It is surely difficult to write anything about Mozart that has not been written before. Mozart, like Wagner and the Bible, is all things to all people. For example, the play and film Amadeus presents the young genius as an immature cutup who unconsciously wrote sublime masterpieces to the consternation of his more learned and hardworking contemporaries.
The critic Anthony Tommasini, however, recently wrote an illuminating article for the New York Times speculating about what Mozart would have accomplished had he lived longer. Tommasini meditates on two aspects of Mozart’s genius. He writes that with the three perfect operas Mozart wrote with the collaboration of Lorenzo da Ponte, he became a supremely confident, pragmatic man of the theater and could have written increasingly complex operas, both dramatic and comic.
The other point that Tommasini makes is that Mozart was beginning to use the technique of motivic development that makes use of small motifs or components that can be developed into whole symphonies or other large works. Mozart, like all opera composers, was a master melodist and the technique of motivic development did not come easily to him. Far from being a simple child of nature, Tommasini says that he was the hardest-working composer who ever lived.
To singers, it is this gift of melody that makes us so attracted to Mozart’s music. Melody is the coin of the realm for vocal music. Above all, I think that it is his clarity that makes him so valuable in teaching young singers the illusive quality of good taste. In Mozart, there is no place to hide. No amount of blustering or posturing can conceal a lack of musicality, technique, or emotional commitment. Mozart’s music is elegant—meaning that there are no extraneous phrases to obscure the clarity of the drama or the music. A famous story recounts that Emperor Josepf II, when he heard Die Entfürung aus dem Serail for the first time, remarked, “Too many notes, my dear Mozart!” The 26-year-old composer replied, “There are just as many notes as there should be, your highness!”
Of course, no teacher in his right mind would assign “Marten aller Arten” to a beginning soprano, but “Das Veilchen,” “Ridente la calma,” or “An Chloe” are entirely appropriate. Intermediate singers can handle Zerlina or Despina, as well as some of the more moderate concert arias. I like to assign “Dalla sua pace” from Don Giovanni for young lyric tenors who need to understand that it is the high tessitura and not extremely high notes that makes some of these roles difficult.
It is important to introduce recitativi with these arias because the art of recitative singing is sadly neglected by most singers in their rush to achieve the glory of the aria. The recitative establishes the drama, while the aria usually reflects merely on the dramatic situation. There is a saying, “The recitative loads the gun and the aria fires it!” For a truly astonishing performance of recitative I would recommend Il barbiere di Siviglia with Riccardo Stracciari, Dino Borgioli, and Mercedes Capsir recorded in 1929, available on several labels. I believe that recitatives in Mozart’s time were sung with the same verve and vitality that this recording exhibits.
Mozart’s operas translate into English extremely well. I was brought up on the Martin translations of Le nozze di Figaro, Cosi fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte, and Die Entfürung aus dem Serail. With certain changes in the translation, Don Giovanni also works. Learning these operas first in English helps the singer to phrase more dramatically and understand why the composer wrote his melodies the way he did. At the very least, the text should be translated into one’s native language before singing a note.
Mozart’s operas also train the singer in the art of the ensemble. One needs only to contemplate the beauty of the “Bei Männern” duet from Die Zauberflöte, the trio from Così fan tutte, or the sextet from Le nozze di Figaro. Mozart’s characters set him apart from other composers of opere serie, whose six stereotyped personages were no more than cardboard figures. Mozart’s characters are real human beings experiencing real human emotions and his music reflects those feelings perfectly. These individual characters are never lost in the ensembles but retain their own individuality while meanwhile contributing to the overall beauty of the whole.
Mozart stands out above other composers of his era—or any other, for that matter. Cherubino, Figaro, Pamina, Osmin, and that rascal Don Giovanni are as alive today as they were 250 years ago and will continue to sing to us about what it means to be human 250 years in the future.
