The Cambridge Companion to Mozart by Simon P. Keefe

Author:Simon P. Keefe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2016-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

In the modern fashion for musical revival, serious opera remains relatively neglected. Mozart’s remain among the finest products of the genre. In Milan, Mozart acted under instruction from his father, from the singers and from the requirements of the court; these operas succeeded, and the absence of any revivals merely reflects a culture in which few operas outlived their first season. We might wonder whether, young as he was, Mozart could have grasped the political and human implications of the stories. Undoubtedly he worked from a stylistic template that enabled him to select a manner appropriate to each dramatic situation, as the remarks of Daines Barrington testify (see above). But in working with the signifying conventions, and thus of audience expectations, Mozart was no different from his peers, and in actual inventiveness within these constraints he can match any master of the previous generation. In Lucio Silla he added a powerful dose of post-Gluckian drama in the tomb scene, anticipating the glories of Idomeneo. In Il re pastore he captured the pastel shades of the libretto to perfection, and working on vulnerable characters on an intimate stage prepared him not only for the richer humanity of Idomeneo but also for his comedies. Although not without flaws, and uncertainty as to his final intentions, Idomeneo is quite simply one of his greatest works; modern performances of La clemenza di Tito have restored it to a significant place in the repertory; and if we add the opera seria arias which belong to no opera – the ‘concert arias’ – we have a Mozartian repertory so richly various that it must be considered unequivocally to be among the glories of his magnificent oeuvre.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.