The second duet is to be omitted altogether, and indeed with more profit than loss to the opera; for if you will read the scene it evidently becomes cold and insipid by the addition of an air or a duet, and very irksome to the other actors, who must stand, by all the time unoccupied; besides, the noble contest between Ilia and Idamante would become too long, and thus lose its whole interest.

Mara has not the good fortune to please me.  She does too little to be compared to a Bastardella [see No. 8], (yet this is her peculiar style,) and too much to touch the heart like a Weber [Aloysia], or any judicious singer.

P.S.—­A propos, as they translate so badly here, Count Seeau would like to have the opera translated in Salzburg, and the arias alone to be in verse.  I am to make a contract that the payment of the poet and the translator should be made in one sum.  Give me an answer soon about this.  Adieu!  What of the family portraits?  Are they good likenesses?  Is my sister’s begun yet?  The opera is to be given for the first time on the 26th of January.  Be so kind as to send me the two scores of the masses that I have with me, and also the mass in B. Count Seeau is to mention them soon to the Elector; I should like to be known here in this style also.  I have just heard a mass of Gruan’s; it would be easy to compose half a dozen such in a day.  Had I known that this singer, Del Prato, was so bad, I should certainly have recommended Cecarelli.

128.

Munich, Nov. 15, 1780.

The aria is now admirable, but there is still an alteration to be made recommended by Raaff; he is, however, right, and even were he not, some courtesy ought to be shown to his gray hairs.  He was with me yesterday, and I played over his first aria to him, with which he was very much pleased.  The man is old, and can no longer show off in an aria like that in the second art,—­“Fuor del mar ho un mare in seno,” &c.  As, moreover, in the third act he has no aria, (the one in the first act not being so cantabile as he would like, owing to the expression of the words,) he wishes after his last speech, “O Creta fortuiiata, O me felice,” to have a pretty aria to sing instead of the quartet; in this way a superfluous air would be got rid of, and the third act produce a far better effect.  In the last scene also of the second act, Idomeneo has an aria, or rather a kind of cavatina, to sing between the choruses.  For this it would be better to substitute a mere recitative, well supported by the instruments.  For in this scene, (owing to the action and grouping which have been recently settled with Le Grand,) the finest of the whole opera, there cannot fail to be such a noise and confusion in the theatre, that an aria, would make a very bad figure in this place, and moreover there is a thunderstorm which is not likely to subside during Raaff’s aria!  The effect, therefore, of a recitative between the choruses must be infinitely better.  Lisel