Mozart, universally renowned yet still unknown
The dramatic concept of the Salzburg Festival 2006
Everyone believes they are on safe territory with Mozart. His music is known, the sound language of this composer is experienced as something familiar. But do we really know Mozart? If we take a look at the Köchel catalogue, we notice very quickly that many of Mozart’s compositions do not belong to the standard repertoire. Music is primarily played that Mozart composed during his years in Vienna – the major orchestral works and chamber music from a later period – whereas the creative phase before he broke off with his home town of Salzburg tends to be neglected. This includes the masses, vespers and litanies from his youth, the church sonatas, the early quartets and instrumental sonatas. The situation is especially remarkable in the sphere of opera: the seven “great” operas from Idomeneo to La clemenza di Tito are to be found on programmes of opera houses everywhere. However, anyone who is looking for an opportunity to experience one of the other fifteen operas and singspiels on stage will have to be patient – and might ultimately abandon the attempt altogether.
Peter Ruzicka takes a conscious stand against
the trend
to focus on highlights and marketing strategies concerned
merely with “the best of …”
From the very beginning the Salzburg Festival placed the city’s great son at the centre of its programmes but so far not even all Mozart’s operas have been staged here; we still await productions of Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes, Apollo et Hyazinthus, La Betulia liberata, Il sogno di Scipione and Il re pastore as well as the two fragments L’oca del Cairo and Lo sposo deluso. The seven “great” operas are confronted with seven opera scores which have not yet been given due attention by the Festival: there is still a lot of Mozart to discover.
In the anniversary year 2006, if we want to come closer to the myth of Mozart, it would be the wrong way (even though more convenient) to limit ourselves to “the best of…”. A composer is always an integral part of his historical surroundings, he has to take responsibility and develop, is bound within certain contexts. If we wish to understand the genius of Mozart and in the best sense demythologise him, we have to analyse this historical and ideational context, we have to follow the development of the composer in his astonishing artistic process of maturing, a process he underwent in so few years. If we take an example: he composed Mitridate (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772) within a year of each other but what a development Mozart made within these few months! Whereas in Mitridate, his first analysis of opera seria, he still adheres to the conventions of the genre, in Lucio Silla he already begins to break away from its structures: instead of the traditional secco recitatives, he uses more exciting accompagnati. The variety of aria forms, ensembles and choruses Mozart introduces into the score is a foretaste of what is to come in works he composed much later: subjective moods are expressed and reflect abysses in the emotional life of the protagonists – it is a piece typical of Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress). However, the symphonic, thematically rich and instrumental conception of the arias indicates in particular Mozart’s emerging individuality. He does not merely provide a stage for coloratura artistry, for divas and castrati to show off their talents, instead he composes an overall artistic structure – an achievement he later mastered beyond compare in Don Giovanni and Figaro.
The encounter with the young opera composer Mozart does indeed make us realise that he analysed very many genres and was immediately able to adapt their specific features. This talent and power of transformation may astonish us just as much as his virtuosity in adopting foreign characteristics and his disregard for limitations.
However, the more decisive question and one that can only be answered on the basis of the early works, is the following: when and how does Mozart find himself and arrive at his unmistakeable sound language? When does his individuality triumphantly cease to be tied to a particular time? The answer lies already in the earliest dramatic works, starting with Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes, which he composed at the age of eleven. Here Mozart reveals his own individual style, at first hesitantly and tentatively, then with ever greater self-confidence, finally freely and independently. A wonderful example of how Mozart frees himself of the fetters of convention and charts new territory with his unmistakeable art, is the opera buffa La finta giardiniera, composed in 1775. Mozart dispenses here with stereotypes of the genre originating from commedia dell’arte, he blends comic elements with tragic moments in a manner similar to the three Da Ponte operas composed twelve years or so later, and in the harmonies, melodic flow and rhythms he offers a fascinating presentiment of the stage works from his Vienna period.
Various prejudices as regards the undertaking to perform all of Mozart’s 22 operas can be refuted. For instance this one that comes from someone who is qualified to have an opinion: “The main characteristic of Mozart’s career as an opera composer is the carefree random nature with which he approached his works”, was the verdict of Richard Wagner. “He would never have dreamed of thinking about aesthetic scruples forming the basis of opera. He was totally uninhibited as regards composing music for an opera libretto given to him, indeed he was unconcerned whether this text was rewarding for him purely as a musician or not.” If Mozart did indeed, as Wagner suspected, behave like a naïve, playful child and was completely unselective as regards the opera libretti he wrote music for, how can it be explained that he did not always complete everything, moreover found himself compelled to abandon scores such as L’oca del Cairo and Lo sposo deluso? It was most probably because Mozart the dramatist was not satisfied with the libretti! The Salzburg Festival intends to stage these fragments too and see how close the genius came to failure. Few things are more revealing about Mozart as an opera composer than the caesuras in his artistic life when the dramatic instinct is victorious over musical playfulness and fancy.
Celebratory and commemorative years have always presented a welcome occasion for great publishing deeds from which we still benefit nowadays. For instance in 1956, the 200th birthday of Mozart, work began on the New Mozart Edition and this is now a standard for all performances. In 1991, the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death, the record company Philips issued the complete recordings of all the composer’s works and in this way made those four fifths of the Mozart repertoire accessible that are very rarely or never performed in concerts and operas. The challenge of presenting all Mozart’s stage works in one place and over a period of a six-week festival season is to be our task for the 250th celebrations in summer 2006. Some may assume this to be an idea founded on an encyclopaedic thought-process but it is not an educational ideal of yesteryear and has absolutely nothing to do with the mania of completeness. In an age of specialisation it is rather a question of reminding ourselves that we can only understand a work, an epoch or a personality when we are able to know them fully. Therefore we consciously intend to adopt a position contrary to the tendency to focus on marketing strategies only concerned with “the best of” and the presentation of fashionable highlights.
Peter Ruzicka