Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (59 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
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Rehearsals were not easy, Mozart wrote in a letter, because the Prague singers were not so well trained as those in Vienna, and the overture was not yet written. Madame Bondini was not dramatic enough, and the maestro had to teach her how
really
to scream on stage; one of the trombone players made mistakes and refused to be instructed, and the opera’s entertainments, including the few quotations from
Figaro
, were probably added as a last-minute improvisation. The first performance was scheduled for October 14 in celebration of the marriage of the archduchess Maria Theresa and a Saxon prince, but the cast was not yet ready, and Bondini resolutely announced that, instead of the new opera,
The Marriage
of Figaro
would be presented, again conducted by the composer himself; the princely couple had to make an early start for Dresden and left the performance long before the end anyway.
really
to scream on stage; one of the trombone players made mistakes and refused to be instructed, and the opera’s entertainments, including the few quotations from
Figaro
, were probably added as a last-minute improvisation. The first performance was scheduled for October 14 in celebration of the marriage of the archduchess Maria Theresa and a Saxon prince, but the cast was not yet ready, and Bondini resolutely announced that, instead of the new opera,
The Marriage
of Figaro
would be presented, again conducted by the composer himself; the princely couple had to make an early start for Dresden and left the performance long before the end anyway.
Experts are still discussing the question how and when Mozart completed the overture, but nowadays most of them accept Constanze’s account that he wrote it while she served strong coffee and, as a latter-day Scheherazade, told him entertaining anecdotes to keep him awake during the night of October 27-28, just in time for the copyists and for distribution to the orchestra. On the evening of Monday, October 29, Mozart, appearing somewhat late at the clavier to conduct the orchestra, was greeted by waves of applause, and the premiere of
I/ dissoluto punito ossia Il Don Giovanni
(
The Libertine Punished, or Don Giovanni
) went off without a hitch. Afterward, Mozart was reported to say, “
Meine Prager verstehen mich
” (My Praguers understand me), and the newspapers reported that, in the opinion of the connoisseurs and the general audience, nothing like it had ever been seen in Prague before. The Viennese were much less enchanted when
Don Giovanni
was presented there in May 1788; the emperor told da Ponte that while the opera was “divine,” perhaps “better than
Figaro,”
yet it was “not quite the right kind of food for the teeth” of his Viennese. “Give them time to chew on it”
(lasciam loro tempo da masticare),
Mozart allegedly told da Ponte when he heard about this conversation with the emperor; the Viennese, slowly chewing, changed their views in time.
I/ dissoluto punito ossia Il Don Giovanni
(
The Libertine Punished, or Don Giovanni
) went off without a hitch. Afterward, Mozart was reported to say, “
Meine Prager verstehen mich
” (My Praguers understand me), and the newspapers reported that, in the opinion of the connoisseurs and the general audience, nothing like it had ever been seen in Prague before. The Viennese were much less enchanted when
Don Giovanni
was presented there in May 1788; the emperor told da Ponte that while the opera was “divine,” perhaps “better than
Figaro,”
yet it was “not quite the right kind of food for the teeth” of his Viennese. “Give them time to chew on it”
(lasciam loro tempo da masticare),
Mozart allegedly told da Ponte when he heard about this conversation with the emperor; the Viennese, slowly chewing, changed their views in time.
It is another question whether the changes da Ponte and Mozart made to the Prague version in order to have
Don Giovanni
more attractive to the Viennese audiences served the opera well, and on many occasions and at different times, producers and music lovers have wanted to return to the Prague “source,” the original performance. Da Ponte’s problem was that he had taken a good deal from Giovanni Bertati, his immediate predecessor, above all in the first act, and then needed to expand the plot in the second act. Hence, his uncertainty: he introduced a rather cumbersome burlesque in which Zerlina mistreats Leporello, ties up his hands with her kerchief, and binds him to a bench, forcing him to make an escape, with the help of a peasant, dragging the bench noisily behind him. Mozart, at least, took into account Don Ottavio’s Prague complaints and added (in Act I, Scene 14) two splendid lyrical stanzas to his aria, “Dalla sua pace, / la mia dipende” (On your peace mine depends). Karl Maria von Weber was the first who, in Prague in 1814, wanted to return to the original production (the management refused to pay for the musicians on stage in Act II, and Weber threatened to pay expenses from his own
pocket before the management relented). Ninety years later, Ernst Possart, famous director of the Royal Opera in Munich, also wanted to reconstitute the Prague performance, and experts discussed whether the orchestra, as prescribed by Mozart, would do under modern circumstances. The performance was conducted by Richard Strauss, and it must have been a holiday for opera lovers.
Don Giovanni
more attractive to the Viennese audiences served the opera well, and on many occasions and at different times, producers and music lovers have wanted to return to the Prague “source,” the original performance. Da Ponte’s problem was that he had taken a good deal from Giovanni Bertati, his immediate predecessor, above all in the first act, and then needed to expand the plot in the second act. Hence, his uncertainty: he introduced a rather cumbersome burlesque in which Zerlina mistreats Leporello, ties up his hands with her kerchief, and binds him to a bench, forcing him to make an escape, with the help of a peasant, dragging the bench noisily behind him. Mozart, at least, took into account Don Ottavio’s Prague complaints and added (in Act I, Scene 14) two splendid lyrical stanzas to his aria, “Dalla sua pace, / la mia dipende” (On your peace mine depends). Karl Maria von Weber was the first who, in Prague in 1814, wanted to return to the original production (the management refused to pay for the musicians on stage in Act II, and Weber threatened to pay expenses from his own
pocket before the management relented). Ninety years later, Ernst Possart, famous director of the Royal Opera in Munich, also wanted to reconstitute the Prague performance, and experts discussed whether the orchestra, as prescribed by Mozart, would do under modern circumstances. The performance was conducted by Richard Strauss, and it must have been a holiday for opera lovers.
Mozart briefly visited Prague again on a concert trip to Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, but the days were not particularly productive. On the way to Saxony and Prussia, he spent forty-eight hours at the inn called the Unicorn, in the Old Town, but it was Eastertide and most of his friends, including Count Sporck and Count Canal, were in the countryside; when he went out to the Bertramka as usual, he was told that La Dušek had just gone to sing in Dresden, and he took at least a letter from her husband and duly delivered it to her a few days later when he met her at a Dresden party of “ugly” but polite ladies, as he noted in his correspondence. He did not have a chance to meet his friend Guardasoni, who had taken on sole responsibility for managing the opera (Bondini had retired and died unexpectedly in a small South Tyrolean town on his way home to Italy). Guardasoni discussed a promising contract for a new opera, as yet unspecified, but the agreement was not signed. On his return trip from Berlin, Mozart was again in Prague for a day on June 1, Guardasoni was away, possibly in Warsaw, and the new opera contract was never finalized. If Mozart was disappointed, he did not show his feelings, and the letters he wrote to ailing Constanze from Germany and Prague were among his most loving and sprightly.
Mozart’s fourth and last excursion to Prague, in the summer of 1791, was more rewarding than his third trip, yet he had, increasingly, to share the attention of the audience, gathered for the festive coronation of Joseph’s brother Leopold as king of Bohemia, with local and Viennese competitors of lesser talent. The Bohemian Estates, now proud owners of the National Theater, which they had bought from the heirs of Count Nostitz, had asked Guardasoni to provide a dignified opera in celebration of the grand event, and it may have been Count Thun or Guardasoni himself who suggested that Metastasio’s well-known
La clemenza di Tito
be set to music once again. The choice fully reflected the new emperor’s conservative tastes, returning to the Neapolitan opera seria. It may have also offered a challenge to Mozart, who certainly knew that Gluck, among others, had used Metastasio for an opera of his own, first performed in Naples in 1752. In Vienna, Mozart had been
working on
The Magic Flute
and the
Requiem
, but he was willing to suspend work on these compositions and, by mid-August, he traveled to Prague, accompanied by Constanze (barely recuperating from the birth of her sixth child) and his friend Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who was to write the
recitativi
of the opera. The invitation to Prague had been delayed, and
La clemenza di Tito
had to be written and rehearsed within three weeks (the usual anecdotes about La Dušek trying to push the maestro to finish the overture once again abounded). On September 2, a special performance of
Don Giovanni
was presented as part of the ongoing celebrations; the imperial family attended, and a number of exiled French aristocrats, among them dukes and counts sporting the white royal cockade, were seen in the boxes; people believed they also saw the young Swedish Count Fersen, Marie Antoinette’s last lover and organizer of the desperate attempt of the French royal couple to escape the revolutionaries. There was also one Franz Alexander Kleist, an officer and civil servant (and relative of the Prussian poet) who, in a travelogue published later, gave a vivid description of the evening and noted that Mozart was “a little man in a green frock and only his eyes revealed what was hidden in his modest demeanor.” It was rumored that Empress Maria Ludovica, who was offended by da Ponte’s
iocoso
libretto, was heard to shout,
“Una porcherìa tedesca!”
(a German Schweinerei!) —others believe that it all happened when she listened to
La clemenza di Tito
, but Metastasio was virtue itself and there was not the slightest reason to be offended.
La clemenza di Tito
be set to music once again. The choice fully reflected the new emperor’s conservative tastes, returning to the Neapolitan opera seria. It may have also offered a challenge to Mozart, who certainly knew that Gluck, among others, had used Metastasio for an opera of his own, first performed in Naples in 1752. In Vienna, Mozart had been
working on
The Magic Flute
and the
Requiem
, but he was willing to suspend work on these compositions and, by mid-August, he traveled to Prague, accompanied by Constanze (barely recuperating from the birth of her sixth child) and his friend Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who was to write the
recitativi
of the opera. The invitation to Prague had been delayed, and
La clemenza di Tito
had to be written and rehearsed within three weeks (the usual anecdotes about La Dušek trying to push the maestro to finish the overture once again abounded). On September 2, a special performance of
Don Giovanni
was presented as part of the ongoing celebrations; the imperial family attended, and a number of exiled French aristocrats, among them dukes and counts sporting the white royal cockade, were seen in the boxes; people believed they also saw the young Swedish Count Fersen, Marie Antoinette’s last lover and organizer of the desperate attempt of the French royal couple to escape the revolutionaries. There was also one Franz Alexander Kleist, an officer and civil servant (and relative of the Prussian poet) who, in a travelogue published later, gave a vivid description of the evening and noted that Mozart was “a little man in a green frock and only his eyes revealed what was hidden in his modest demeanor.” It was rumored that Empress Maria Ludovica, who was offended by da Ponte’s
iocoso
libretto, was heard to shout,
“Una porcherìa tedesca!”
(a German Schweinerei!) —others believe that it all happened when she listened to
La clemenza di Tito
, but Metastasio was virtue itself and there was not the slightest reason to be offended.
Mozart had to work with a group of singers whom he did not know (only Antonio Baglioni, once Ottavio, was singing the role of Tito Vespasiano), and the opera celebrating the magnanimity of the Roman emperor who forgives his enemy was not received with the acclaim Mozart’s friends had hoped for. Newspaper reviews were sparse, and even Kleist, the faithful admirer, briefly noted that the opera was “worthy of its master, especially in the
andante
passages.” The official court circular did not mention the coronation performance at all (only saying that the imperial family had taken their seats in the boxes punctually), and the pro-Mozartians ascribed the Prague audience’s cool response to their being almost deafened on that occasion by spectacles, fireworks, balls, concerts, and an industrial exhibition; and in the Jewish Town, a “Turkish” band was entertaining.
andante
passages.” The official court circular did not mention the coronation performance at all (only saying that the imperial family had taken their seats in the boxes punctually), and the pro-Mozartians ascribed the Prague audience’s cool response to their being almost deafened on that occasion by spectacles, fireworks, balls, concerts, and an industrial exhibition; and in the Jewish Town, a “Turkish” band was entertaining.
Other Mozart enthusiasts suspected intrigues by the anti-Mozart faction in Vienna, present in Prague upon the invitation of the emperor and in full force, Salieri conducting the music of the coronation mass at Hrad
any
Cathedral, and Mozart’s Czech adversary Leopold Koželuh presenting an official coronation cantata. Koželuh, who came from a Czech village and had studied law at Prague University, had decided, after a success with a ballet composition in 1771, to change his life: in Vienna he was appointed by Joseph II to be music teacher to a princess and joined in the intrigues of the Italian group, although his colleague Salieri, usually cast as the villain of the piece, was mostly trained in Vienna and was closer to Gluck than to the Neapolitan tradition. It was believed in Prague that Koželuh was dead set against Mozart, and it remains to be explained why La Dušek sang the solo part of Koželuh’s coronation cantata. Koželuh’s famous concert at the Palais Czernin, with an orchestra of a hundred and fifty, preceding a glamorous ball, was certainly considered a distinct anti-Mozart demonstration by people in the know.
anyCathedral, and Mozart’s Czech adversary Leopold Koželuh presenting an official coronation cantata. Koželuh, who came from a Czech village and had studied law at Prague University, had decided, after a success with a ballet composition in 1771, to change his life: in Vienna he was appointed by Joseph II to be music teacher to a princess and joined in the intrigues of the Italian group, although his colleague Salieri, usually cast as the villain of the piece, was mostly trained in Vienna and was closer to Gluck than to the Neapolitan tradition. It was believed in Prague that Koželuh was dead set against Mozart, and it remains to be explained why La Dušek sang the solo part of Koželuh’s coronation cantata. Koželuh’s famous concert at the Palais Czernin, with an orchestra of a hundred and fifty, preceding a glamorous ball, was certainly considered a distinct anti-Mozart demonstration by people in the know.
Among Mozart’s Czech friends, F. X. Niemetschek was the most loyal and not only as the author of the earliest biography, “describing” Mozart’s life “according to the original sources.” After Mozart’s death, and when Constanze had to travel to earn a living on her own concert tours, Niemetschek was a second father to Mozart’s sons. Karl, the older one, lived in Niemetschek’s house in the Minor Town for several years (until 1797), was educated by the Niemetscheks, and together with them spent many a carefree summer at their summer house at Sadska. Only after his fifteenth birthday was he sent to Livorno in Italy to learn the principles of commerce, and even in his later years, when he was a quiet civil servant in the administration of Milan (he died in 1858), he remembered Niemetschek with feeling and gratitude. Franz Xaver Amadeus, the younger son (only two of the six children survived), was left in Niemetschek’s care when Constanze gave a concert in Prague and he did not return to Vienna for a year and a half, to be trained as a concert pianist (he died in Karlsbad in 1844). Niemetschek did not want to believe that the thirty-five-year-old Mozart died of natural causes and, unwittingly, gave rise to many stories when, in his biography, he quoted melancholy Mozart saying to Constanze in a late Vienna conversation that “he was surely given poison” and “could not let go of that thought.” Niemetschek did not suggest anything about who could have done the deed, but in the minds of many scandalmongering contemporaries it could only have been Antonio Salieri, thought to be the
capo
of the Vienna Italian opera mafia. Rumors quickly spread among music enthusiasts in the European cities, and denials in newspapers and in other early biographies—for instance, that of Ignaz Ferdinand Arnold of 1803—only enhanced the belief that the stories were true. Unfortunately,
Salieri suffered a nervous breakdown, and it is said that in his confusion he accused himself of murdering Mozart—in other, clearer moments, he just joked about the rumor. Yet the melodramatic story was the not easily forgotten; Karl Maria von Weber believed it when he was in Vienna in 1803, Alexander Pushkin in 1830 wrote a short piece about Salieri pouring the poison, and, more than a century later, Peter Shaffer’s play
Amadeus
and the colorful film by Miloš Forman made from it took a different version of the story back to location in Prague, where it all had begun. F. Murray Abraham, in the role of the Italian irrepressibly hating the genius of Mozart, was, of course, more demonic than Salieri had ever been.
capo
of the Vienna Italian opera mafia. Rumors quickly spread among music enthusiasts in the European cities, and denials in newspapers and in other early biographies—for instance, that of Ignaz Ferdinand Arnold of 1803—only enhanced the belief that the stories were true. Unfortunately,
Salieri suffered a nervous breakdown, and it is said that in his confusion he accused himself of murdering Mozart—in other, clearer moments, he just joked about the rumor. Yet the melodramatic story was the not easily forgotten; Karl Maria von Weber believed it when he was in Vienna in 1803, Alexander Pushkin in 1830 wrote a short piece about Salieri pouring the poison, and, more than a century later, Peter Shaffer’s play
Amadeus
and the colorful film by Miloš Forman made from it took a different version of the story back to location in Prague, where it all had begun. F. Murray Abraham, in the role of the Italian irrepressibly hating the genius of Mozart, was, of course, more demonic than Salieri had ever been.
Prague Mozartians may owe a particular debt of gratitude to the maestro’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, one of the most gifted and adventurous characters of the later eighteenth century—Catholic priest,
dissoluto,
collaborator, friend of Mozart, Salieri, and Casanova, to name only a few, and later grocer,
en gros et en détail,
in Pennsylvania, and in New York self-appointed ambassador of Italian culture at large. He was born in 1749 Emmanuele Conegliano, son of a Jewish leather merchant in the Veneto, and accepted the name of Lorenzo da Ponte (that of the bishop of Caneda, and his benefactor) when he was baptized at the age of fourteen. As a young man, he was a successful teacher of Latin and the humanities at ecclesiastical seminaries, gambled a good deal, had a passionate affair with a patrician girl, was ordained (1773), wrote an elegant political satire, and was expelled, for adultery, from Venice for fifteen years. Undeterred, he set out on his life’s pilgrimage, which took him to Dresden, Vienna, Trieste, London, and ultimately the United States. He came to Prague for the first time to assist Mozart with rehearsals of
Don Giovanni
in 1787 and once again in 1792, together with his common-law wife, Nancy Grahl (from a Trieste Jewish family converted to the Anglican Church), and on that occasion he visited his friend Casanova, who lived in northern Bohemia in the castle of Count Waldstein. One of da Ponte’s Vienna enemies, an Irish tenor named Kelly, described him as vain, affected in his gait, and speaking with a heavy Venetian accent and a lisp. He was certainly resilient; after many bankruptcies on both sides of the Atlantic, he continued to impress his American contemporaries, especially those in Manhattan, with his commitment to poetry, rare books, and opera. He convinced the García troupe to come from Europe to New York to present a full repertoire of Italian opera, including the first American performance of
Don Giovanni
in 1825 (somewhat of a disaster), and spent a good deal of money to pay for the passage of his grandniece Giulia, a gifted singer, or so he was told, to come to New York too—unfortunately, she was not a great success, but da Ponte may have been attracted by the thought that her music teacher was none other than Antonio Baglioni, Prague’s first Don Ottavio, who had always complained to Mozart (or Mozzart, as da Ponte spelled it). Never tiring, a little garrulous as an old man, da Ponte graciously accepted the honor of being named the first professor of Italian language and literature (unpaid) at Columbia College in 1825.
dissoluto,
collaborator, friend of Mozart, Salieri, and Casanova, to name only a few, and later grocer,
en gros et en détail,
in Pennsylvania, and in New York self-appointed ambassador of Italian culture at large. He was born in 1749 Emmanuele Conegliano, son of a Jewish leather merchant in the Veneto, and accepted the name of Lorenzo da Ponte (that of the bishop of Caneda, and his benefactor) when he was baptized at the age of fourteen. As a young man, he was a successful teacher of Latin and the humanities at ecclesiastical seminaries, gambled a good deal, had a passionate affair with a patrician girl, was ordained (1773), wrote an elegant political satire, and was expelled, for adultery, from Venice for fifteen years. Undeterred, he set out on his life’s pilgrimage, which took him to Dresden, Vienna, Trieste, London, and ultimately the United States. He came to Prague for the first time to assist Mozart with rehearsals of
Don Giovanni
in 1787 and once again in 1792, together with his common-law wife, Nancy Grahl (from a Trieste Jewish family converted to the Anglican Church), and on that occasion he visited his friend Casanova, who lived in northern Bohemia in the castle of Count Waldstein. One of da Ponte’s Vienna enemies, an Irish tenor named Kelly, described him as vain, affected in his gait, and speaking with a heavy Venetian accent and a lisp. He was certainly resilient; after many bankruptcies on both sides of the Atlantic, he continued to impress his American contemporaries, especially those in Manhattan, with his commitment to poetry, rare books, and opera. He convinced the García troupe to come from Europe to New York to present a full repertoire of Italian opera, including the first American performance of
Don Giovanni
in 1825 (somewhat of a disaster), and spent a good deal of money to pay for the passage of his grandniece Giulia, a gifted singer, or so he was told, to come to New York too—unfortunately, she was not a great success, but da Ponte may have been attracted by the thought that her music teacher was none other than Antonio Baglioni, Prague’s first Don Ottavio, who had always complained to Mozart (or Mozzart, as da Ponte spelled it). Never tiring, a little garrulous as an old man, da Ponte graciously accepted the honor of being named the first professor of Italian language and literature (unpaid) at Columbia College in 1825.
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