That the Cherubino of Mozart’s Nozze is quite different from Beaumarchais’ Cherubin does not affect this question.  He is a new creation, just because Mozart could not, or would not, conceive the character of the page in Beaumarchais’ sprightly superficial spirit.  He used the part to utter something unutterable except by music about the soul of the still adolescent lover.  The libretto-part and the melodies, taken together, constitute a new romantic ideal, consistent with experience, but realised with the intensity and universality whereby art is distinguished from life.  Don Juan was a myth before Mozart touched him with the magic wand of music.  Cherubino became a myth by the same Prospero’s spell.  Both characters have the universality, the symbolic potency, which belongs to legendary beings.  That there remains a discrepancy between the boy-page and the music made for him, can be conceded without danger to my theory; for the music made for Cherubino is meant to interpret his psychical condition, and is independent of his boyishness of conduct.

This further explains why there may be so many renderings of Cherubino’s melodies.  Mozart idealised an infinite emotion.  The singer is forced to define; the actor also is forced to define.  Each introduces his own limit on the feeling.  When the actor and the singer meet together in one personality, this definition of emotion becomes of necessity doubly specific.  The condition of all music is that it depends in a great measure on the temperament of the interpreter for its momentary shade of expression, and this dependence is of course exaggerated when the music is dramatic.  Furthermore, the subjectivity of the audience enters into the problem as still another element of definition.  It may therefore be fairly said that, in estimating any impression produced by Cherubino’s music, the original character of the page, transplanted from French comedy to Italian opera, Mozart’s conception of that character, Mozart’s specific quality of emotion and specific style of musical utterance, together with the contralto’s interpretation of the character and rendering of the music, according to her intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice, have collaborated with the individuality of the hearer.  Some of the constituents of the ever-varying product—­a product which is new each time the part is played—­are fixed.  Da Ponte’s Cherubino and Mozart’s melodies remain unalterable.  All the rest is undecided; the singer and the listener change on each occasion.

To assert that the musician Mozart meant nothing by his music, to assert that he only cared about it qua music, is the same as to say that the painter Tintoretto, when he put the Crucifixion upon canvas, the sculptor Michelangelo, when he carved Christ upon the lap of Mary, meant nothing, and only cared about the beauty of their forms and colours.  Those who take up this position prove, not that the artist has no meaning