Mozart And His Operas

David Cairns weaves a brilliantly engaging narrative which puts Mozart’s operas in the context of his life, showing how they illuminate his creativity as a whole. Mozart’s unusual childhood as a musical prodigy touring Europe as a performer from an early age is well known. But even more remarkable is that the genius grew up, surviving his unnatural early years and producing works of increasing maturity and originality. Using the operas as his guide, Cairns traces the steady deepening of Mozart’s musical style from his beginnings as a child prodigy, through his coming of age with what Cairns sees as the most Romantic and forward-looking of all Mozart’s operas, Idomeneo, the later genius displayed in the three comic operas, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, and in The Magic Flute, the final and greatest triumph of his career.

Is The Marriage of Figaro just about Figaro? Is Don Giovanni’s story the only one—or even the most interesting one—in the opera that bears his name? For generations of critics, historians, and directors, it’s Mozart’s men who have mattered most. Too often, the female characters have been understood from the male protagonist’s point of view or simply reduced on stage (and in print) to paper cutouts from the age of the powdered wig and the tightly cinched corset. It’s time to give Mozart’s women—and Mozart’s multi-dimensional portrayals of feminine character—their due. In this lively book, Kristi Brown-Montesano offers a detailed exploration of the female roles in Mozart’s four most frequently performed operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte. Each chapter takes a close look at the music, libretto text, literary sources, and historical factors that give shape to a character, re-evaluating common assumptions and proposing fresh interpretations. Brown-Montesano views each character as the subject of a story, not merely the object of a hero’s narrative or the stock figure of convention. From amiable Zerlina, to the awesome Queen of the Night, to calculating Despina, all of Mozart’s women have something unique to say. These readings also tackle provocative social, political, and cultural issues, which are used in the operas to define positive and negative images of femininity: revenge, power, seduction, resistance, autonomy, sacrifice, faithfulness, class, maternity, and sisterhood. Keenly aware of the historical gap between the origins of these works and contemporary culture, Brown-Montesano discusses how attitudes about such concepts—past and current—influence our appreciation of these fascinating representations of women.

"Rushton has based this volume on articles in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera that feature information on the life of Mozart, his works, librettists, and interpreters, and the places where his works have been performed. Rushton compiles these meticulously researched articles into an organized narrative, designed to make finding information on Mozart as easy as possible without sacrificing readability This volume is completely up-to-date, and includes a suggested listening guide and a six-page photo gallery."--BOOK JACKET.

Renowned Mozart scholar Daniel Heartz brings his deep knowledge of social history, theater, and art to a study of the last and great decade of Mozart's operas. Mozart specialists will recognize some of Heartz's best-known essays here; but six pieces are new for the collection, and others have been revised and updated with little-known documents on the librettist's, composer's, and stage director's craft. All lovers of opera will value the elegance and wit of Professor Heartz's writing, enhanced by thirty-seven illustrations, many from his private collection. The volume includes Heartz's classic essay on Idomeneo (1781), the work that continued to inspire and sustain Mozart through his next, and final, six operas. Thomas Bauman brings his special expertise to a discussion of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782). The ten central chapters are devoted to the three great operas composed to librettos by Lorenzo da Ponte—Le nozze di Figaro (l786), Don Giovanni (l787), and Così fan tutte (l790). The reader is treated to fresh insights on da Ponte's role as Mozart's astute and stage-wise collaborator, on the singers whose gifts helped shape each opera, and on the musical connections among the three works. Parallels are drawn with some of the greatest creative artists in other fields, such as Molière, Watteau, and Fragonard. The world of the dance, one of Heartz's specialties, lends an illuminating perspective as well. Finally, the essays discuss the deep spirituality of Mozart's last two operas, Die Zauberflöte and La Clemenza di Tito (both l79l). They also address the pertinence of opera outside Vienna at the end of the century, the fortunes and aspirations of Freemasonry in Austria, and the relation of Mozart's overtures to the dramaturgy of the operas.

Table of contents

In Staging Scenes from the Operas of Mozart: A Guide for Teachers and Singers, opera director William Ferrara offers the perfect resource for the dramatic preparation of opera scenes for directors and student performers. Topics include study and research, rehearsal planning, blocking, characterization, and costuming for four of Mozart’s most popular operas. He surveys basic concepts of opera acting and directing and provides a step-by-step guide to the rehearsal process. While much has appeared on the history and musical performance practice of the operas of Mozart, no guide to the directing and acting of his operas—with simple, concise staging instructions and practical information concerning casting, props, and costumes—has yet seen publication. Featuring over one hundred illustrations, including costume designs by Martha Ferrara, the author breaks new ground for student performers and directors alike, as he walks readers through the process of staging scenes from Mozart’s operas. The first part of the guide, which focuses on study and preparation, comprisess five chapters: ideas for organizing the opera class, a description of the job of the director, a step-by-step review of the rehearsal process, a set of five exercises for researching and analyzing the scenes, and a vocabulary for actors and directors. The next four sections of the book consist of detailed staging guides for a selection of scenes from Mozart’s most frequently performed operas: Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte. The introduction to each scene includes a brief discussion of the story and characters, suggestions for costuming, and minimal set and props. The heart of this guide is the text and translation of each scene, embedded with line-by-line acting notes, and blocking directions and diagrams. These are for use by the actors during speaking and blocking rehearsals and are especially valuable when rehearsing recitatives. Intended for college and university voice teachers seeking guidance for developing a scenes program or opera workshop class, this is also the perfect workbook for students studying opera stage direction, as well as graduate and undergraduate students performing opera scenes by Mozart.

This collection of essays, presented by an internationally known team of scholars, explores the world of Vienna and the development of opera buffa in the second half of the eighteenth century. Although today Mozart remains one of the most well-known figures of the period, the era was filled with composers, librettists, writers and performers who created and developed opera buffa. Among the topics examined are the relationship of Viennese opera buffa to French theatre; Mozart and eighteenth-century comedy; gender, nature and bourgeois society on Mozart's buffa stage; as well as close analyses of key works such as Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro.

This book explores how the Enlightenment aesthetics of theater as a moral institution influenced cultural politics and operatic developments in Vienna between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moralistic viewpoints were particularly important in eighteenth-century debates about German national theater. In Vienna, the idea that vernacular theater should cultivate the moral sensibilities of its German-speaking audiences became prominent during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, when advocates of German plays and operas attempted to deflect the imperial government from supporting exclusively French and Italian theatrical performances. Morality continued to be a dominant aspect of Viennese operatic culture in the following decades, as critics, state officials, librettists, and composers (including Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven) attempted to establish and define German national opera. Viennese concepts of operatic didacticism and national identity in theater further transformed in response to the crisis of Emperor Joseph II’s reform movement, the revolutionary ideas spreading from France, and the war efforts in facing Napoleonic aggression. The imperial government promoted good morals in theatrical performances through the institution of theater censorship, and German-opera authors cultivated intensely didactic works (such as Die Zauberflöte and Fidelio) that eventually became the cornerstones for later developments of German culture.