CHAPTER IV

MOZART

Although Mozart’s (1756-1791) earliest years were passed at Salzburg, the musical influences which surrounded his cradle were mainly Italian.  Salzburg imitated Vienna, and Vienna, in spite of Gluck, was still Italian in its sympathies, so far at any rate as opera seria was concerned.  Mozart wrote his first opera, ‘La Finta Semplice,’ for Vienna, when he was twelve years old.  It would have been performed in 1768 but for the intrigues of jealous rivals and the knavery of an impresario.  It was not actually produced until the following year, when the Archbishop of Salzburg arranged a performance of it in his own city to console his little protege for his disappointment at Vienna.  It is of course an extraordinary work when the composer’s age is taken into account, but intrinsically differs little from the thousand and one comic operas of the period, Mozart’s first German opera, ’Bastien und Bastienne,’ though written after ‘La Finta Semplice,’ was performed before it.  It was given in 1768 in a private theatre belonging to Dr. Anton Meszmer, a rich Viennese bourgeois.  It follows the lines of Miller’s Singspiele closely, but shows more originality, especially in the orchestration, than ‘La Finta Semplice.’  The plot of the little work is an imitation of Rousseau’s ‘Devin du Village,’ telling of the quarrels of a rustic couple, and their reconciliation through the good offices of a travelling conjurer.  It was significant that the Italian and German schools should be respectively represented in the two infant works of the man who was afterwards to fuse the special beauties of each in works of immortal loveliness.  Mozart’s next four operas were, for the most part, hastily written—­’Mitridate, Re di Ponto’ (1770) and ’Lucio Silla’ (1775) for Milan, “La Finta Giardiniera’ (1775) for Munich, and ‘Il Re Pastore’ (1775) for Salzburg.  They adhere pretty closely to the conventional forms of the day, and, in spite of the beauty of many of the airs, can scarcely be said to contain much evidence of Mozart’s incomparable genius.  In 1778 the young composer visited Paris, where he stayed for several months.  This period may be looked upon as the turning-point in his operatic career.  In Paris he heard the operas of Gluck and Gretry, besides those of the Italian composers, such as Piccinni and Sacchini, whose best works were written for the French stage.  He studied their scores carefully, and from them he learnt the principles of orchestration, which he was afterwards to turn to such account in ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘Die Zauberfloete,’ The result of his studies was plainly visible in the first work which he produced after his return to Germany, ‘Idomeneo.’  This was written for the Court Theatre at Munich, and was performed for the first time on the 29th of January, 1781.  The libretto, by the Abbe Giambattista Varesco, was modelled upon an earlier French work