did Mozart Have a Hand in Them?’, printed belowGoogle Scholar

25 British Library R M 22 i 3–5 I am indebted to Alan Tyson for his kindness in showing me the early score in question, which we looked at together in the Manuscripts Room of the British Library on 3 May 1986Google Scholar