La Clemenza Research Articles

“Da uomo”: Querying Gender and Sexuality in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito

“Da uomo”Querying Gender and Sexuality in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito Ilana Walder-Biesanz (bio) The young mezzo-soprano Gaia Petrone is dressed all in black, with a mohawk and overdrawn eyebrows; she sings the male role of Sesto. Andrew Owens (tenor) kneels beside her in similarly monochrome garb, barely restraining tears as the emperor, Tito. The place is the Theater an der Wien stage; the time, 2014; the opera, Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito.1 Petrone as Sesto is singing an aria of repentance: “Deh, per questo istante solo, / ti ricorda il primo amor” (Ah, for just this instant, / remember our former love).2 Though it is the younger, less powerful Sesto who is begging forgiveness, in this production Tito seems more distraught: as Sesto finishes the aria, Tito grabs her/his hand and kisses it passionately. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Gaia Petrone as Sesto and Andrew Owens as Tito during Sesto’s aria “Deh, per questo istante solo” in the Wien Kammeroper’s 2014 production of Tito. Still from the video stream by the Wien Kammeroper. Used with permission. There’s a lot of queer play here both in the text and in the performance. A female singer (Petrone) is playing a male character (Sesto, here presented as unambiguously male, though some productions problematize his gender presentation) [End Page 129] in a role originally sung by a castrato. Sesto expresses a deep emotional attachment to another male character (Tito), who seems to reciprocate romantic feelings. And this is just one scene (albeit a very queer one, to which I will return). La clemenza di Tito (hereafter Tito) features a second trousered mezzo and several other tantalizingly ambiguous relationships.3 The trousered mezzos provide a starting point for my investigation, but in and of themselves they no longer seem particularly queer. Audiences of early opera are used to seeing women play men, and inhabitants of the modern world are used to seeing women in trousers. The normalization of cross-dressing (on and off the stage) and the androgyny of modern dress shift the main locus of queerness in operas like Tito away from trouser roles and toward the relationships of those trousered characters. The explicit romantic relationships in Tito (Vitellia and Sesto; Servilia and Annio) are, I would argue, “mezzosexual”: trousered mezzos (or, rarely, countertenors) making love to sopranos in a pleasurable confusion of close bodies and voices.4 But the gender roles in these relationships are far from essential, with the male characters partaking of femininity (especially highlighted in the costume and staging choices of Jan Bosse’s 2014 production for the Bayerische Staatsoper [BSO]). To add to the pervasive confusion, the character of Sesto is involved in two friendships with strong homoerotic possibilities (with Annio and Tito), particularly within the context of the opera’s setting in ancient Rome. Such interpretations lead to several possible readings of the characters’ genders, sexualities, and motivations and provide a broader meaning to the opera’s titular theme of “clemency” as pardon, not just for a political assassination attempt but for transgressions of sexual and gender norms. Why examine Tito? It is certainly not the only opera seria that displays the aspects of queerness in which I am interested. When I discuss Tito as a “queer opera,” I am speaking of it as an example of a larger phenomenon rather than an exception to it. Tito is an ideal opera with which to explore “queer opera” both because the features I draw attention to—trouser roles, ambiguous gender roles, and homosexuality with respect to both singer and character genders—are particularly abundant and because the opera has been produced frequently in recent years, which enables me to discuss a variety of stagings. Throughout this analysis, I work from the premise that operas are living texts that are constantly recreated by directors, performers, and audiences. In my analysis, I will consider modern productions of Tito, as well as the libretto and music.5 Productions implicitly or explicitly connect texts to contemporary events and concerns, and they reflect deep analysis of the libretto and music by directors, conductors, [End Page 130] designers, performers, dramaturges...

Clemency and Conversion: Theological Reflections on Mozart’s La Clemenzadi Tito

AbstractThis essay suggests that Mozart's serious opera La clemenza di Tito encapsulates both a political philosophy and a theological anthropology, which reflect the composer's dual commitments to the late Enlightenment and Catholicism. I argue that the opera advocates for the rule of law and specifically for a renewed (Beccarian) understanding of clemency as general lenience in punishing rather than as the absolute ruler's extraordinary use of pardons based in his liberum arbitrium. At the same time, Mozart's Clemenza offers the audience a Christian account of the journey from concupiscence and sin to salvation, caused by mercy, love, and suffering.

Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 by David Wyn Jones

Reviewed by: Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 by David Wyn Jones Peter Höyng David Wyn Jones, Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell Press, 2016. 277 pp. David Wyn Jones’s stupendous study manages to have the reader learn anew many facets of the seemingly standard musical fare of classical music in Vienna, albeit now through the lens of history, politics, and sociology. After all, when interpreting compositions by Mozart and the likes, one detaches them from their cultural and political contexts, which, more often than not, determine a great part of a composition’s aesthetic conception and confinements. While being familiar with the biographies of these composers is undoubtedly an integral part of the study of music, Jones could not have presented the convincing historical arc that is the subject of this work without his emphasis on the imperial city’s significance as a space to the musical domain. Ever since Friedrich Kittler published his Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 three decades ago, the vertical crystallization of time has proven to be a useful means for establishing a larger historical narrative that is not bound by the fallacies of an exhaustive, comprehensive approach but instead provides the advantage of showing significant shifts through limited time windows around the turn of a given century. Such is the case when Jones lays the groundwork in his brief but crucial introduction, explicating at its end the book’s structure in broad terms: “Baroque, Classical, Modern; Imperial, Aristocratic, Bourgeois, and Habsburg, Austria, Vienna” (6). The “1700” historical mark is the most liberally applied of the sections, as it covers the successive emperors Leopold I, Joseph I, and Karl VI, who “reigned as Holy Roman Emperor for a period of eighty-two years, from 1658 to 1740” (27). During this time period one can trace a continuous growth of the corps of musical personnel at court, and thereby document the main thesis of this first part that music “had a presence and a purpose that was inextricably linked with that of the dynasty itself” (27). As part of the aggressive Counter-Reformation, music at Leopold’s court had to serve the rituals of the Catholic Church. If there is one blind spot in Jones’s emphasis on religious politics under Leopold, it is that the anti-Judaism so intricately associated with his name is not touched on. In addition to religious music in this time period, Jones explores the importance of Italian opera, which arguably matched that of sacred music, and that of occasion-based ceremonial music, which helped to glorify the Habsburg dynasty on such events as the birthdays and name days of the emperors’ [End Page 159] family or the coronation of Karl VI in Prague in 1723. It was the composer and theorist Johann Joseph Fux who provided the coronation opera Costanza e Fortezza (59); reading the “thick description” of it that Jones provides, one begins to grasp the extent of the political utilization of this opera and opera in general for the sake of Habsburg unity. The second part, “1800,” begins where the first ended, albeit almost seventy years later at another Habsburg coronation. Mozart, “who was overworked and under-appreciated” (72), wrote his late opera La clemenza di Tito (1791) for the coronation of Leopold II, again in Prague. Having earlier provided the imperial court as the primary catalyst for Viennese musical life, Jones uses this comparison to emphasize continuity on one hand and the differences to come on the other. His brother and onetime emperor Joseph II had made, for example, an impact on the musical domain by decreasing the interest in ceremonial music, which had the effect of making such music a more public affair, and by promoting German as the main language for opera (78). Likewise does Jones stress the shift from the imperial court to the aristocracy as the leaders of both private and public tastes in music, best exemplified by the obvious influences of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy, and Count Joseph Lobkowitz. Whereas these prominent families of the higher aristocracy are familiar names in music history, the uncovering of the “hidden history of women in music in this...

Music and the Politics of Negation by James R. Currie (review)

and Politics of Negation. By James R. Currie. (Musical Meaning and Interpretation.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. [xxi, 222 p. ISBN 9780253357038 (hardcover), $34.95; (e-book), $28.99.] examples, bibliography, index.In his book, and Politics of Negation, James R. Currie employs following sections: Veils (Mozart, Piano Concerto K. 459, Finale); Dreams (Fugal Counterpoint); Exile (Haydn, String Quartet Op. 33, No. 5); Enchantment (Mo - zart, La clemenza di Tito); and Forgetting (Edward Said). Currie's overarching enterprise has been to elevate from rubble of its political setting. As James Garratt said in his review of book, where he compared it with Music after All (Journal of American Musi cological Society 62, no. 1 [Spring 2009]: 145-204), the version of this argument presented in and Politics of Negation is considerably more nuanced (Music & Letters 94, no. 3 [2013]: 528). Nevertheless, unprimed reader of book may experience a jolt when Currie equates smugness of current musicology with self-congratulatory stance of late capitalism-a state that he rightly opines is unwarranted with current situation of world, postcollapse of Eastern European communisms and, principally, post-fall of Berlin Wall: catastrophic political instability, global financial crisis, coldly indifferent markets unmasked, fragility of democracy, and failure of Leftin Britain.By Currie's account, new or musicology's transhistoricalness causes it, ironically, to enact psychoanalytic condition of projectional disavowal, through replicating the dynamics of very object that it nearly always rejects in order to validate itself (p. x). This leads to a of exclusion-of music and (p. x). In what can be seen as an updated application of Fredric Jameson's insights in Postmodernism, or, Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post- Contemporary Interventions [Durham: Duke University Press, 1991]), Currie specifically situates new musicology's identity politics as a reflection of heinousness of this phase in our political history. Currie leads us through analyses founded on typical new musicology paradigms-while yet managing, simultaneously, to champion revivification of aesthetic autonomy- all of which arrive at some point of negation, so that negation of egregious political situations can occur through music. I would have welcomed more teasing-out of charge that new musicology has a general sense of political well-being (p. x). Nor was I explicitly shown this structural replicating. One might ask whether aligning new musicology with its dominant political context just because both came into being at same time is not in itself an act of historicizing!In his analysis of works from classical era, Currie's argument is that straying from established forms equates with political activism-an example of which is analogy that concerto form embodies dynamic of individual versus society, which Currie explores through Finale of Mozart's Piano Concerto in F major, K.459, and which provides a parallel for our contemporary situation. Currie addresses Wye J. Allanbrook's postmodern (A Millennial Mozart? Mozart Society of America Newsletter 3, no. 2 [Summer 1999]: 2-4) at length here. This trope might well smack of a restaging of Susan McClary's and others' approaches-and indeed, Currie informs us that his own approach is not an argu ment against those who have inspired him (Berthold Hoeckner, Michael Spitzer, Daniel Chua, Lydia Goehr and Martin Scherzinger [p. xv]). These are all authors who would be described as new musicologists or, in U.K., as part of British critical musicology approach. (It is refreshing to this reader that there are only two references, judiciously selected, to Gilles Deleuze.) But Currie then proceeds to refute his own slant here by uncovering its innate instability. …

Kontrafakturen in der böhmischen Kirchenmusik des 18. Jahrhunderts

CONTRAFACTA IN BOHEMIAN CHURCH MUSIC OF THE 18th CENTURY By means of transferring popular opera arias into the repertoire of church music, using new latin texts, some of the Bohemian churches gained new functions as centers of concert life. In the collection of Prague’s St. Veit cathedral more than hundred church arias and duets exist, dating back even to the 1740 years, the origin of which are Italian operas of 14 composers (Anfossi, Boroni, Fux, Galuppi, Gluck, Graun, Handel, Hasse, Leo, Lotti, Marcello, Pergolesi, Sarri, Vinci). In the music collection of the Royal Canonry of Premonstratensians in Prague in Strahov 32 contrafacta are preserved, deriving from Mozart’s operas (13 from Idomeneo, 10 from La clemenza di Tito). Even the unique quintet of the three Ladies, Tamino and Papageno of The Magic flute had been transformed into an offertory. 28 contrafacta from operas of Antonio Boroni are preserved in the music collection of the Benedictine monastery in Prague in Břevnov. From Gluck’s Prague opera Ezio are preserved in Bohemian historical music collections 19 contrafacta. Mozart’s music in the form of historical contrafacta going back to arias and ensembles amount to be c. sixhundred in church collections of Bohemia. The music of the contrafacta is nearly never simplified but faithfully transferred. In some of them new cadences and ornaments are inserted for local singers. Until now more than 120 of these cadences within the contrafacta could be registered.

Az k horkemu konci: Prazske nemecke divadlo 1845-1945. By Jitka Ludvova.

In Prague there are three extant theatres of great historical and cultural significance. The oldest is the Estates Theatre (1783), the memorable venue for the world premieres of Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito. For a century it remained the only stone-built theatre in Prague, but in 1881 the Czech National Theatre was erected by public subscription (it accidentally burnt down almost immediately but was rebuilt by 1883). And in response to the resplendent Czech Theatre an equally resplendent German Theatre opened in 1888. It is no longer known by this title. After the mass expulsion of the German population of Prague in 1945, it was taken over by the Czechs and continually renamed (Grand Opera of the Fifth of May; Smetana Theatre; State Opera, Prague), its connection with the other theatres varying from independence to secondary stage according to the political vagaries of the time. As the main venue for the German-speaking minority in Prague, the German Theatre was an opera house of world importance mostly through its distinguished roster of conductors (Mahler, Klemperer, Zemlinsky, Kleiber, Steinberg, Széll, Rankl). While the Czech National Theatre and the Estates Theatre have had countless monographs devoted to them over the years (a token of how much theatre and opera has mattered to Czech national aspirations), information on the Prague German Theatre has been much harder to come by. This is partly because most of its archives had disappeared by 1945 but also because of chauvinistic Czechs who wanted to write the German cultural contribution out of the script, a process encouraged by the post-war Communist administration through political censorship and restrictions on archives. It was only after an international conference in 1963 that one of the luminaries of Prague German culture, Franz Kafka, was reluctantly accorded persona grata status, and with it followed the surprising discovery for much of the younger generation that there had been a vibrant German cultural scene before the war. ‘Normalization’ of the 1970s brought with it more censorship and bureaucratic blocking of archives—this changed only with the fall of the Communists in 1989. Since then there has been great interest in German theatre in Prague, most of it uncritical. Jitka Ludvová’s magnificent book, written under the auspices of the Theatre Institute (an important centre of theatre research in Prague that for decades has sponsored the publication of many essential surveys of operatic activities) is the first serious and substantial evaluation of the German theatre culture in Prague, embodied in its chief venue. Ludvová has been working in this field for some forty years and the book is the culmination of her life’s work. It will now be an essential starting point for anyone working in music and theatre in Prague during this period.

Time management at Turin's Teatro Regio: Galuppi's La clemenza di Tito and its alterations, 1759

Margaret R.Butler Time management at Turin’s Teatro Regio: Galuppi’s La clemenza di Tito and its alterations, 1759Hitherto unexplored materials surrounding Baldassare Galuppi’s 1759 setting of Pietro Metastasio’s La clemenza diTito for Turin’s Teatro Regio shed new light on the work and how the theatrical administration’s priorities influenced its performance. Three manuscript tables tipped into the back of a copy of the printed libretto contain precise durations of every portion of the opera as well as the performance’s total running time. Markings in the tables and the libretto indicate cuts in many of the arias. This study considers the evidence in the tables together with that of other sources including the libretto text, manuscript scores, administrative documents and contemporary reports. It contextualizes the sources within Turin’s operatic culture, yielding a clearer picture of the opera as it was likely performed and considering the implications of this view for 18th-century operatic production and performance practices more broadly. It demonstrates the decisive role a theatre’s administration and production staff could play in shaping an 18th-century opera’s form, character and performance.

Ancient Rome in Early Opera (review)

Reviewed by: Ancient Rome in Early Opera Michael Ewans Robert C. Ketterer . Ancient Rome in Early Opera. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Pp. xi + 253. $40.00. This book discusses operas based on themes drawn from Roman history over the period from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643) to c.1800, after which operatic taste moved away from this subject matter. Ketterer demonstrates that "Rome provided early modern Europe with impressive visual and aural presentations of two important myths, which I call the myth of the clement prince and the myth of liberty" (2), because these myths reflected central preoccupations of educated, operagoing audiences during the period before and up to shortly after the French Revolution. The book traces the development of ideas, and therefore of the preoccupations of opera librettists and composers, throughout this period, after which there are virtually no more Roman operas (though Berlioz's midnineteenth century masterpiece Les Troyens should have received at least an honorable mention, even if it is based on epic rather than history). Ketterer's book is primarily a study in what some scholars refer to as "librettology." He rightly observes that libretti were in this period important in their own right, and the most popular ones were set many times by different composers. As a result, the average contemporary operagoer is likely to have actually seen only three of the many operas discussed here: L'incoronazione di Poppea, Handel's Giulio Cesare, and Mozart's setting of an adapted version of Metastasio's highly popular La clemenza di Tito, as the opera seria to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II as king of Bohemia in 1791. And, as a further result, consideration of the music of opera is comparatively rare in this book, and considerably circumscribed; almost the only aspect of Monteverdi's great opera to be discussed is the use of the stile concertato, and elsewhere, comment on musical settings is largely confined to value judgments on the quality of the settings of particular passages of the text. However, this limitation is more than adequately compensated for by the quality of Ketterer's consideration of texts. In each case, a concise exposition of the Roman source material and the essence of the original story precedes the discussion of the uses for which operatic librettists employed it to reflect the concerns of their contemporaries. Ketterer deftly separates various aspects of classical thought and the extent to which they influenced the content of opera texts—in particular Neoplatonism, from which the Renaissance gained a sense of yearning to return to "the upper spheres of fire and light" (24), and Stoicism, which influenced the portrayal of Seneca in L'incoronazione di Poppea. (Nonetheless, Ketterer rightly argues that the triumph of Amor in the union of Nerone and Poppea is gloriously celebrated, and is therefore central to the opera.) Stoicism then became a principal theme in operas based on the stories of Scipio Africanus and Cato. An extended and excellent analysis of Minato's text for Scipione [End Page 282] affricano (chapter 3) foregrounds the continence of Scipione, and his struggles against his erotic feelings and the temptation to abuse his power. I am not at all sure about the discussion of the closing scenes of Handel's Agrippina. Ketterer has to juggle complex factors, including the wealth of associations surrounding the character of Ottone, the possibility that Handel's music undermines the final reconciliation of Ottone and Poppea, and the heavy shadow of actual subsequent Roman history, which hangs over the happy ending for the couple; as the author notes, "Agrippina was supposed to have poisoned Claudius, Nero pursued Poppea, exiled Ottone, and killed both Agrippina and Poppea herself " (75). Scipio returns as the leading character in Zeno's libretto for Scipio nelle Spagne (1710), in which the clement prince myth is first seen fully developed. Ketterer argues that in this libretto (as in Poppea) there is a Stoic character—Luceio as a surrogate Cato, conquering his own desires and able to renounce his passion for Sophonisba, and accept his own death, so his sworn friend Scipione may take her as his wife. Apart from Luceio, this libretto also contains the...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: La clemenza di Tito

Sylvain Cambreling's not very aristocratic rendition of the overture of La clemenza di Tito should have been sufficient for me to realize that the conductor was underplaying Tito's imperial condition. Instead, it took me a little longer to grasp that his musical interpretation suited Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann's production and Christoph Prégardien's portrayal of the title character perfectly. Karl-Ernst Herrmann designed a white marble background on which the characters are occasionally reflected. This plain set remains the same throughout the opera, with the only eccentric addition being the short appearance in act 1 of a huge potatolike chariot, whose meaning admittedly escaped me. The plot unfolds in a timeless palace with no explicit references to the Roman Empire. In this aseptic environment, the characters are dressed eclectically: female characters wear twentieth-century ball gowns while male characters don Roman robes. All this plainness might seem as though the production team was...

Recognition in Mozart's Operas (review)

in Mozart's Operas. By Jessica Waldoff. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. [xii, 337 p. ISBN 0-19-515197-6. $45.] Illustrations, references, index. Any book about Mozart published in 2006 may immediately engender suspicion of a celebratory tome hastily put together to mark 250th birthday of Austrian composer. In case of Jessica Waldoff's in Mozart's Operas, however, date of publication may well be a fortunate coincidence. There is nothing resembling a last-minute birthday present in this long awaited, well-written book, which is result of many years of reflection over an essential, but previously overlooked plot element in music dramaturgy: recognition. As Waldoff defines it, recognition-or anagnoresis, term we have inherited from Aristotle's Poetics-marks shift from ignorance to knowledge and involves protagonist (and audience) in a powerful reversal of former (p. 3). Already in this foundational definition, reader may immediately sense safe distance separating Aristotle's definition-constructed a posteriori on basis of philosopher's experience with literary genres of his time-from idea of recognition that Waldoff uses for her critical approach to late eighteenth-century opera. For Greek philosopher, anagnoresis represents reversal or peripeteia, shift from ignorance to knowledge (often resulting in pity or fear; pp. 4-5)-an extremely productive concept in opera studies. What is less productive is Aristotle's undermining of psychological element in his ideological conception of drama, in which events, not people and their state of being, propel action towards a goal. As Aristotle puts it, the goal is a certain activity, not a qualitative state. . . . It is not, therefore, function of agent's actions to allow portrayal of their characters; is, rather, for sake of their actions that characterization is included. So, events and plot-structure are goal of tragedy, and goal is what matters most of all (Aristotle, Poetics, book 6, quoted by Waldoff, p. 82). This citation appears in context of Waldoff's third chapter entitled Reading for Plot and offers a mechanistic view of drama that may well serve plot analysis of Le nozze di Figaro (pp 88-95), crafted by Da Ponte after ingenious invention of dramatist and clockmaker Beaumarchais. It requires, however, a substantial degree of modification to make suitable for analysis of Mozart's other operas. As Waldoff is well aware, psychological characterization is carefully achieved musically and dramatically, and moments of psychological transformation are pivotal in conception of drama. These are indeed treated by Waldoff as moments of recognition. After first two chapters, centered on recognition as enlightenment in Die Zauberflote and on Recognition Scenes in Theory and Practice respectively, becomes clear that it would be pointless to try to base an understanding of recognition scenes in opera on Aristotle's categories (p. 50). Waldoff arrives at this conclusion on basis of two main reasons: one is lack of a unidirectional teleological conception of drama (subplots are as essential in opera buffa as in heroic opera), while another is shift of attention from objective events to subject. Tamino's recognition, for example, involves a process of self-discovery and acquisition of knowledge, which also shifts center of attention from (as in Oedipus or in Odyssey) to of identity, or the tendency to celebrate individual discoveries of feeling (especially love), to favor striving for knowledge over inherited wisdom, and to center plots on themes of enlightened governance in both political [see also chapter 8 on La clemenza di Tito] and domestic spheres (p. 54). The political implication is inevitably that recognitions of family ties and birth-right appear to be far less important than recognitions of self, knowledge, purpose, or feeling. …

Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship, Politics, Fraud (review)

Reviews 237 Parergon 20.2 (2003) Shippey, Tom and Martin Arnold, eds, Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship , Politics, Fraud (Studies in Medievalism XI), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2001; cloth; pp. viii, 264; RRP US$60.00, £35.00; ISBN 085991626X. The nine essays by different authors in this volume are entertaining and wellresearched . What they are doing gathered together in one place, and what their intended relationship to one another is, I cannot say. The editors, Shippey and Arnold, have used a number of terms in the title, as if to cover a range of contingencies. As well as ‘Middle Ages’ and ‘scholarship,’ there is the more trendy ‘politics’ and ‘fraud,’ capped by the money-word ‘appropriating.’ Appropriation is a term with connections to postmodernism and postcolonial theory. My view is that it refers to a process more particular than the mere reuse of ideas, forms or materials in another context. Politics and fraud are also, I think, reasonably technical terms. I would like to know what the editors mean by them, and how they relate to the Middle Ages. That information is not to be found in this volume. The only introduction is an editorial note of less than twoand -a half pages, which gives no definitions and does not reveal the origin of the collection – whether it is based on papers delivered together at a conference, whether the papers were solicited individually, or whether they came together by chance. There is instead a brief summary of the position of each paper, and references to the relevancy argument and the relativity principle. The relativity principle states that every time phenomena such as the Middle Ages are looked at, they are re-seen and reinterpreted in the light of the people who are looking at them. We do the same, and so every observation on the Middle Ages is relative. The solution for Shippey is to expand the field of the Middle Ages to include, as well as the hypothetical original phenomena, every subsequent interpretation, so as to make medievalism ‘inclusive of any and all previous attempts at rewriting and/or rethinking [or re-imagining] the medieval past.’ That makes Medievalism a gigantic field. Whether it is better to proceed across the field by an orderly path, or to pluck flowers at random, is the question. If the editors of this volume started out with the intention of showing the variety of ways in which the Middle Ages have been subsequently reinterpreted, they could hardly have chosen a more eclectic mix. Scholarship is a characteristic of all of the contributions, which are written to a high standard. It is also the subject of some, such as Sophie van Romburgh’s chapter on Junius, in which she describes how the Dutch philologist devoted himself to a study of Old English for nationalist ends. Fraud, on the other hand, 238 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) is largely absent, with the notable exception of John Friedman’s discussion of the so-called Spanish forger, who working at the beginning of the twentieth century produced over 300 forgeries of Medieval works, cleverly using authentic leaves. Friedman does give a brief typology of copyists and forgers, and repeats the character-blackening report that John Ruskin’s idea of a pleasant evening was one spent before the fireplace, cutting up medieval manuscripts. Werner Wunderlich, in his chapter ‘Medieval Mozart,’ discusses a clear case of the substitution of a classical theme with a medieval one. In the early nineteenth century C. M. Heigel made an adaptation of Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito which rewrote the libretto so as to draw positive parallels between the then King of Bavaria, Max Joseph, and the Merovingian King Garibald. Wunderlich writes that ‘the Baroque and classicist use of Roman times in La clemenza di Tito are transformed by Heigel into a romantic and patriotic appropriation of Germanic times.’ That word ‘appropriation’ sticks out, for me, like the kettledrums in Il seraglio. It is not clear why it is used here. Wunderlich does not explain why Heigel ‘appropriates’ the medieval, whereas Mozart and his librettist merely ‘use’ the classical. If anything has been appropriated, surely it is not Germanic history but Mozart...

Tradition and Reception of Roman Imperial Ethics in the Opera La clemenza di Tito

??? COHPAnATIST TRADITION AND RECEPTION OF ROMAN IMPERIAL ETHICS IN THE OPERA LA CLEMENZA DI TITO Werner Wunderlich I. Fingiti in mente Eroe più generoso, e più clemente. [...] Inútil chiama, perduto il giorno ei dice, in cui fatto non ha qualcun felice. (Mozart, Clemenza I, Recitative) ViteUia, to whom these Unes are addressed in Mozart's opera La clemenza di Tito, is told to imagine a milder and more generous hero, one who says that the day on which he has made no one happy is useless and lost. This patriotic and friendly song of praise to the Roman emperor Tito (Titus) and his goodness is sung by Sesto (Sextus), his favorite and confidant. He cites the famous dictum "Amici, diem perdidi," the apothegm of hyperbolic self-characterization that had been attributed to Titus Flavius Vespasianus Caesar by the Roman historian Suetonius (669).' Sesto wants to make it clear to his beloved Vitellia what an outrage an assassination attempt on this emperor would be. However, Vitellia , the proud daughter ofthe former emperor Vitellius whom Titus had ousted, is furious. She impatiently scolds Sesto, telling him that he should drive that magnificent embodiment of imperial virtue from the throne and not delay a moment longer. Enough words have gone back and forth; now she wants action. Agitated with rage and hate, Vitellia angrUy demands revenge for her father and for her shattered hope that Titus would make her his empress. And so disaster takes its course within twenty-four hours. Of course, the palace coup miscarries. Titus, torn between raison d'état and mercy, forgives Sesto and Vitellia in the end as weU as aU the other conspirators because he prefers not to exercise his official power and authority, but to show human love and goodness. II. Metastasio's opera of royal homage La clemenza di Tito was first produced on November 4, 1734, in the Vienna Hoftheater, using the score by court composer and vice conductor Antonio Caldara, to celebrate the nameday of Charles VI, honored in Italy as "cesare" and as the successor ofthe Roman emperors (cf. Rice 132 ff). In the epilogue-like "licenza" of La clemenza di Tito, which functions more as a topos than as a declaraVcH . 25 (2001): 5 ROMAN IMPERIAL ETHICS IN LA CLEMENZA DI TITO tion ofloyalty, the author turns directly to the "good" sovereign Charles VI and gives his reasons for referring to Titus: Non crederlo, signor; te non pretesi Ritrarre in Tito. [...] Veggo ben che ciascuno Ti riconobbe in lui. [. . .] E ogni virtù più bella, Se in te, signor, s'aduna, Come ritrarne alcuna Che non somigli a te? (750) Believe not, Sire, that I wish to portray you in Titus. [. . .] But I see that everyone recognizes you in him. [. . .] And were, O Sire, all virtue combined in you most beautifully, how could one portray someone that would not resemble you?2 The motif and theme of this Titus play (Lühning, "Clemenza" 60Of) correspond to those in CorneiUe's Cinna ou la clémence d'Auguste (1641). Of course, instead of the Augustus material, Metastasio, the famous "principe" of melodramatic poetry and "poeta cesareo" of the Vienna court, chooses the Flavian emperor Titus as eponymous hero of the libretto praised by Rousseau and Voltaire3 for its unity ofplace, time, and action (cf. Moberly). Besides, ever since the Titus plays by Corneille and Racine, the figure of the forgiving ruler and the motif of mildness were familiar on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stages. For example , Francisco Antonio Bances Candamo's play El esclavo en grillos de oro (ca. 1690) shows how the emperor Trajan brings a conspirator to reason by naming him co-emperor and forcing him to discharge the duties ofthe position. Likewise, Johann EUas Schlegel's tragedy Canut of 1746 is an homage to the Danish King Friedrich V, who was admired by Klopstock as the ideal enlightened monarch (cf. Borchmeyer). Metastasio, whose original name was Pietro Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi and who got his HeUenized name from his patron, the jurist and writer Gian Vincenzo Gravina, belonged to the tradition ofthe Accademia dell'Arcadia, founded in Rome in 1690 and supported by Gravina . This "poet's school...

‘Twittering and trilling’: Swedish reaction to Metastasio

The performance of Metastasio's works in Sweden falls into four groups (see table 1); those associated with the little-known aristocratic composer Arvid Niclas von H6pken (1710-78); those opera librettos set by Francesco Uttini (1723-95); the two oratorio performances of the 1770s; and the early 19thcentury works related to La clemenza di Tito. For all practical purposes, Metastasio's works may be said to have arrived in Sweden with Francesco Uttini in the 1750s. However, von H6pken had produced two settings in the early 175os-one of II re pastore, the other of Catone in Utica'-but these remained unperformed, and did not influence Swedish thinking in a broader sense. In fact, von Hopken was a trifle cut off from the mainstream of musical life; he appears to have spent much of his life outside Sweden as an officer of the Swedish army, although the position of his brother as State Councillor suggests that he had the means to keep abreast of Swedish affairs. Among his arias and songs are also some from other Metastasian operas-'Fra cento affanni', 'Per pieti, bell'idol mio' and 'Sul le sponde del torbido lete' from Artaserse, and 'Betta il nocchier' supposedly from La clemenza di Tito.2 His musical style remained unrelentingly Italianate, perhaps indicating an interest in things Italian that was responsible for his choice of the Metastasian

Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth Century London. Volume I: The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791 (review)

Reviewed by: Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth Century London. Volume I: The King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 1778–1791 Byron Nelson Italian Opera In Late Eighteenth Century London. Volume I: The King’S Theatre, Haymarket, 1778–1791. Curtis Price, Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995; pp. xxv + 698. $85.00 cloth. Although the title announces a narrow topic, this study of the production of Italian opera in the space of a dozen years at one theatre in late eighteenth-century London proves richly rewarding. The product of immense scholarly labor, the book provides a meticulous reconstruction of the financial, legal and artistic milieu in which the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, presented opera and ballet from June 1778, when the playwright Richard B. Sheridan acquired the company, through the fire which gutted the theatre in June 1789. The trio of authors present “a full-dress account” (viii) of the company’s fortunes simply because (as they state with needless modesty) the King’s Theatre “housed an ambitious and interesting company in the 1780s” (vii). Although the figures at the center of their study are scarcely towering presences now—such as Giovanni Andrea Gallini, William Taylor and Gasparo Paccheriotti—numerous great figures do appear, if only fleetingly in these pages—Luigi Cherubini, Haydn, the “London” Bach and Sir John Soane among them. Had Mozart accepted the company’s invitation to come to London in 1791, he might have been spared his early death and enjoyed a long career like Handel’s. This was a transitional period, between the death of Handel and the rise of Romantic opera; none of the operas presented by the company remains in the repertory, and even the idea of a canon of operas had not yet come into existence. In this era, the repertory was determined by the singers, among whom the leading castrati, such as Paccherotti, Rubinelli and Marchesi, drew the crowds. We are told that the audiences came to hear the “primo uomo,” who then was a castrato, not a tenor, and that they enjoyed hearing a variety of singers and watching a generous share of dances, which followed each act of the operas. Far from presenting the latest Italian operatic hits in reasonable facimiles of their European originals, the King’s Theatre favored “pasticcios,” in which the scores were cobbled together from many different composers and operas. The notion of the pre-eminence of the composer and the autonomy of the operatic score lay in the future, and the concept of a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk would have baffled the King’s team. In the 1780s, the operas usually had to be new; Gallini justified his 1783 revival of Handel’s Giulio Cesare by pronouncing it “ancient music but tolerably good” (373). The King’s Theatre in Sheridan’s first season boasted the services of both the estimable Antonio Sacchini and Johann Christian Bach, whose La clemenza di Scipione is properly hailed by the authors as “the high-water mark of Italian opera in London” in the period of this study (195). But even the best operas often left little impression on the fickle audiences. Cherubini’s impressive Giulio Sabio was yanked after a single performance, and Haydn’s long-awaited L’anima del philosofo was never completed or staged, for reasons the authors ponder at some length. One area which could have been further explored is the composition of the King’s audience: who attended, and how much did they pay? One of the book’s most valuable features is its examination of the season-by-season repertory. The reader will find generous discussions of the plots, singers, and performance history and several valuable (but frustratingly brief) musical illustrations. There are intriguing discussions of forgotten operas which seem worthy of rediscovery, such as Sacchini’s Enea e Lavinia, which might be paired profitably with Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. But often only the “favorite airs” of these operas survive, with the manuscripts having been casually plundered to serve other pasticcios. While theatre buffs will enjoy the season-by-season glimpses at the repertory, they will find the chronicle of the daily squabbles among the managers, singers, creditors, and lawyers all too drearily...

Reading between the (Ledger) Lines: Performing Mozart's Music for the Basset Clarinet

RILM abstract: "The basset horn came into being around 1788. Mozart used it for his concerto K.622 and quintet K.581, and for certain arias in Cosi fan tutte and La clemenza di Tito. Other works of Mozart may have been realized with the basset horn, particularly in performances by Anton Stadler."

La clemenza di Tito. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Journal Article La clemenza di Tito. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Get access Jeffrey L. Buller Jeffrey L. Buller Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Opera Quarterly, Volume 12, Issue 2, Winter 1995, Pages 133–135, https://doi.org/10.1093/oq/12.2.133 Published: 01 January 1995

The History in Literature: On Value Genre, Institutions (review)

REVIEWS HERBERT LJNDENBERGER. The History in Literature: On Value Genre, Institutions. New York: Columbia UP, 1990. xix + 269 pp. Herbert Lindenberger's latest collection of essays investigates the relentlessly historical nature of literary study with clarity, knowledge, and elegance. In addition to providing a sane view of some hotly debated issues, he also includes a wealth of fascinating details. The book is centered in the nineteenth century, but extends into the present with essays on canon formation, on opera, and on the new historicism, with which this collection joins forces. It begins with a useful glossary, recontextualizing such terms as canon, genre, history, institutions, literature, opera, romanticism. The essay on "The Normality of Canon Change" gives a much needed historical perspective on the subject. For one thing, it is comforting to be reminded that our predicament is not new, such a perspective may serve to lessen some of the animosity which debates about the canon have generated. Given Lindenberger's central role in such debates at Stanford, I wonder whether that diffusion of hostility may have implicitly inspired this levelheaded essay. In it he considers three instances: a current debate over a humanities reading list, the mid-nineteenth century formation of the German classical canon raising Goethe, Schiller and Lessing to star status while includingbut dimming slightly the lights ofKlopstock, Wieland, andJean Paul, and the formation of the canon of Greek tragedy sometime between the third century B.C. and the second A.D., the selectors seeming to have favored plays with catastrophic endings but not those with melodramatic action. The next essay reports on the much publicized debate about what should be included in a general course on western culture taken by all undergraduates at Stanford. Here again, we get a valuable sense of particular history, we learn, for example, that many western civilization courses stemmed from one given at Columbia in 1918, which "sought to introduce Americans to the European heritage in whose defense they were soon to risk their lives." (One might bistoridze Lindenberger's text from an interamerican comparative perspective , and note that our language is not quite pluralistic enough yet, for he, like many of us, still uses "American" rather than "North American" to refer to this continent.) Lindenberger usefully contextualizes the polemics of these debates, reminding us, for example, that Allan Bloom's criticism ofStanford's revisions of the canon as "indoctrination with ephemeral ideologies" and "surrender to the present" are strikingly similar to complaints against Rousseau in the British press during the 1790s. He ends the essay with the wise observation that the move toward a more "globally oriented" course represents not only the university's multicultural student body but also the waning of America's power in the world—an implicit testimony to the continuing importance of comparative perspectives. The chapter on opera and postmodernity includes an instructive comparison of opera house and art museum, in which Lindenberger investigates why opera houses have been less hospitable to contemporary music than art museums to contemporary art: whereas the production of new and unpopular operas tends to alienate rich patrons, the acquisition ofnew art works attracts such patrons via new display rooms named for them. 140 THE COMPARATIST Other chapters, on "RomanticPoetryandthe Institutionalizing ofValue," and on "Evaluation as Justification and Performance: The Leech Gatherer as Testing Ground," in the "Value in History" section; on "Theories of Romanticism : From a Theory of Genre to the Genre of Theory," on "The History in Opera: La clemenza di Tito, Khovanshchina, Moses andAwn," and on "The Literature in History: Danton's Death in the Texts of Revolutions," in the "Genre in History" section; and on the new historicism, in the "Institutions" section, are equally rich in historical insights and information. The book ends with an epilogue in the form of an interview, where Lindenberger ironizes to himself, expressing his views, for example, on the new historicism as both a valuable corrective to earlier trends, and "the only viable career move the past ten years," demonstrating that "canon change is as normal in criticism as in literature." Finally, he predicts that the issue for the 1990's will be style, but "style in a much broader sense, the styles...

The First Undoubted ‘Magic Flute’?

Which was the first reasonably complete and faithful performance of Die Zauberflöte in English?In common with other Mozart operas, and despite its unabated popularity on the Continent, Die Zauberflöte came late and haltingly to the English stage. The date of its introduction is somewhat problematic. Dennis Arundell has drawn attention to an advertisement in The Times of 29 March 1806. A comic opera, Adolf and Clara, was to be performed that evening at the German Theatre (or Sans Souci), Leicester Square: ‘After which, a Pantomime Dance: and, for the 1st time, a new Musical Piece, by Mozart, called The ENCHANTED FLUTE; and to conclude with the Optical Ballet.’ No more is known beyond the bald statement. The production was apparently in English, and admittedly there was music, but does it appear likely that this was a serious attempt at the whole work? Introduced into the programme as a mere afterpiece, sandwiched between other diversions, and so very modestly announced, it sounds at the best estimate a heavily truncated version. Indeed the probability is that the piece was got up hastily in order to capitalize on the interest aroused by the Haymarket's production of La clemenza di Tito two days earlier, that being the first time a Mozart opera had been performed in England.

THE INFLUENCE OF FRENCH CLASSICAL DRAMA ON MOZART'S ‘LA CLEMENZA DI TITO’

Journal Article THE INFLUENCE OF FRENCH CLASSICAL DRAMA ON MOZART'S ‘LA CLEMENZA DI TITO’ Get access R. B. MOBERLY R. B. MOBERLY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume LV, Issue 3, July 1974, Pages 286–298, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/LV.3.286 Published: 01 July 1974

Uprizoritve Mozartovih oper v Ljubljani do leta 1861

Uprizoritve Mozartovih oper v Ljubljani do leta 1861