No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2025
Despite the density of scholarly engagement with Mozart’s operas, Donna Elvira’s aria ‘Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata’, composed for the 1788 Viennese production of Don Giovanni, has received little sustained, critical attention. Yet this oversight is unjustified, particularly considering the aria’s many stylistic elements that expand beyond the musical language of the original Prague Don Giovanni, and which therefore show Mozart not only deepening Elvira’s characterization but probing new compositional horizons. This article undertakes a thorough, analytic examination of ‘Mi tradì’, focusing especially on its evocation of Elvira’s subjectivity and self-consciousness, and paying particular attention to formal rhetoric and topical reference, both of which, by suggesting affinities with genres such as variation and the free fantasia, move the aria significantly beyond the expressive world often associated with Mozart’s vocal writing. The article closes with brief speculations on the relationship between ‘Mi tradì’ and the composer’s career aspirations in the late 1780s.
1 Although this point has been explored by critics dating back to Hoffmann and Kierkegaard, its most recent defence comes from Kramer, Richard, whose Cherubino’s Leap: In Search of the Enlightenment Moment (University of Chicago Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues that the Countess, Cherubino, Konstanze, and Pamina all exude a self–knowledge which Kramer connects to broader cultural trends in eighteenth-century thought. The link with ‘subjectivity’ has been adduced most thoroughly by Michael P. Steinberg, for whom Don Giovanni in particular represents a turning-point in the ability of music to say ‘“I,” [to operate] in the first person’; see his Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity and Nineteenth–Century Music (Princeton University Press), p. 22.
2 For instance, Bruce Alan Brown notes that the musical differentiation of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, though it reaches its apogee in Act II, is implicit in their opening duet. See his W. A. Mozart: Così fan tutte (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 111. Tamino’s ‘enlightenment’ in the Act I Finale of Die Zauberflöte has been the subject of much discussion, but what he attains, too, is already suggested by the harmonic sophistication of ‘Dies Bildnis’. A more general, foundational view of such processes has been compellingly organized by Jessica Waldoff under the banner of ‘recognition’; see her Recognition in Mozart’s Operas (Oxford University Press, 2006).
3 It is with the image of fixed characters that Wye. J. Allanbrook introduces her extended analysis of the opera: ‘In Don Giovanni [the conventions of Figaro] have become rigid and chilling – grim truisms rather than growing-spaces. Masetto is a stock peasant character, and Donna Anna moves about in her noblewoman’s habit with the taut hysteria of the caged.’ Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 199. Although here she singles out Elvira as the solitary exception, Allanbrook’s subsequent analyses treat Zerlina, too, as somewhat immune from this rigidity. Equally noteworthy is Stefan Kunze’s contention that Elvira is, in fact, seria rather than mezzo carattere from the outset; see his Mozarts Opern (Reclam, 1984), p. 403.
4 That the entrance in travelling clothes is a sign of ridicule is taken up by James Webster (following Frits Noske) in ‘The Analysis of Mozart’s Arias’, in Mozart Studies, ed. by Cliff Eisen (Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 101–99 (p. 111). Elvira’s humiliation at Giovanni’s ‘sentir odor di femina’ and at Leporello’s hands during the Catalogue aria are discussed respectively in Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture, pp. 233 and 241–47.
5 Sisman’s reading of these traits, particularly in the context of ‘Ah fuggi’, is given in ‘The Marriages of Don Giovanni: Persuasion, Impersonation and Personal Responsibility’, in Mozart Studies, ed. by Simon P. Keefe (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 183. For a less favourable reading, see Heartz, Daniel, Mozart’s Operas (University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar, p. 212. See also the discussion of Elvira’s musical volatility and angularity in Julian Rushton, W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 100–01. Webster uses still more loaded language in describing the persona that shines through ‘Ah chi me dice mai’: ‘obsessive […] excessive […] neurotic […] raving […] rigid […] insecure’; ‘The Analysis of Mozart’s Arias’, p. 181. (To be sure, for Webster these abject qualities chafe against the ‘genuine emotion’ more often associated with the aria d’affetto, such that a sensitive listener may, hearing Elvira’s outbursts, sympathise with her.)
6 Sisman, in line with the reading described above, sees this not so much as a transformation as a rhetorical recalibration for a new audience. Whereas ‘Ah fuggi’ was directed to Zerlina, whom the Handelian tone is meant to impress, ‘Non ti fidar’ is a ‘sensitive, poignant peer-to-peer appeal.’ But here as well, even if we grant Sisman’s point, it is still possible to see a new poise in Elvira’s opening gesture, as Rushton argues (W.A. Mozart, p. 101). Another compelling account of this transformation is given in Edmund Goehring, ‘Episode and Necessity in ‘Non ti fidar’ from Don Giovanni’, in Mozart Studies, ed. by Simon P. Keefe, pp. 137–62 (pp. 145–59).
7 On the tritone in the first phrase of ‘Non ti fidar’, see Goehring, ‘Episode and Necessity’, pp. 148–49. The possibility that the orchestral imitation of Elvira’s cadential gesture constitutes a depiction of sympathetic listening is subject of a penetrating discussion in Roman Ivanovitch, ‘Mozart and the Environment of Variation’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 2004), pp. 233–35. Elvira’s tendency to initiate musical motifs that are taken up by the orchestra and attain a degree of ‘formal–figural autonomy’ is discussed insightfully (with particular reference to ‘Non ti fidar’) in Kunze, Mozarts Opern, pp. 419–25.
8 Allanbrook’s reading is, here, interpretive rather than historical. She does not acknowledge that, although the original and final versions of ‘Mi tradì’ were sketched in E♭, Mozart briefly considered transposing the aria into D — a point that would undermine her reading of tonality and meaning in Act II. Ian Woodfield has speculated that this tonal uncertainty may have been a result of questions as to the intended position of Elvira’s scena in the act. If placed too close to the Sextet, he observes, ‘Mi tradì’ would be the second lengthy number in E♭. Although the evidence and reasoning are difficult to parse, Mozart ultimately abandoned the plan for a D-major ‘Mi tradì’. See Woodfield, The Vienna Don Giovanni (The Boydell Press, 2010), pp. 71–73.
9 Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture, pp. 252–53.
10 Ibid., p. 253.
11 Ibid., pp. 231–32.
12 Heartz, Mozart’s Operas, p. 223. For his discussion of Elvira in the Sextet, see pp. 207–15.
13 Kerman, Joseph, Opera as Drama, revised ed. (University of California Press, 1988), p. 197 Google Scholar. Frits Noske goes further, deeming the aria a ‘dramatically colourless’ piece that ‘considerably weakened’ Elvira’s role; see The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi (Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 79.
14 Kunze (Mozarts Opern, p. 343) attempts to argue that the scena makes plausible Elvira’s intervention in the Act II Finale; however, this claim, which is questionable in any case, is based solely on the libretto.
15 To appreciate the extent to which the opening two bars of the Sextet are neutral in affect, compare them with the lighthearted gesture in the Concerto for Two Pianos K.365, first movement, bars 30–31. K.365 uses identical materials to the Sextet, including the passing E♮, the melodic shape, inner-voice writing, and the repeated B♭ quavers in the first violins.
16 Heartz, Mozart’s Operas, p. 214.
17 Steinberg, Listening to Reason, p. 30.
18 Earlier critics such as Edward Dent and Brigid Brophy were more sympathetic to ‘Mi tradì’, perhaps because they came of age in a culture in which the aria was more frequently performed. Dent in particular deems Elvira the ‘most human’ of the opera’s characters and allows that ‘Mi tradì’ plays some part in establishing this; see his Mozart’s Operas: A Critical Study (McBride, Nast & Co., 1913), p. 218.
19 Brown-Montesano, Kristi, Understanding the Women of Mozart’s Operas (University of California Press, 2007), p. 55 Google Scholar. It is striking that ‘Mi tradì’ and ‘Dalla sua pace’, the two arias Mozart added for the Viennese production, are the only soliloquies in an opera whose arias are addressed uniformly to other characters. Sisman claims that ‘Ah chi me dice mai’ is the only soliloquy from the original Prague version (though she acknowledges that the interruptions make the aria feel unlike a soliloquy); see ‘The Marriages of Don Giovanni’, p. 168. However, the aria’s first line of text suggests that Elvira is addressing a crowd of passers-by; thus, it is not at all a soliloquy. (The first phrases of the Act II Trio could more aptly be described as the only soliloquy in the original version, though this number, too, soon becomes a dialogue.)
20 This and subsequent translations are by the author.
21 Although the opera’s other accompanied recitatives feature glimpses of chromatic writing, particularly in Donna Anna’s enharmonic modulations, the music moves primarily through circle-of-fifths progressions. The present recitative, by contrast, opens with a figure that more pointedly draws attention to its own chromatic structure.
22 Although the recitative preceding ‘Or sai chi l’onore’ features an enharmonic modulation from E♭ minor to B minor (perhaps as a proxy for C♭ minor) in bars 27–28, the effect is brief, and it occurs beneath Anna’s narrative text. In the present recitative, by contrast, an undisguised chromatic scale structures the recurring opening motif — which, played in unison by the full orchestra, punctuates Elvira’s statements and is the sole focus of aural attention for a significant portion of the number.
23 For instance, C. P. E. Bach’s Versuch instructs improvisers of fantasias to become adept at harmonizing chromatic scalar bass lines. On Mozart’s familiarity with Bach’s teachings and use of the same protocols in his own fantasias and preludes, see numerous sources, among them Levin, Robert, ‘Mozart’s Non-Metrical Keyboard Preludes,’ in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe, ed. by Hogwood, Christopher (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 198–216 Google Scholar.
24 The implications of interiority and subjectivity in instrumental fantasias have been the topic of various studies, most recently Bonds, Mark Evan, The Beethoven Syndrome: Hearing Music as Autobiography (Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 58–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also notes 48, 51 and 52, below.
25 The most up-to-date definition of ‘topic’, framed by Danuta Mirka in her hefty Introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory (Oxford University Press: 2014), pp. 1–57, is: ‘styles or genres taken out of their proper context and used in another one’ (p. 2). It should be noted that, like the fantasia topic I adduce here, topics such as the minuet or contredanse, which form the basis of earlier analyses of these operas, are also abstracted from instrumental performance contexts but retain the associated rhetorical implications.
26 Although Laurel Elizabeth Zeiss’s rich study of recitative–aria pairs in Don Giovanni focuses only on numbers included in the 1787 original, her observations as to the ‘fusing’ of the rhetorical and expressive functions of recitatives and arias apply with equal strength to this scena. See her ‘Permeable Boundaries in Mozart’s Don Giovanni’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 13.2 (2001), pp. 115–39 (pp. 119–32 and passim), doi:10.1017/S095458670100115X.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 For a discussion of such sliding semitones in the retransition from the second movement of the Piano Concerto K.453, see Burnham, Scott, Mozart’s Grace (Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 122–24Google Scholar.
28 The case for ubiquitous insertion of appoggiaturas, including at beginnings of vocal entrances, is made convincingly by Crutchfield, Will in ‘The Prosodic Appoggiatura in the Music of Mozart and His Contemporaries’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 42.2 (1989), pp. 229–74, doi:10.2307/831657 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although others, notably Frederick Neumann, have taken exception to such prescriptions for modern-day performances, Crutchfield’s claims concern the expectations Mozart himself likely harboured — and in this Crutchfield’s evidence is persuasive. Crutchfield does not make explicit the argument for including unprepared appoggiaturas on the initial notes of phrases, yet the examples he cites demonstrate that this practice was widespread. See, for instance, his Figure 1 (p. 234).
29 On the externalized role of the orchestra in ‘routine’ (rather than specifically mimetic) operatic writing, see, for instance, Cone, Edward T., The Composer’s Voice (University of California Press, 1974), pp. 29–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cone revised this opinion in a later essay, ‘The World of Opera and Its Inhabitants’, in Music: A View from Delft: Selected Essays, ed. by Robert P. Morgan (University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 125–38 (pp. 136–37).
30 See Cone, The Composer’s Voice, p. 29; Burnham, Scott, ‘Mozart’s “Felix Culpa”: Così fan tutte and The Irony of Beauty’, The Musical Quarterly, 78.1 (1994), pp. 77–98, doi:10.1093/mq/78.1.77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ivanovitch, ‘Mozart and the Environment of Variation’, pp. 233–35.
31 See, again, Zeiss, ‘Permeable Boundaries’.
32 Webster, ‘The Analysis of Mozart’s Arias’, pp. 122–30.
33 The interplay of voice and winds features centrally in Patricia Lewy Gidwitz’s study of Cavalieri’s voice; see ‘“Ich bin die erste Sängerin”: Vocal Profiles of Two Mozart Sopranos’, Early Music, 19.4 (1991), pp. 565–79 (especially p. 566), doi:10.1093/earlyj/XIX.4.565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Simon Keefe proposes that the foregrounding of the wind instruments in ‘Mi tradì’ may have been necessitated by Cavalieri’s age and declining abilities; see his Mozart in Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 388–89. Cavalieri’s vocal characteristics are the subject of lengthy recent analysis and discussion throughout Link, Dorothea, The Italian Opera Singers in Mozart’s Vienna (University of Illinois Press, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 That a motif associated with a character can attain musical–structural autonomy is a recurring feature of the discussions of Elvira in Kunze, Mozarts Opern. (See note 7, above.) The phenomenon of ‘composite melodies’ created by singer and orchestra together is discussed in Cone, The Composer’s Voice, pp. 26–29, with reference to ‘Dove sono’.
35 Brown–Montesano, p. 55.
36 ‘Here one sees what I mean when I say that Don Giovanni resonates in Elvira, that it is something more than a phrase. The spectator […] should hear him in Elvira, through Elvira, for it is indeed Don Giovanni who is singing, but he sings in such a way that the more developed the spectator’s ear, the more it seems to him as if it came from Elvira herself.’ Kierkegaard’s Writing III, Part I: Either/Or, ed. by Howard V. Hong and Edna, H. Hong (Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 121–23Google Scholar.
37 ‘The Analysis of Mozart’s Arias’, p. 181.
38 The notion of motivic coherence as generating a perceptual consistency and even subjectivity has been explored in the context of Bach’s vocal writing by authors such as Naomi Cumming — whose method in her extended analysis (‘The Subjectivities of “Erbarme Dich”’, Music Analysis, 16.1 (1997), pp. 5–44, doi:10.2307/854112) rests largely on the imitation of motivic cells between the solo violin and vocal lines — and especially Butt, John, throughout Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity: Perpsectives on the Passions (Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, particularly pp. 77–81.
39 Kramer, Cherubino’s Leap, p. 168.
40 The term ‘extrageneric’ variation comes from Ivanovitch, ‘Mozart and the Environment of Variation’, and refers to instances outside the formal context of the variation genre in which two phrases share structural elements, and especially where one phrase is profitably heard ‘through’ the other.
41 This facet of the variation aesthetic is proposed in Kofi Agawu, Music as Discourse (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 28–29.
42 Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘Sonata Form in Schubert’, in Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. by Frisch, Walter (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), pp. 1–12 Google Scholar (p. 2).
43 Rushton, Julian, ‘“By Their Arias Shall Ye Know Them”: Characterization in Aria–Based Opera’, in Dramma Giocoso: Four Contemporary Perspectives on the Mozart/Da Ponte Operas (Leuven University Press, 2012), pp. 11–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 28).
44 This idea, too, is introduced in Butt’s study of subjectivity in Bach (pp. 76–94 and 209–17), where the representation of ‘externalized’ narration, based on strict contrapuntal forms and other cultural conventions, is contrasted with the subjectivities evoked by narration from the perspectives of individual characters, where such conventions are rejected. (Although these ideas are largely implicit in Butt’s study, they occasionally surface more explicitly, as in his discussion of fugal conventions at pp. 215–16.) The structure of this argument may be extended to Mozart’s operas as well — and it is probably for this reason that the authors who most strongly champion convention–based readings (Allanbrook among them) also tend to view characters’ subjectivities as being elusive, gleaming through only when conventional material gives way to idiosyncrasies.
45 As discussed above, Donna Anna’s narration of her attack at Giovanni’s hands — the ‘strange event’ (‘lo strano avvenimento’) she describes to Ottavio in the recitative preceding ‘Or sai chi l’onore’ — begins in E♭ minor.
46 This progression, referred to as an omnibus in modern scholarship but termed the ‘Teufelsmühle’ in Georg Joseph Vogler’s writings, is discussed in relation to the Act II Finale and various harmonic models given in contemporary compositional tutors (particularly Vogler), in Paula J. Telesco, ‘Enharmonicism and the Omnibus Progression in Classical–Era Music’, Music Theory Spectrum, 20.2 (1998), pp. 242–79 (p. 264), doi:10.2307/746049.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Throughout her study, Telesco emphasizes not only the progression’s harmonic features but its rhetorical and affective potency.
47 Telesco, ‘Enharmonicism and the Omnibus Progression in Classical–Era Music’, p. 251.
48 Ivanovitch, Roman, ‘Mozart’s Art of Retransition’, Music Analysis, 30.1 (2011), pp. 1–36, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2249.2011.00305.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 The equation of extreme chromaticism with a ‘positively anarchic’, ‘untrammeled, antisystematic proliferation’ of harmonic turns that defy the depiction of ‘rational’ thought is a recurring theme in the literature on the fantasia topic, to which I turn below. These descriptions come from Gooley, Dana, Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-Century Music (Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; however, similar terms are used elsewhere, including by Richard Kramer (Cherubino’s Leap, pp. 14–15) who writes of ‘reason and its adversary’ fighting head-to-head when an ‘improvisatory rush’ cannot be ‘reconciled’ with ‘grounded structure’.
50 Allanbrook briefly refers to some harmonic procedures in the ombra sequences of the Introduzione, too, as ‘high fantasy’ material (Rhythmic Gesture, p. 211); however, the harmonic stability and staid rhythmic profile of that music suggests stronger associations with the stile antico and the alla cappella style, both of which she develops at greater length.
51 For a recent interrogation of the theatrical fiction of improvisation as encoded into various instrumental genres, see Bandy, Dorian, Mozart the Performer: Variations on the Showman’s Art (University of Chicago Press, 2023), pp. 99–123 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Kramer, Richard, ‘Diderot’s Paradoxe and C.P.E. Bach’s Empfindung’, in C. P. E. Bach Studies, ed. by Richards, Annette (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 6–24 Google Scholar (p. 11).
53 Richards, Annette, The Free Fantasia and The Musical Picturesque (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 176 Google Scholar.
54 See note 23, above.
55 See, for instance, K.475, bars 10–15 and, even more, the left–hand figuration in bars 56–72 and the right–hand figuration in 73–77.
56 See note 50, above: Allanbrook refers once to the ‘high fantasia’ style in her analysis of the Introduzione, but does not elaborate. Meanwhile, no mention of the fantasy is made either in the remainder of her study, nor in more recent topical analyses of the Mozart–Da Ponte trilogy, including Goehring’s treatment of Così.
57 On Mozart’s aria types and associated conventions, see Hunter, Mary, Mozart’s Operas (Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 12–15 Google Scholar.
58 Rhythmic Gesture, p. 199.
59 Kramer, Cherubino’s Leap, ch. 9.
60 Brown-Montesano, p. 57.
61 This facet of Mozart’s retransitions, and the perceived renewal following chromatic or contrapuntal passages, is treated both by Ivanovitch in the final pages of ‘Mozart’s Art of Retransition’ and by Burnham throughout Chapter 3 of Mozart’s Grace.
62 On the ‘learned style’ as topic, see Elaine Sisman, Mozart: The ‘Jupiter’ Symphony (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 69–74. Sisman draws examples from the last movements of K.387 and K.551, both of which share the rhythmic gesture of this passage from ‘Mi tradì’. Keith Chapin, in a nuanced discussion, suggests that the learned style refers also to nobility and the church, a point particularly relevant given the discussions of Elvira’s synthesis of comic and serious traits as well as her subsequent retirement to a convent. See Chapin’s ‘Learned Style and Learned Styles’, in The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory, ed. by Danuta Mirka (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 301–29 (pp. 318–19 and 323–26).
63 Cavalieri’s vocal weakness, deduced both from elements of this aria and other contemporary music written for her, is discussed in both Keefe, Mozart in Vienna, pp. 388–89, and Gidwitz, ‘“Ich bin die erste Sängerin”’.
64 As Mozart writes in a letter of 7 May 1783, ‘if possible [an opera must] include 2 equally good female roles; – one would have to be a Seria, the other a Mezzo Carattere – but in quality – both roles would have to be absolutely equal.’ Quoted, translated, and discussed as a possible motivation for the addition of ‘Mi tradì’ in Woodfield, The Vienna Don Giovanni, p. 64.
65 Webster, ‘The Analysis of Mozart’s Arias’, p. 112.
66 Taylor, Benedict, The Melody of Time: Music and Temporality in the Romantic Era (Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 33 Google Scholar.
67 The significance of performance for Mozart’s compositional decision-making has been the subject of a series of recent articles and monographs by Simon Keefe, most recently Mozart in Vienna. The aesthetic and interpretive ramifications of this alignment are the subject of Bandy, Mozart the Performer.
68 Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, expanded ed. (W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 290; Berger, Karol, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow (University of California Press, 2007)Google Scholar.
69 Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture, pp. 89, 170, 205–06, and passim. Cone agrees that Mozart’s music fulfils these dramaturgic functions; see ‘The World of Opera’, p. 137.
70 Allanbrook, Wye J., The Secular Commedia: Comic Mimesis in Late Eighteenth-Century Music (University of California Press, 2014), p. 16 Google Scholar.
71 The historical details and interpretive implications of these realities are discussed in numerous texts, including Rushton, ‘“By Their Arias Shall Ye Know Them”’ and Hunter, Mozart’s Operas.
72 Mozart’s Operas, p. 3.
73 As Jessica Waldoff observes in her rich study of Mozart’s operas, to pursue character analysis primarily in light of the human identities of his collaborators is akin to ‘[restricting] our understanding of Romeo and Juliet to readings that bear in mind that Juliet was first created on the stage by a boy.’ See Waldoff, Recognition in Mozart’s Operas, p. 234.
74 This metaphysics of fiction, in which characters are said to be real entities who exert a causal pull on the decisions of the author, is explored in a range of philosophical texts, and given a thorough defence in Cone, ‘The World of Opera’. Cone takes an extreme view, speculating that perhaps fictional characters themselves should be considered as the ‘authors’ of their own music. Such arguments have been challenged by Penner, Nina, most recently in Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater (Indiana University Press, 2020)Google Scholar, who takes a ‘moderate intentionalist’ stance that foregrounds the composer’s creative role in the shaping of characters. Although Penner is sensitive to historical details and contexts, however, she may overemphasize the importance of the composer’s creative agency and ‘intentions’. It is true, of course, that in writing an opera Mozart is holding the pen; however, if we wish to find a satisfying explanation for his musical decision-making it is difficult to do so without invoking, and attributing agency to, the inhabitants of the fictional world he was trying to bring to life. For a more extended discussion along these lines, see Bandy, Mozart the Performer, pp. 35–38.
75 Wolff, Christoph, Mozart at The Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788–1791 (W.W. Norton, 2012)Google Scholar.
76 Ibid., p. 92.
77 Ibid., p. 105. On the Leipzig Don Giovanni, p. 54; on the planned but ultimately cancelled production in Frankfurt, p. 48.
78 For instance, the notions of interiority I have explored with regard to ‘Mi tradì’ are arguably even more present in Così. Analyses by Goehring and Burnham in particular have documented the ways this later opera expands individual viewpoints and warps perceptions of the passage of time. On the possibility that late sacred works such as Ave verum corpus and the Requiem also build upon sophisticated chromatic and fantasia-like procedures, see Bandy, Mozart the Performer, pp. 87–88.