Wolfgang Amadé Mozart - The Compleat Mozart (Neal Zaslaw)
Vocal music and related works
Concert Arias, Duets, Trios, and Quartets
Background and overview
The fifty-four arias and four ensembles chronicled in this section are loosely but somewhat misleadingly known as “concert arias”. Properly speaking, a concert aria is an aria intended not for an opera but for inclusion as one item of a concert otherwise made up of unrelated music. This is confusing in more than one way. Popular arias drawn from operas could be and frequently were used as concert arias, suggesting that the boundaries between concert arias and other arias were vague. Then, hidden in this category are several types of arias: “true” concert arias, often written for Mozart’s favorite singers to perform at his or their benefit concerts; insertion arias on newly written texts meant to be added to someone else’s opera to extend the role of one of the characters; substitution arias, added to Mozart’s or someone else’s opera but in place of an already existing aria and often taking over its text; domestic or house-music arias, for use at home with friends; arias for occasions of state (licenze), with texts flattering a rich and powerful patron; and apprentice or practice works, mostly set to aria texts by the reigning librettist of serious opera: Pietro Metastasio.
Some of these arias technically constitute what is called a scena or “scene”. This does not mean the same thing as a scene in a spoken play, which is usually a self-contained dramatic sub-unit of an act. Rather it refers to a single aria with the recitative that precedes it and “sets the scene” for the aria. It was a convention in eighteenth-century Italian opera that whenever a character entered or exited the stage, a new scene was said to begin. But since it was another convention that a character, after unburdening him- or herself of an aria, would leave the stage (the so-called exit aria), an aria plus its introductory recitative usually constituted a scene. These scenes can immediately be recognized in the following notes because their titles are double, giving the opening words of both the recitative and the aria.
Mozart’s best concert arias contain some of his most extraordinary music. Some of them present formidable technical difficulties for their soloists. Nearly all show him grappling with the musical, dramatic, and psychological issues that distinguish his operas from the majority of operas by his contemporaries. Here is a rich vein of precious masterpieces waiting to be mined.
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Concert arias and scenes for soprano
K. 23 Conservati fedele
Origin: The Hague, October 1765
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, strings
In September 1765, Mozart, a child of nine, and his sister Nannerl traveled to the Netherlands, where Nannerl nearly died of typhoid. Mozart composed an initial version of this aria in The Hague in October before coming down with typhoid himself. He probably revised it during his convalescence in January 1766. The aria may have been written for Princess Caroline of Nassau-Weilburg, sister of Prince William V of Orange.
The text is from Metastasio’s Artaserse, a libretto so popular in its day that it was set 107 times. Mozart may have seen the opera during his year-and-a-half sojourn in London in 1764-65. At any rate, he was drawn to Metastasio’s text for four of his earliest concert arias (K. 23, 78, 88, and 79). In this aria from the opening of the opera, Mandane expresses the hope that Arbace will remain faithful to her.
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K. 78 Per pietà, bell’idol mio (K6 73b)
Origin: Holland, 1765-66
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Like K. 23, K. 78 derives its text from Metastasio’s Artaserse. It is a simple song, without introductory recitative, in which Artaserse protests his love of Semira and his sadness that the course of their love does not run smoothly.
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K. 79 O temerario Arbace ... Per quel paterno amplesso (K6 73d)
Origin: Holland, 1765-66
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
The text for K. 79 is from Artaserse, Act II, Scene 11. Arbace has been wrongly imprisoned for crimes actually committed by his father, Artabano, but he refuses to betray the latter. Addressing his father, Arbace nobly accepts his destiny. As sometimes happened in concert versions of operatic scenes, the singer assumes the roles of both characters in the recitative, in order to preserve dramatic continuity. She first delivers Arbace’s words in orchestrally accompanied recitative, next sings a few words of response from Artabano in secco recitative, and then concludes with Arbace’s aria.
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K. 70 A Bernice ... Sol nascente (K6 61c)
Origin: Salzburg, 1767-69
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, 2 horns, strings
This scena was probably composed as a licenza, or epilogue of homage, to accompany a performance of Giuseppe Sarti’s opera Vologeso. Mozart added the licenza to honor the sixty-ninth birthday of the prince-archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach, which occurred on February 28, 1769. Such pieces were a popular form of musical flattery in the mid-eighteenth century; although coming at the end of a full evening’s opera and sung by one of the characters in the opera, they had little or nothing to do with the plot. In this case the text makes a brief transition from the happy outcome of the opera’s plot to the happy birthday wishes for Sigismund.
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K. deest Cara, se le mie pene
Origin: Salzburg? 1769? or Olomouc, Moravia? 1767?
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, 2 horns, violin, viola, bass
This recently discovered work appears to date from the late 1760s. It is warmly lyrical, with just a touch of pyrotechnical coloratura. It differs from Mozart’s other concert arias of this period both in its use of a non-Metastasian text, and in its scoring without a second violin. Its scoring is the same, however, as that of another early aria fragment, “Un dente guasto e gelato” (K6 209a), from 1775.
Leopold Mozart claims, in a letter of May 28, 1768, that Wolfgang composed an aria in Olomouc, in December 1767, for the daughter of a physician, a certain Dr. Wolf. As nothing else exists that can be identified as this aria, perhaps “Cara, se le mie pene” was the work.
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K. 88 Fra cento affani e cento (K6 73c)
Origin: Milan, February or March 1770
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings
This is the last of the arias drawn from Metastasio’s Artaserse. It is also the most ambitious – a full 266 measures long, even though it lacks an opening recitative. In eighteenth-century Italy this sort of grand opera seria aria, or aria monumentale, was greatly admired by the aristocratic opera lovers of the day. Mozart undoubtedly designed this piece for a virtuoso castrato voice.
The text is the opening aria of the hero Arbace. In the scene leading up to it, his father Artabano has handed him the bloody sword with which Artabano has slain King Serse, the father of Arbace’s beloved Mandane. The aria is Arbace’s heroic meditation on Mandane’s approaching sorrow and Artabano’s treachery.
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K. 77 Misero me ... Misero pargoletto (K6 73e)
Origin: Milan, March 1770
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
This is one of five concert arias (K. 77, 82, 83, 74b, 368) that Mozart drew from Metastasio’s music drama Demofoonte (Demophoön). The complete text was set by some of the finest masters of the first half of the eighteenth century: Leonardo Leo, Antonio Caldara, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Adolf Hasse, Niccolò Jommelli, Niccolò Piccini, and Giovanni Paisiello.
In the opera’s plot, it seems that the hero and heroine, Timante and Dirce, have innocently committed incest. In K. 77 Timante, sung by a soprano, soliloquizes on the horror of discovering he has married a woman he believes to be his sister. The recitative is long and magnificent – Mozart’s first great dramatic recitativo accompagnato.
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K. 82 Se ardire, e speranza (K6 73o)
Origin: Rome, April 25, 1770
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 flutes, 2 horns, strings
Mozart again used a text from Metastasio’s Demofoonte in this aria, written for the celebrated castrato Giovanni Manzuoli. As a nine-year-old, Mozart had taken some singing lessons from Manzuoli in London. In 1771 Manzuoli sang the role of Ascanio in the Milan premiere of Mozart’s Ascanio in Alba. He was a florid singer of formidable powers, but Mozart chose to show off his quiet, legato style in K. 82. In this scene of the opera, Timante has just witnessed his beloved Dirce dragged off to be a sacrificial victim, chosen by the king of Thrace as his yearly sacrifice to Apollo.
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K. 83 Se tutti i mali miei (K6 73p)
Origin: Rome, April or May 1770
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
K. 83 is the third of Mozart’s Demofoonte arias, composed possibly for the soprano Anna Lucia de Amicis, who two years later created the role of Giunia in Mozart’s opera seria, Lucio Silla. In this scene from Act III, Dirce, believing that she is to die a sacrificial death, pours out her grief to Creusa, her rival for Timante’s love. Mozart gives the singer three opportunities to improvise cadenzas in this aria.
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K3 74b Non curo l’affetto
Origin: Milan or Pavia, early 1771
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
On December 26, 1770, Mozart’s first large-scale opera, Mitridate, rè di Ponto, was performed in Milan. In the aftermath of this performance, Mozart composed his last concert aria before his return to Salzburg. Little is known about the genesis of “Non curo l’affetto”. The autograph is lost, but a copyist’s manuscript in Prague bears a notation that it was composed for the theater in Pavia, a town some thirty miles south of Milan.
The text is again from Metastasio’s Demofoonte. In Act I, Scene 7, Timante has incurred the wrath of Princess Creusa by spurning her love. In retaliation, she insists to his brother Cherinto, who is madly in love with her, that he kill Timante if he wishes to enjoy her favors.
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K. 217 Voi avete un cor fedele
Origin: Salzburg, October 26, 1775
Author: anonymous, after Carlo Goldoni
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
In the fall of 1775 an Italian opera troupe visited Salzburg, performing Baldassare Galuppi’s opera buffa, Le nozze di Dorinda (Dorinda’s Wedding). Mozart was apparently called on to provide a new aria for the prima donna. Rapidly becoming a master of the style, he turned out a comic gem that surpasses anything in his own opera buffa of ten months earlier, La finta giardiniera. “Voi avete un cor fedele” constitutes a watershed in Mozart’s creative life.
In Act I, Scene 4, Dorinda addresses her suitor: “You have the faithful heart of an impassioned lover”. Her words are filled with ironic overtones; she really finds her interlocutor a dull fellow, and Mozart’s music sparkles with a young woman’s amused contempt.
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K. 272 Ah, lo previdi ... Ah, t’invola agl’occhi miei
Origin: Salzburg, August 1777
Author: Vittorio Amadeo Cigna-Santi
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
This is the first of Mozart’s great concert arias. According to American musicologist Alfred Einstein, Mozart “almost never wrote anything more ambitious, or containing stronger dramatic feeling, than this aria”. The work was an artistic breakthrough for Mozart in the vocal realm comparable to the instrumental breakthroughs in the first G minor Symphony and the “Jeunehomme” Piano Concerto. The aria was commissioned by the great Prague-born soprano Josephine Duschek in the summer of 1777. She was an oratorio singer and specialist (perhaps the first ever) in vocal music for the concert stage. Beethoven was to write his concert aria “Ah! Perfido” for her in 1796.
The text of “Ah, lo previdi” was drawn from the opera Andromeda, originally set by Giovanni Paisiello from a libretto by Cigna-Santi, who also supplied Mozart with the libretto for his first Milan opera, Mitridate, rè di Ponto. In Act III, Scene 10, Euristeus, betrothed to Andromeda, tells her that he has met Perseus, her true lover, wandering in a garden, holding an unsheathed sword and bereft of his senses. Andromeda, imagining that Perseus has killed himself, at first turns in rage upon Euristeus for not having prevented the suicide. Then in the second recitative and the concluding cavatina, her passion turns to resignation and she welcomes death so that she can accompany Perseus to “Lethe’s other shore”.
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K. 294 Alcandro, lo confesso ... Non sò d’onde vieni
Origin: Mannheim, February 24, 1778
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
This great work is one of the landmarks among Mozart’s concert arias. It was the first of eight he wrote for Aloysia Weber. Mozart was closer to her than to any other singer in his life and was, in fact, already deeply in love with her when he completed the work. The aria with its special connection with Aloysia Weber was obviously of enormous importance to Mozart, and he frequently made references to the aria and to her in his letters home during his visit to Mannheim.
The words are from Metastasio’s Olimpiade, another of his librettos that dozens of composers set to music. In the opera, an attempt is made on the life of King Clisthenes of Sicyon by a young man who is later revealed to be his son, separated from his father since infancy. Clisthenes has just condemned the would-be assassin to death. Deeply troubled by an inexplicable sense that he knows the youth, he asks his confidant, Alcander, what this sudden pounding of his heart, these tender feelings, can mean.
According to his letters, Mozart began to set this scene for the tenor Anton Raaff, but felt compelled to change to the soprano register. Just three days after that, he compensated Raaff with a tailor-made aria, K. 295. Nine years later he set the text again, to entirely new music for a bass voice (see the note for K. 512).
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K2 486a Basta vincesti ... Ah, non lasciarmi, no (K6 295a)
Origin: Mannheim, February 27, 1778
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 flutes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Mozart designed this scena from Metastasio’s Didone abbandonata for Dorothea Wendling of Mannheim, for many years the most celebrated singer of the Palatine stage. Two years later Mozart was to create the role of Ilia in Idomeneo for her.
In Metastasio’s version of the turbulent love affair of Aeneas and Dido, Dido pretends to agree to a marriage proposal from Jarba, King of the Moors. The jealous Aeneas demands that she retract her written promise, and Dido hands him the paper containing the retraction. But still fearing that she will lose Aeneas, she pleads with him, in tones of quiet, understated intensity, not to abandon her.
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K. 538 Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle
Origin: drafted in Mannheim? 1778?; completed in Vienna, March 4, 1788
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Of all the arias Mozart composed for Aloysia Weber, this is the most brilliant and dazzling. While his other works for her fairly glow with warmth and tenderness, this one is largely a matter of transcendental vocal cords. Mozart rarely wrote more difficult vocal music.
The words are drawn from Metastasio’s L’eroe cinese (The Chinese Hero). The hero Sevino, son of the Regent of China, sings them in Act I, when he and his princess Lisinga are in danger of being separated.
The aria exists both in a full score from 1788 and in a particella, or continuity draft, containing only the vocal part and the bass line, written ten years earlier during Mozart’s first visit to Mannheim. The earlier version would seem to date from about the time Mozart first became fond of Aloysia Weber; the later version was to be his last composition for her. Why Mozart put the work aside remains unexplained.
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K. 316 Popoli di Tessaglia ... Io non chiedo, eterni dei (K6 300b)
Origin: Paris, July 1778; Munich, January 8, 1779
Author: Raniero de Calzabigi
Scoring: soprano, oboe, bassoon, 2 horns, strings
While Mozart was in Paris in the summer of 1778, he set as ide time from his busy rounds to begin an ambitious operatic scena for Aloysia Weber. He deliberately set himself a challenge in choosing the text from Gluck’s opera Alceste, which had been a sensational success both in Vienna in 1767 and in Paris in 1776. This was a bold and (some must have thought) arrogant gesture coming from a twenty-three-year-old composer.
The opera tells the story of the Thessalian King Admetus, who is on his deathbed when an oracle of Apollo announces that the king will be spared if one of his subjects volunteers to die in his place. Only his wife, Alcestis, comes forward. Mozart composes Alcestis’s entrance scene in the first act, before the oracle has been heard; she addresses the people in dignified, priestess-like tones of lament and resignation. Only in the final section of her long aria does she give way and allow her grief to pour forth.
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K. 368 Ma che vi fece, o stelle ... Sperai vicino il lido
Origin: Salzburg, 1779-80, or Munich, 1780-81
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 flutes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Mozart turned to Metastasio’s Demofoonte for the fifth and last time in this work (see K. 77 on p. 75). Musicologist Alfred Einstein believes that the aria was intended for the Munich soprano who created the demanding role of Electra in Idomeneo, Elisabeth Wendling. She was a sister-in-law of Dorothea Wendling, the Ilia of the Idomeneo premiere and the dedicatee of the concert aria K. 486a.
In Act I, Scene 4, Timante discovers that his supposed father, Demophoön, has promised him in marriage to Creusa. Secretly married to Dirce, Timente laments the sorrows that afflict his wife and himself.
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K. 369 Misera, dove son! ... Ah! non son’ io che parlo
Origin: Munich, March 8, 1781
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: soprano, 2 flutes, 2 horns, strings
This is the last work that Mozart wrote before taking up residence for the rest of his life in Vienna. The aria was written in Munich in the aftermath of the premiere and great success of Idomeneo. It was designed for and dedicated to an aristocratic amateur, the Countess Josepha von Paumgarten.
The text comes from another Metastasio libretto, Ezio, which was set by dozens of composers. The Roman general Ezio has exchanged vows of love with Fulvia, the daughter of Ezio’s false friend, Massimo. Massimo spreads false rumors to poison their love, and has Ezio cast into prison. Fulvia is fully aware of her father’s treachery, but filial duty has sealed her lips. Now, with her betrothed flung into prison and threatened with death, she ponders her destiny.
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K. 374 A questo seno deh vieni ... Or che il ciel
Origin: Vienna, April 1781
Author: Giovanni de Gamerra
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
In the spring of 1781 Mozart was in Vienna with a fellow Salzburg musician, the male soprano Francesco Ceccarelli. Both were in the retinue of their employer, the archbishop of Salzburg, who was visiting the capital. Mozart composed this vocal rondo for Ceccarelli to perform at a concert given by the archbishop’s father, Prince Rudolf Joseph Colloredo, on April 8, 1781.
The text comes from the Paisiello’s opera Sismano nel Mogul, with words by de Gamerra, the librettist of Mozart’s own early opera Lucio Silla. In this scene the heroine, Zaïra, gives vent to her relief and joy when her lover returns safely from battle.
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K. 119 Der Liebe himmlisches Gefühl (K6 382h)
Origin: Vienna? 1782?
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, [2 oboes, 2 horns, strings]
This aria exists only in an undated non-autograph version for voice and piano. Its original scoring was reported by Ludwig Köchel (in K1), who examined a set of orchestral parts that are now lost. Its style seems to suggest Mozart’s early Viennese period. Of the various hypothetical origins proposed by historians, the one most commonly accepted places it as a companion piece to K. 383 (see below), which is likewise a German concert aria. Since K. 119 is a bravura aria in fast tempo, it provides a nicely contrasting counterpart to K. 383. Both arias were presumably composed for Aloysia Weber Lange.
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K. 383 Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner!
Origin: Vienna, April 10, 1782
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, flute, oboe, bassoon, strings
This delicate little piece is the most exquisite of the handful of concert arias Mozart wrote in his native German tongue. Like the great aria “Ch’io mi scordi di te?” K. 505, it was written for a singer who was leaving Vienna and wanted to take a graceful farewell of her faithful Viennese public. In this case the singer was Mozart’s future sister-in-law Aloysia Lange, née Weber, an artist whom Mozart had fallen in love with in Mannheim in 1778. The aria is a simple ballad in two verses, but not without original features, including sudden dropouts or pauses in the vocal line that suggest a certain coquettishness that was apparently very much a part of Aloysia’s nature.
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K. 416 Mia speranza adorata ... Ah, non sai qual pena
Origin: Vienna, January 8, 1783
Author: Gaetano Sertor
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
This aria is perhaps the most distinguished of the series dedicated to Aloysia Weber Lange. She sang it a mere three days after its composition at a concert in a Viennese casino. On March 23 she repeated the aria in more formal surroundings at a mammoth all-Mozart concert in the Burgtheater.
The text comes from Pasquale Anfossi’s opera Zemira, which had its premiere in Venice in the winter of 1781-82. The hero Gandarte must abandon his fiancée, Zemira, to the Emperor of Mongolia; in the presence of the tearful Zemira and her father, he takes an emotional farewell.
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K. 178 Ah, spiegarti, oh Dio (K3 125i, K6 417e)
Origin: Vienna? June 1783?
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, [orchestra]
This aria exists only in an undated non-autograph version for voice and piano. There is also an undated autograph copy of the vocal part. Since the aria is similar in text and affect (key of A major, slow tempo, duple meter) to K. 418 (see below), historians have suggested that it represents an early attempt at an aria for the same purpose. It differs from K. 418 mainly in that it remains in slow tempo throughout, while K. 418 concludes with an allegro section.
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K. 418 Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!
Origin: Vienna, June 20, 1783
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
The circumstances concerning the composition and performance of K. 418 and K. 419 (see below) provide the best possible illustration of the stormy politics surrounding the whole question of interpolating new arias into other composers’ operas. Both arias were written to be sung by Aloysia Weber Lange at her Viennese debut with the Italian Opera Company in Anfossi’s Il curioso indiscreto (The indiscreet snoop). Mozart wrote his father, “My friends were malicious enough to spread the report beforehand that ‘Mozart wanted to improve on Anfossi’s opera’. I heard of this and sent a message to Count Rosenberg that I would not hand over my arias unless the following statement was printed in the copies of the libretto, both in German and Italian: ‘Notice. The two arias on p. 36 and p. 102, have been set to music by Signor maestro Mozart to oblige Signora Lange, those written by Signor maestro Anfossi not being commensurate with her ability, but meant for someone else. This must be notified, so that honor should be accorded where it is due, and this without prejudice to the reputation of the already well-known Neapolitan’.” By insisting that the statement be printed in the libretto, he ensured that the audience would listen with special attention to his two arias.
In the opera’s plot, the Marquess Calandrano, in order to test the fidelity of his fiancée, Clorinda, sends his friend, the Count of Ripaverde, to court her. “Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!” occurs toward the end of the first act, when Clorinda nobly sends the count away to find happiness with her rival, Emilia.
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K. 419 No, no, che non sei capace
Origin: Vienna, June 1783
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
This aria occurs later in the action of Anfossi’s Il curioso indiscreto. His pride wounded by Clorinda’s rebuff, the count tells the Marquess that Clorinda was unfaithful. When she discovers this, in Act II, she reacts with a bravura aria, protesting her innocence.
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K. 490 Non più, tutti ascolti ... Non temer, amato bene
Origin: Vienna, March 10, 1786
Author: anonymous (Lorenzo da Ponte?)
Scoring: soprano, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, violin obbligato, strings
An opportunity arose during the Lenten season of 1786 – when the public theaters were closed – for a single private performance of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo at the palace of Prince Johann Adam Auersperg in Vienna. For this performance Mozart composed two extra numbers with new texts. One of the new pieces is a duet, K. 489, for Ilia and Idamante; the second is a recitative and aria for Idamante.
At the beginning of Act II Ilia, the captive Trojan princess, begs Idamante to forget her in favor of Elettra, the woman his father has chosen for him. In the ensuring aria, Idamante refuses. The aria and much of the recitative are set to the same text Mozart was to use again nine months later in K. 505.
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K. 505 Ch’io mi scordi di te? ... Non temer, amato bene
Origin: Vienna, December 26, 1786
Author: anonymous (Lorenzo da Ponte?)
Scoring: soprano, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, piano obbligato, strings
This is arguably the greatest concert aria ever composed. It is of monumental proportions, it has the added delight of being a solo aria and a duet (for it contains an obbligato piano part that is in every sense but the literal one a second voice), and it provides a unique link between Mozart’s great piano concertos and his operas. Mozart wrote the work for the English soprano Ann Selina (Nancy) Storace when she was about to leave Vienna, having recently premiered the role of Susanna in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. He designed the piano obbligato for himself, and played it at her farewell concert in the Kärntnerthortheater. Mozart had set the text once before, as the insertion aria K. 490, composed for the private revival of his opera Idomeneo in 1786.
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K. 528 Bella mia fiamma ... Resta, o cara
Origin: Prague, November 3, 1787
Author: D. Michele Scarcone
Scoring: soprano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Don Giovanni opened in Prague on October 29, 1787. Five days later Mozart completed this magnificent concert aria which, like “Ah, lo previdi” (K. 272), was for Josephine Duschek, the Bohemian soprano. At the time he was a guest of Josephine and her husband at their estate outside Prague. Mozart had possibly originally intended this aria for his friend Gottfried von Jacquin, an amateur bass. But it had gone far beyond the abilities of an amateur singer, and apparently the charming Duschek persuaded Mozart to turn it over to her.
The text comes from Cyrere placata (Ceres Appeased), composed by Niccolò Jommelli, based on the myth of Proserpina and her mother Ceres. Ceres separates Proserpina from her mortal lover, Titano, who she decrees shall die. Titano expresses his profound anguish at losing not only his life but his beloved Proserpina.
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K3 540c In quali eccessi ... Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata
Origin: Vienna, April 30, 1788
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte
Scoring: soprano, flute, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, strings
See the note for Don Giovanni.
K. 577 Al desio, di chi t’adora
Origin: Vienna, July 1789
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte?
Scoring: soprano, 2 basset horns, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
The Marriage of Figaro was revived in Vienna in 1789. The original Susanna had been the vivacious English soprano Ann Selina (Nancy) Storace. In the revival the role went to Francesca Adriana Grabrielli, known as “Il Ferrarese”, perhaps a finer singer technically than “La Storace”, with a greater range and brilliance, but certainly not her equal as a comic actress. Six months later she was to create the demanding role of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte.
This is the first of two replacement arias (K. 577, 579) for Susanna. It was intended to replace the fourth-act aria, “Deh vieni, non tardar”. Susanna is teasing Figaro who she knows is eavesdropping, for he suspects that she is about to keep a rendezvous with Count Almaviva.
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K. 578 Alma grande e nobil core
Origin: Vienna, August 1789
Author: Giuseppe Palomba
Scoring: soprano, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Mozart wrote this aria to be inserted in a revival of Cimarosa’s I due baroni di Rocca Azzura, performed in Vienna on September 6, 1789, a week after the revival of Figaro. He wrote it for the soprano Louise Villeneuve, a popular singer newly arrived in Vienna. Three months later she created the part of Dorabella in the premiere of Così fan tutte.
The story involves a clever young man who wins a beautiful and wealthy bride, Donna Laura, by impersonating a suitor, the Baron of Rocca Azzura, whom her father has chosen for her, sight unseen. When the real baron arrives, he is attracted by another woman, Sandra. A quarrel between the two women culminates in Laura’s aria, “Alma grande e nobil core”, an apostrophe to her highborn ideals and her scorn of the likes of Sandra. who should treat her with more respect. Laura finally vents her rage on the baron.
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K. 579 Un moto di gioia
Origin: Vienna, August 1789
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte
Scoring: soprano, flute, oboe, bassoon, 2 horns, strings
This is the second of two replacement arias (K. 577, 579) for Susanna in the 1789 revival of The Marriage of Figaro. It is a little arietta, barely a minute and a half long and as light as thistledown. It is uncertain exactly where it fits into the action of Figaro. To make room for it, Mozart dropped Susanna’s Act II aria, “Venite inginocchiatevi”, sung as she is fitting Cherubino with a mobcap and teaching him a lady’s deportment. The replacement cannot compare with the original but is irresistible nonetheless, and since Mozart himself made an elegant piano reduction, it has often been appropriated by lieder singers as a song with piano accompaniment.
C.R.
K. 580 Schon lacht der holde Frühling
Origin: Vienna, September 17, 1789
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
This little-known but substantial aria has been neglected because the composer merely sketched the orchestration, although the voice part is complete. Plans were afoot in 1789 to mount a new production in German of Paisiello’s enormously popular Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) in Vienna, with Mozart’s eldest sister-in-law, Josefa Hofer, starring as Rosina. For some reason the project was shelved, and Mozart simply dropped work on the aria. It was, in all probability, designed to serve as Rosina’s singing lesson in the second act.
C.R.
K. 582 Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia
Origin: Vienna, October 1789
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte?
Scoring: soprano, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
K. 582 and K. 583 are two more interpolation arias written, like K. 578, for Louise Villeneuve, this time for a revival of Antonio Soler’s Il burbero di buon cuore (The Good-Hearted Churl), which was presented at the Vienna Burgtheater on November 9, 1789.
This is the more brilliant of the two arias. The heroine, Madame Lucilla, is puzzled by the churlishness of her suitor, who, unbeknownst to her, is hopelessly in debt. Excitedly and without giving reason, he has forbidden her to mix in his personal affairs.
C.R.
K. 583 Vado, ma dove?
Origin: Vienna, October 1789
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte?
Scoring: soprano, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
This is the other interpolated aria in Antonio Soler’s Il burbero di buon cuore. The situation is similar: Lucilla is troubled by the bizarre behavior of her suitor. The aria shows her deep and tender feelings, not far removed from those of Countess Almaviva.
C.R.
Concert arias and scenes for alto
K. 255 Ombra felice ... Io ti lascio
Origin: Salzburg, September 1776
Author: Giovanni de Gamerra
Scoring: alto, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
This recitative and aria en rondeau was composed for the alto castrato Francesco Fortini. It is one of Mozart’s most noble concert arias, but because it is his only one for alto voice it seems to have been unjustly overlooked. Fortini was a virtuoso da camera (chamber virtuoso) of the elector of Bavaria and was in Salzburg performing with an Italian troupe that specialized in opere buffe. It was most unusual for castrati to sing in comic opera (they were already the subjects of much comic repartee), and Fortini may have appeared only in concert repertory with the company. Mozart may have provided this distinctly opera seria aria for such a concert.
The text is traceable to a dramma per musica called Arsace, with music by Michele Mortellari, which deals with a tragic love affair between Selene, wife of King Medonte, and Arsace, the king’s chief of staff. Here, early in the opera, Arsace takes leave of his beloved and wonders if he will ever see her again.
C.R.
Concert arias and scenes for tenor
K. 21 Va, dal furor portata (K6 19c)
Origin: London, 1765
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: tenor, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
The occasion for the composition of this aria, Mozart’s earliest known vocal work, is uncertain, but its date is attested by a manuscript note in his father’s hand. The text comes from Metastasio’s Ezio, which the Mozarts saw sung in pasticcio format (that is, with inserted arias from other sources) in early 1765 in London. It is highly questionable that Wolfgang’s aria was ever inserted in this production, however, since Leopold mentions no such occurrence in his correspondence.
The aria is sung by Massimo, who has just made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the emperor. Suspicion has fallen not on Massimo, but on Ezio, who is beloved of Massimo’s daughter Fulvia. When Fulvia expresses contempt for her father’s actions, Massimo angrily accuses her of filial treason.
W.C.
K. 36 Or che il dover ... Tali e cotanti sono (K6 33i)
Origin: Salzburg, December 1766
Author: anonymous
Scoring: tenor, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
This aria is one of Mozart’s first works after his return to Salzburg from his grand tour to London and northern Europe. He composed it as a licenza (an inserted epilogue of homage) for the intermezzo “Il cavaliere di spirito” (on a text by Carlo Goldoni), which was performed on the occasion of the anniversary of the consecration of Archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach in Salzburg on December 21, 1766. The text makes specific reference to this occasion. Mozart composed another licenza, K. 70, for a similar occasion in Salzburg.
W.C.
K. 209 Si mostra la sorte
Origin: Salzburg, May 19, 1775
Author: anonymous
Scoring: tenor, 2 flutes, 2 horns, strings
In 1775 and 1776 Mozart appears to have written no fewer than five arias and scenes in connection with a visiting Italian opera buffa troupe in Salzburg: these include K. 209, 210, and 256 for tenor, K. 217 for soprano, and K. 255 for alto. The autograph score of the first of these arias bears a date in Leopold Mozart’s hand; otherwise nothing has come to light concerning its purpose. Perhaps it served as an insertion aria in the same opera as the contemporaneous aria, K. 210. It is conceivable that Mozart wrote these arias for the use of a local Salzburg singer performing with the Italian troupe.
W.C.
K. 210 Con ossequio, con rispetto
Origin: Salzburg, May 1775
Author: anonymous
Scoring: tenor, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Contemporaneous with K. 209, this aria served as an insertion aria in Niccolò Piccinni’s opera L’Astratto, ovvero Il giocatore fortunato (The Absent-Minded Man, or The Lucky Joker) on a text by Giuseppe Petrosellini. The aria comes in Act II, Scene 20, but departs from Petrosellini’s text, which sets the entire scene as recitative. In this scene the devil-may-care Capitano Faccenda, disguised as a doctor, appeals boastfully for the hand of Clarice, the daughter of Don Timoteo, the wealthy but choleric landowner who sings the present aria. The following year Mozart composed another insertion aria, K. 256, for the same scene (see below).
W.C.
K. 256 Clarice cara mia sposa
Origin: Salzburg, September 1776
Author: anonymous
Scoring: tenor, 2 oboes, 2 horns, strings
Mozart composed this aria specifically for the singer Antonio Palmini. It is an insertion aria for the same opera and scene as K. 210, sung by the character of Capitano Faccenda. Typically for a buffa aria of this sort, a second character (Don Timoteo) interrupts with commentary in recitativo secco.
W.C.
K. 295 Se al labbro mio non credi
Origin: Mannheim, February 27, 1778
Author: Antonio Salvi
Scoring: tenor, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
This is one of the three concert arias (K. 294, 295, and 486a) that Mozart composed within the space of four days during his first stay in Mannheim. He composed the works for three of the principal singers of Mannheim: the sopranos Aloysia Weber [Lange], and Dorothea Wendling, and the tenor Anton Raaff. According to a letter from Mozart to his father, he chose a text of an aria that was already in Raaff’s repertory, hoping to make so much the stronger an impression of the celebrated tenor. Raaff was reportedly delighted, but asked Mozart to shorten the composition. Indeed, Mozart’s manuscript contains many changes and deletions that would appear to correspond to such a request. Mozart was later to create the title role in his opera Idomeneo for Raaff.
Mozart took the text from an aria in Johann Adolf Hasse’s Artaserse (libretto by Metastasio), an aria that the composer had actually borrowed from his own earlier opera Arminio (libretto by Salvi).
W.C.
K. 435 Müsst’ich auch durch tausend Drachen (K6 416b)
Origin: Vienna? 1783?
Author: anonymous
Scoring: tenor, flute, oboe, clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
On February 5, 1783, Mozart wrote to his father, “I am now writing myself a German opera – I have picked out a comedy by Goldoni – Il servitore di Due Padroni – and the whole first act is already translated – the translator is Baron Binder – but the whole thing is still a secret until it is all finished”. It is possible that the tenor aria K. 435 and a bass aria, “Männer suchen stets zu naschen”, K. 433, were designed for this opera, which presumably would have gone by the title Der Diener zweier Herren (The Servant of Two Masters). No more is known of the projected opera. The present aria, unlike the fragmentary K. 433, survives composed from beginning to end but with the orchestration incomplete.
W.C.
K. 420 Per pietà non ricercate
Origin: Vienna, June 21, 1783
Author: anonymous
Scoring: tenor, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Like the two arias K. 418 and 419 (see the note on p. 80), K. 420 was designed as an insertion aria for Pasquale Anfossi’s opera Il curioso indiscreto. Mozart composed it specifically for the German Johann Valentin Adamberger, one of the finest tenors of his day, for whom Mozart later created the role of Belmonte in The Abduction from the Seraglio.
In Act II, the Count of Ripaverde overhears a conversation between Clorinda and Aurelio, a friend of the Marquess Calandro. Left alone, the count gives vent to his overwhelming envy of Clorinda’s love for the Marquess; in desperation he seeks only death.
W.C.
K. 431 Misero! O sogno ... Aura che intorno spiri (K6 425b)
Origin: Vienna? December 1783?
Author: anonymous
Scoring: tenor, 2 flutes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
A note on Mozart’s manuscript indicates that he composed this scene, like the preceding aria, for Johann Valentin Adamberger, but no other details of the work’s origin are certain. It is often equated with a “new rondo” of Mozart’s that Adamberger is reported to have sung in a concert of December 22, 1783.
W.C.
K3 540a Dalla sua pace
Origin: Vienna, April 24, 1788
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte
Scoring: tenor, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
See the note for Don Giovanni.
Concert arias and scenes for bass
K. 432 Così dunque tradisci ... Aspri rimorsi atroci (K6 421a)
Origin: Vienna? 1783
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: bass, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Although from boyhood onward Mozart composed separate soprano or tenor arias to be interpolated in other composers’ operas, it was not until 1783 that he began writing concert arias for bass. The inspiration for this new departure was the prodigiously talented basso profundo Karl Ludwig Fischer, who created the role of Osmin in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He was eager to be recognized as a master of Italian operatic music and asked Mozart for a highly effective solo that he could introduce into a forthcoming Vienna production of the opera Temistocle, originally set to music by Andrea Bernasconi. In this aria, Sebaste, a subsidiary character, has been found out in evil-doing, and is filled with remorse.
W.S.M.
K. 512 Alcandro, lo confesso ... Non sò d’onde vieni
Origin: Vienna, March 19, 1787
Author: Pietro Metastasio
Scoring: bass, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
This aria was also composed at the request of Ludwig Fischer. While Mozart was engaged in preliminary work on Don Giovanni, Fischer asked for a dramatic solo aria in Italian suitable for the singer’s subscription concert on March 21, 1787. Fischer had been dropped from the Vienna Italian Opera Company and he evidently wished to show authority its grave mistake. Again Mozart went back to a Metastasio text; this time he chose words he had already set in 1778 for the soprano Aloysia Weber Lange (see K. 294). For Fräulein Weber’s aria Mozart had imagined the situation of a mother and her son; for Fischer’s aria he restored the true situation, that of a father and son.
W.S.M.
K. 513 Mentre ti lascio
Origin: Vienna, March 23, 1787
Author: Duca Sant’ Angioli-Morbilli
Scoring: bass, flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Like the aria K. 512, this one was composed during preliminary work on Don Giovanni. It was written for Mozart’s young friend Gottfried von Jacquin, a good amateur bass singer, for whom Mozart wrote other music. The text comes from Paisiello’s opera La disfatta di Dario, which was composed in 1777. In this aria, a father is bidding farewell to his daughter.
W.S.M.
K. 539 Ein deutsches Kriegslied (“Ich möchte wohl der Kaiser sein”)
Origin: Vienna, March 5, 1788
Author: Johann Wilhelm Ludwig
Scoring: bass, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, percussion, strings
Mozart composed “Ein deutsches Kriegslied” (“A German War Song”) for a patriotic concert in Vienna at the beginning of the Turkish wars – hence the piccolo, cymbals, and bass drum in the orchestral accompaniment (all three were synonymous with “Turkish” music in Viennese music of Mozart’s day). The poem was by J. W. L. Gleim, a noted German writer; Mozart’s setting was tailor-made for the limited vocal gifts of the popular Viennese comedian Friedrich Baumann, Jr. This charming trifle came into being while the master was busy preparing Don Giovanni for its Vienna premiere.
W.S.M.
K. 541 Un bacio di mano
Origin: Vienna, May 1788
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte?
Scoring: bass, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Mozart wrote this aria for Francesco Albertarelli, his first Viennese Don Giovanni. It was to be introduced into Pasquale Anfossi’s comic opera Le gelosie fortunate (Jealousy Rewarded), produced in Vienna in June of 1788. The text’s ironic literary content suggests the hand of da Ponte. The aria is famous chiefly because it includes a melody (at the words “Voi siete un po’ tondo”) that Mozart was to borrow, three months later, for the first movement of his “Jupiter” Symphony. In this aria Girò, a Frenchman, is giving jocular advice on love to his highly susceptible friend, Pompeo.
W.S.M.
K3 621a Io ti lascio (K1 Anh 245)
Origin: Vienna? 1788?
Author: anonymous
Scoring: bass, strings
The clouds of mystery have not yet completely lifted from this short piece. Mozart’s widow insisted in 1799 that it was not her husband’s work, but a collaboration between him (the string accompaniment) and his friend Gottfried von Jacquin, who wrote the vocal part as an adieu to Countess Hortense Hatzfeld. Musicologist Alfred Einstein, having examined the extant half of the manuscript score, felt little doubt that “Io ti lascio” is pure and authentic Mozart, accepting the tradition that Mozart jotted down its thirty-nine measures just before leaving Prague after the first production of La clemenza di Tito in September 1791.
But the English scholar Alan Tyson has shown that the surviving autograph fragment is of a type of paper that Mozart used primarily in 1788.
W.S.M.
K. 584 Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo
Origin: Vienna, December 1789
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte
Scoring: bass, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and timpani, strings
In 1789 Mozart was composing his third and last Italian comic opera with da Ponte, Così fan tutte. In it, two young soldiers dress up in outlandish disguises and woo each other’s sweethearts in order to test their fidelity. The bass soldier, Guglielmo, is the first to do the courting on behalf of both of them: da Ponte gave him an unusually long aria text, brilliantly and wittily imagined, and vividly inspiring to Mozart. But the result proved too extended for the balance of the scene in context, and it was replaced, before the first performance, by the shorter and less pretentious aria “Non siate ritrosi”.
The disguised Guglielmo begins the aria by addressing his own sweetheart, recommending his tenor friend to her attention; he then asks her sister to admire his own virtues. When his wooing turns out to be unsuccessful, he is delighted: it means that the two young women are (for the time being at least) faithful to their lovers.
W.S.M.
K. 612 Per questa bella mano
Origin: Vienna, March 8, 1791
Author: anonymous
Scoring: bass, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings with double bass obbligato
In March 1791, shortly before beginning work on Die Zauberflöte, Mozart wrote this unusual aria for Franz Gerl (who was to be the first Sarastro in that opera) and Friedrich Pichelberger, the principal double bass player in the orchestra at Emanuel Schikaneder’s theater, where Die Zauberflöte was to have its premiere. The occasion was most likely a subscription concert for Gerl or Pichelberger. Mozart treats both soloists as virtuosi, asking the double bassist for plentiful double-stops in thirds, rapid scales, arpeggios, and wide leaps, and the bass singer for comparable feats.
W.S.M.
Concert duets, trios, and quartets
K. 479 Dite almeno in che mancai
Origin: Vienna, November 5, 1785
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte?
Scoring: soprano, tenor, 2 basses, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
K. 480 Mandina amabile
Origin: Vienna, November 21, 1785
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte?
Scoring: soprano, tenor, bass, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
Mozart composed these two works as replacement ensembles for the Vienna premiere of Francesco Bianchi’s opera buffa, La villanella rapita (The Abducted Country Girl), on November 28, 1785. The original opera had premiered the previous year in Bologna. Both of Mozart’s ensembles replaced passages of secco recitative in Bianchi’s original composition; in both cases the texts were altered from Giovanni Bertati’s original libretto.
In the opera, the Count is in love with Mandina, a simple peasant girl who is engaged to marry the peasant boy Pippo. Mandina and her father Biagio take the Count’s approaches as innocent indications of his benevolence. In K. 480, the Count attempts to demonstrate the true nature of his favor to Mandina, who is too simple-minded to understand, although Pippo sees through the scheme. Finally the Count decides to abduct Mandina by giving her a sleeping potion. In K. 479, Pippo and Biagio discover Mandina in the Count’s palace and, jumping to conclusions, they shower her with abuse and reproaches; the entrance of the Count only adds to the confusion.
Though it happened without his knowledge, K. 480 was Mozart’s only vocal composition to be published in full score during his lifetime (Paris, c. 1789-90).
W.C.
K. 489 Spiegarti non poss’io
Origin: Vienna, March 10, 1786
Author: anonymous
Scoring: soprano, tenor, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings
See the note for Idomeneo on p. 52.
K3 540b Per queste tue manine
Origin: Vienna, April 28, 1788
Author: Lorenzo da Ponte
Scoring: soprano, bass, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, strings
For the Vienna revival of Don Giovanni, Mozart added two new arias (K. 540a and 540c) and this duet.