Mozart as Soprano

MOZART AS SOPRANO John A. Rice Mozart-Jahrbuch 2006, pp. 345–53

Joseph Haydn, as a boy, had a beautiful treble voice with which he gained access to the choir school at St. Stephens cathedral. But boy sopranos do not last; and Haydn’s approaching puberty gave rise to a crisis, if we can believe his early biographer Georg August Griesinger: Damals waren am Hofe und an den Kirchen in Wien noch viele Kastraten angestellt, und der Vorsteher des Kapellhauses glaubte ohne Zweifel des jungen Haydns Glück zu gründen, wenn er mit dem Plane, ihn sopranisiren zu lassen, umging, und auch wirklich den Vater um seine Einwilligung befragte. Der Vater, dem dieser Vorschlag gänzlich mißfiel, machte sich schleunig auf den Weg nach Wien, und in der Meinung, daß die Operation vielleicht gar schon könnte vorgenommen worden seyn, tritt er in das Zimmer, wo sich sein Sohn befand, mit der Frage: “Sepperl, thut dir was weh? Kannst du noch gehen?” Hocherfreut, seinen Sohn unverletzt zu finden, protestirte er gegen alle fernere Ansinnen von dieser Art.1

Although several Haydn scholars have expressed doubt in the veracity of this story, it is useful in vividly illustrating a point of decision through which many of the best eighteenth-century musicians had to pass. I do not mean the decision of whether or not to undergo castration, but rather of whether to devote one’s life to singing or to composition and conducting, whether to become a singer or a maestro di cappella. Many important musicians of the eighteenth century received training in both singing and composition. Especially in the realm of opera seria, singing and composition were such closely related activities that it was hard to learn one without the other. Singers needed to realize figured bass and to improvise ornamentation and cadenzas; composers needed to spin out beautiful lines and coloratura that would most effectively display a singer’s ability. A natural result of this symbiotic relationship between composition and singing is that many musicians who eventually won fame as composers, including Johann Adolf Hasse, Carl Heinrich Graun, Giovanni Platti, and Vincenzo Righini, were professional singers in their youth. Likewise several important professional singers, including the sopranos Farinelli, Venanzio Rauzzini, Giuseppe Aprile, Giuseppe Millico, and Girolamo Crescentini, and the tenors Giacomo David and Domenico Mombelli, wrote a considerable amount of music. But all these musicians eventually decided to favor one part of their musical creativity over the other, facing the same choice that Haydn, together with his teachers and his father, faced. 1. Georg August Griesinger, Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn, Leipzig, 1810, 11.

2 Mozart’s early travels constituted an aspect of his childhood in which he differed from most of the musicians of his age. They provided him with a vast array of theatrical experiences before the age of twelve, probably before most of his compositional contemporaries saw their first opera. These travels brought Mozart to London, where he lived from April 1764 to July 1765, and where he celebrated his ninth birthday. His experiences in London represented perhaps the single most important turning point in his relations with the theater. Earlier in his travels he had amazed and delighted audiences with his sightreading and improvisation at the keyboard, and with his fluent violin playing. But in London he found a new outlet for his talents that allowed him to experience something of the thrill of being on the operatic stage. In London Mozart became a singer—and specifically a miniature opera seria soprano. It was first in London that Mozart fully experienced the symbiotic relationship between singing and composing, between music for the keyboard and music for the stage, and between singers and keyboard players. Prior to their residence in London, neither Leopold nor Wolfgang Mozart showed much interest in opera, which is perhaps not surprising given that Salzburg was hardly an operatic center. Even in London, in a letter of 8 February 1765, Leopold discussed Italian opera in such a way as to suggest that he had little artistic interest in it: Niemand macht diesen Winter grosses Geld als Manzoli und einige andere von der Opera. Manzuoli hat 1500 Pf: Ster: für diesen Winter.... Nebst diesem hat er auch ein Benefit, das ist eine Nachts=Recita für ihn, so daß er diesen Winter über 20000. Teutsche gulden ziehet. das [ist] auch der einzige den man rechtschaffen hat bezahlen müssen, um der Opera wieder aufzuhelfen. Hingegen werden 5. oder 6 opern aufgeführt, die erste ware Ezio, die 2.te Berenice. alle zwey waren sogennante Pasticci von unterschiedlichen Maistern. die 3.te ware Adriano in Syria von Sgr: Bach neu componirt. Nun weis ich das eine neu componirte Demofoonte vom Vento kommt. und dann noch ein paar Passticci.2 Leopold’s principal interest in the London opera was financial: the money that the musico Giovanni Manzoli made. As for the list of operas being performed in London, two things stand out: the Italian repertory in London during the Mozarts’ visit consisted entirely of opera seria, and it was dominated by settings of librettos by Metastasio. Of the four operas mentioned by Leopold, three were based on librettos by the poeta cesareo; and in addition to them, Manzoli's benefit performance involved yet another libretto by Metastasio—Giardini’s setting of Il re pastore.3 Compare Leopold’s letter with Mozart’s experience in London, which also involved Manzoli, opera seria, and Metastasio (and more specifically two of the dramas performed in London: Ezio and Demofoonte). Mozart heard Manzoli not only on the operatic stage but also in 2. Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch, and Joseph Heinz Eibl, 7 vols., Kassel, 1962, I, 173-79. 3. Charles Burney, A General History of Music, ed. Frank Mercer, 2 vols., New York, 1957, II, 869.

3 private concerts, as we know from a letter from Margaret Clive to her husband in which she mentioned a private concert that was to take place the following day: “Tomorrow I shall have a great deal of Company... to hear Manzoli sing here, accompanied by Mr Burton on the harpsichord, on which the little Mozarts, the boy aged 8 and the girl 12 will also play most completely well.”4 The famous account by Daines Barrington of Mozart’s operatic improvisations has been frequently quoted; I will do so again here in order to emphasize the difference between Leopold's reaction to opera in London and that of his son: Happening to know that little Mozart was much taken notice of by Manzoli, the famous singer, ... I said to the boy, that I should be glad to hear an extemporary Love Song, such as his friend Manzoli might choose in an opera. The boy on this (who continued to sit at his harpsichord) looked back with much archness, and immediately began five or six lines of a jargon recitative proper to introduce a love song. He then played a symphony which might correspond with an air composed to the single word, Affetto. It had a first and second part, which, together with the symphonies, was of the length that opera songs generally last: if this extemporary composition was not amazingly capital, yet it was really above mediocrity, and shewed most extraordinary readiness of invention. Finding that he was in humour, and as it were inspired, I then desired him to compose a Song of Rage, such as might be proper for the opera stage. The boy again looked back with much archness, and began five or six lines of a jargon recitative proper to precede a Song of Anger. This lasted also about the same time with the Song of Love; and in the middle of it, he had worked himself up to such a pitch, that he beat his harpsichord like a person possessed, rising sometimes in his chair. The word he pitched upon for this second extemporary composition was, Perfido.5 Earlier Mozart and his father had sung a duet on a text from Metastasio’s Demofoonte, the boy singing the higher part “in the truest taste, and with the greatest precision,” Barrington reported: “His voice in the tone of it was thin and infantine, but nothing could exceed the masterly manner in which he sung.”6 Mozart’s singing is also attested to by Charles Burney, who in his reminiscences of Mozart's visit to London recalled the young boy’s “fondness for Manzoli.” Mozart imitated “the several Styles of Singing of each of the then Opera Singers, as 4. Margaret Clive to Robert Clive, 12 March 1765, in Ian Woodfield, “New Light on the Mozarts’ London Visit: A Private Concert with Manzuoli,” Music & Letters LXXVI (1995), 187-208 (195). 5. Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch, Kassel, 1961, 89. 6. Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, 88.

4 well as of their Songs in an Extemporary opera to nonsense words--to which were [added] an overture of 3 Movements Recitative – Graziosa, Bravura & Pathetic Airs together with Several accompd Recitatives, all full of Taste imagination, with Good Harmony, Melody & Modulation, after whch he played at Marbles, in the true Childish Way of one who knows Nothing.”7 Leopold Mozart, in a list of his son's works that he compiled in 1768, referred to fifteen Italian arias in London and shortly thereafter, in Holland.8 These probably included “Va, dal furor portata,” K. 21, Mozart’s earliest surviving vocal work, a setting of an aria-text from Metastasio's Ezio. Some of the aria were presumably written-out versions of those he improvised in London; “Va, dal furor portata,” though written out for tenor, could have been the aria of rage that Barrington asked him to improvise. (It is is also possible, of course, that some of what Barrington took for improvisation was simply Mozart's performance of arias he had composed and memorized earlier.) (“Va, dal furor portata” sung by Thomas Moser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgC8UugcnK4 ) In London opera became for the first time a means through which Mozart could perform, as he did for Barrington and Burney: a means for earning admiration and praise. And by earning money for Leopold—since Londoners paid to see Mozart improvise—opera became a way for Mozart to earn his father’s approval as well. In London also he came into contact with Metastasio’s librettos, in particular librettos from which he took the texts of some of his earliest arias; and also Il re pastore, which he was himself to set to music a decade later. He wrote no real opera in London, but the “extemporary opera to nonsense words” that Burney admired was the seed from which Mozart's career as an operatic composer grew. What did Mozart learn from Manzoli, and of what did their relations consist? Parallels between Mozart’s experiences in London and the youthful experiences of three other musicians in whose development musici played a significant role—the Bohemian Franz Benda, the Venetian Domenico Alberti, and the Irishman Michael Kelly—suggest some possible answers. Franz Benda, born in 1709, displayed his soprano voice in the churches of Prague and Dresden, and later, when his voice lowered to contralto register, in both the theaters and churches of Prague. In 1724, at the age of 14, he sang in the chorus of Fux’s coronation opera Costanza e Fortezza. One of the soloists in that opera, the contralto Gaetano Orsini, attracted Benda’s particular attention, as he wrote in his autobiography: Die damahligen vortrefflichen Sänger die in der Opera gesungen, worunter der Contra Alt der Cajetano Ursini mein Liebling war, verschaffte mir großen Nutzen, ja in gewisser Arth auff meine gantze Folge des musikalischen Studii, ich war sehr aufmerksam, und da ich eben Alt sung, so wußte ich alles was der Ursini gesungen aufs Genaueste auswendig. Zu seinen Arien wurden lateinische Texte gemacht, welche ich alsdan in der Kirche gesungen, sie sind mir auch noch jetzo guten theils im Gedächtniss.9 7. Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, Addenda, Neue Folge, ed. Cliff Eisen, Kassel, 1997, 20. 8. Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, I, 288. 9. From Franz Benda's manuscript autobiography as published in Franz Lorenz, Die Musikerfamilie Benda: Franz Benda und seine Nachkommen, Berlin, 1967, 141.

5 We can get some idea of what Benda heard and saw in Orsini’s performances from the autobiography of Johann Joachim Quantz, who was also in Prague for the performance of Costanza e fortezza, and evidently found Orsini as wonderful as Benda did: Gaetano Orsini, einer der größten Sänger, die jemals gewesen, hatte eine schöne, egale, und rührende Contraltstimme, von einem nicht geringen Umfange; eine reine Intonation, schönen Trillo, und ungemein reizenden Vortrag. Im Allegro articulirte er die Passagien, besonders die Triolen, mit der Brust, sehr schön; und im Adagio wußte er, auf eine meisterhafte Art, das Schmeichelnde und Rührende so anzuwenden, daß er sich dadurch der Herzen der Zuhöher, im höchsten Grade bemeisterte. Seine Action war leidlich; und seine Figur hatte nichts widriges.10 At the age of fifteen, within a year of his performance in Costanza e Fortezza and his exposure to Orsini’s singing, Benda lost his alto voice. It was only later that he began studying the violin, the instrument to which he devoted his career. Thus the period in which Benda imitated and learned from Orsini was very short. Yet their relations, at least as experienced by Benda, must have been intense. Whether or not Orsini was even aware of the teenager who listened to him so admiringly, we do not know. But Benda absorbed Orsini’s arias so thoroughly that he remembered them forty years later; and he credited Orsini with a special place among the singers whose performance shaped his entire musical education (“meine gantz Folge des musikalischen Studii”). That included, presumably, his development as a violinist and composer. Daniel Heartz has called Domenico Alberti “the singer-cembalist par excellence”—and his ability to sing and play the keyboard equally well was probably related to his very short life; he hardly had time to specialize.11 Famous now as the composer for whom the Alberti bass was named, Alberti actually earned as much applause for his singing as for his composing and keyboard playing, if we are to believe La Borde’s Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne: Il alla en Espagne, en qualité de Page d’un Ambassadeur de Venise; & il y étonna, par sa maniere de chanter, le célebre Farinelli, qui se réjoissait de ce qu’Alberti n’était qu’un amateur: car, disait-il, j’aurais en lui un rival trop redoutable. Il passa à Rome avec le Marquis Molinari, ou il se perfectionna pour le chant & pour le clavecin. Il mit en Musique, à Venise, l’Endimione, charmant morceau de poésie de Metastase, l’an 1737; & quelque tems après, la Galatea du même. Ces deux ouvrages sont très estimés: la composition en est fort agréable & pleine de sentiment. Tous les Professeurs se souviennent de lui avec entousiasme: rien ne peut égaler les grâces de son chant; & en préludant sur le clavecin, il charmait une nombreuse assemblée pendant des nuits entieres. Pendant qu’il demeurait à Rome, il se promenait la nuit dans les rues en 10. Johann Joachim Quantz, “Herrn Johann Joachim Quantzens Lebenslauf, von ihm selbst entworfen,” in Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Historisch-kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, Bd. 1, St. 5, Berlin, 1755, 197-250, 218. 11. Daniel Heartz, Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720-1780, New York, 2013, 250.

6 chantant, & il était toujours suivi d’une foule d'amateurs qui l’applaudissaient sans cesses. Il y mourut fort jeune & très regretté. Il a composé trente-six Sonates, qu’on n’a pu parvenir encore à retirer des mains d’un particulier de Milan, qui en est le seul possesseur. On les dit superbes & d’un genre neuf.12 This biographical sketch, which unfortunately constitutes pretty much all we know about Alberti, is remarkable for its points of contact with Mozart’s early life. Like the young Mozart, Alberti travelled very actively. Since he was a page when he visited Madrid (like Mozart’s Cherubino, another exceptionally talented boy-musician13), his voice was probably that of a soprano. Farinelli was Alberti’s Manzoli: a famous musico who, in admiring and praising his youthful singing, gave him a kind of seal of approval. By successfully setting to music poetry by Metastasio, Alberti demonstrated his possession of another sine qua non of eighteenth-century musicality. And his improvisatory skill likewise bridged the gap between composition and vocal performance. Michael Kelly, born six years after Mozart, spent his boyhood in Dublin. When he was not practicing keyboard, he studied singing with Nicolò Peretti, “a vero musico” who had sung in Italy, Germany and London.14 Later he met another musico: I was so fortunate as to be taken great notice of by Rauzzini, during his stay in Dublin. He gave me lessons, and taught me several songs, particularly that beautiful air of his own, which he sang divinely, “Fuggiam da questo loco”... Rauzzini was so kind to me, and so pleased with the ardent feeling I evinced for music, that, previously to his leaving Ireland, he called upon my father, and said, “My dear Sir, depend upon it: your son will never follow any profession but that of a musician; and as there is no person in this country who can give him the instruction he requires, you ought to send him to Italy. He is now at the time of life to imbibe true taste, and in Italy only is it to be found.”15 Kelly’s phrase “taken great notice of” comes very close to the words that Barrington used to describe Manzoli’s attitude to Mozart. Venanzio Rauzzini (like Peretti and Manzoli) was a specialist in opera seria, and a composer as well as a singer. Kelly’s father followed Rauzzini's advice and sent his son to Naples, where he continued to win the approval of male sopranos and to benefit from their instruction. After a dinner given by the British ambassador, William Hamilton, Kelly took part in music-making: The celebrated Millico accompanied himself on the harp.... I was asked, and sang 12. Jean-Benjamin de La Borde, Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, 4 vols., Paris, 1780, III, 161-62. 13. My thanks to Oliver Huck for drawing my attention to this parallel; on Cherubino see his article, “Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio? Mozart und das Komponieren in der Pubertät,” Mozart-Jahrbuch 2006, 297–307. 14. Michael Kelly, Reminiscences, 2nd ed., 2 vols., London, 1826, I, 3. 15. Kelly, Reminiscences, I, 11.

7 Rauzzini’s song, “Fuggiam da questo loco,” and “Water parted from the sea,” accompanying myself on the piano-forte. I seemed to give general satisfaction, and Signor Millico, in particular, said many kind things.16 Kelly studied with yet another musico, Giuseppe Aprile; later, in Florence, “I had the good fortune to be noticed [that phrase again!] by Signor Giuarduci [recte: Tommaso Guarducci], the celebrated soprano, and he gave me a few lessons.”17 The somewhat parallel lives of Mozart and Kelly converged, of course, in Vienna in the mid 1780s. Kelly, who was in the original cast of Le nozze di Figaro, told a story that suggests that his career might have gone in another direction if he had made different decisions earlier in his life: [Mozart] one day made me sit down to the piano, and gave credit to my first master, who had taught me to place my hand well on the instrument.... I had composed a little melody to Metastasio's canzonetta, “Grazie agl’ inganni tuoi,” which was a great favourite wherever I sang it. It was very simple, but had the good fortune to please Mozart. He took it and composed variations upon it, which were truly beautiful; and had the further kindness and condescension to play them wherever he had an opportunity.... Encouraged by his flattering approbation, I attempted several little airs, which I shewed him, and which he kindly approved of; so much indeed, that I determined to devote myself to the study of counterpoint, and consulted with him, by whom I ought to be instructed.—He said, “My good lad, you ask my advice, and I will give it you candidly; had you studied composition when you were at Naples, and when your mind was not devoted to other pursuits, you would perhaps have done wisely; but now that your profession of the stage must, and ought, to occupy all your attention, it would be an unwise measure to enter into a dry study. You may take my word for it, Nature has made you a melodist, and you would only disturb and perplex yourself. Reflect, ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing;’—should there be errors in what your write, you will find hundreds of musicians, in parts of the world, capable of correcting them; therefore do not disturb your natural gift.” “Melody is the essence of music,” continued he. “I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone, and remember the old Italian proverb—‘Chi sa più, meno sa—Who knows most, knows least.’” The opinion of this great man made on me a lasting impression.18 Underlying this anecdote one can perhaps sense a feeling of regret: a melancholy awareness of roads not taken: perhaps not only by Kelly, but by Mozart as well. But to return to London. 16. Kelly, Reminiscences, I, 28. 17. Kelly, Reminiscences, I, 112. 18. Kelly, Reminiscences, I, 223-25.

8 That Manzoli gave Mozart any formal lessons is doubtful; if he had done so, Leopold would surely have mentioned it. But by taking notice of Mozart, Manzoli bestowed on him the same kind of artistic legitmacy that Farinelli granted Alberti and Rauzzini granted Kelly. And Manzoli’s singing, like that of Orsini and Rauzzini, constituted a valuable lesson in itself: in the shaping of vocal lines, in ornamentation, in the invention of cadenzas, in the dramatic potential of opera seria. Manzoli’s lesson was probably heard and absorbed by Leopold as well as Wolfgang. Rauzzini’s recommendation to Kelly’s father that he send his son to Italy suggests the possibility that Manzoli made a similar recommendation to Leopold. The Mozarts’ experiences in London and their implications for the future are reflected in an account in Melchior Grimm’s Correspondence litteraire of 15 July 1766. Grimm referred to Manzoli and Mozart’s singing, and raised (probably for the first time in print) the possibility that Mozart would soon compose an opera in Italy: Il a même écrit plusieurs airs italiens, et je ne désespère pas qu’avant qu’il ait atteint l’âge de douze ans, il n’ait déjà fait jouer un opéra sur quelque théâtre d’Italie. Ayant entendu Manzuoli à Londres pendant tout un hiver, il en a si bien profité que, quoiqu’il ait la voix excessivement faible, il chante avec autant de goût que d’âme.19 Grimm was a friend of Leopold’s, and he was probably reporting Leopold’s opinions and ambitions here; he ended his report with exaggerated praise of Leopold’s own talents. Despite Leopold’s apparent lack of interest in opera, London was a turning point for him as it was for his son, whose experiences there—and in particular his relations with Manzoli—apparently gave Leopold the first idea of making an extended tour of Italy with the goal of making Wolfgang a composer of opera seria. That idea approached fruition in December 1769, when Mozart and Leopold left Salzburg on their first trip to Italy. While Leopold hoped to win an operatic commission for his son, he also intended the trip to serve as an educational experience: a resumption of the initiation into Italian serious opera that had begun in London. He timed the beginning of the trip to coincide with the Carnival opera season, and he and Wolfgang attended operas in Verona, Mantua, and Cremona. Mozart’s education in the music and stagecraft of opera seria did not keep him from demonstrating, in a series of concerts, his prowess in operatic improvisation and singing. During a concert in Verona, according to a local newspaper report, “sopra quattro versi esibitigli, ha composta sul fatto un’aria d’ottimo gusto nell’atto stesso di cantarla.”20 And in Mantua “cantò improvisamente un’aria intera, sopra nuove da lui mai vedute parole, dandole i debiti accompagnamenti.”21 Mozart continued on to Milan, where he wrote several arias in the hope of demonstrating to Count Firmian, governor-general of Lombardy, his ability to compose an opera for the court 19. Mozart: Dokumente seines Lebens, 55. 20. Mozart: Dokumente seines Lebens, 96. 21. Mozart: Dokumente seines Lebens, 97.

9 theater. Having improvised an aria on four lines of text, as he had done in Verona, it was a small step to put an aria down on paper. One of his earliest surviving arias, “Per pietà, bell'idol mio,” K. 78, is a setting of a four-line aria-text from Metastasio’s Artaserse. A simple, tender cavatina in sonata form, the aria gives one a good idea of the kind of music that Mozart, singing “avec autant de goût que d'âme,” might have improvised as he approached his fourteenth birthday. (“Per pietà,” sung by Lucia Popp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD2zhWIocrw ) The Italian tour of 1770-71 brought Mozart into contact for the first time with Italian opera on its native soil and introduced him to the pleasures and headaches of operatic composition and production. This theatrical initiation, moreover, coincided with a physical coming of age. At the beginning of the tour Mozart was a boy soprano, singing to audiences in Verona and Mantua arias that a musico might have sung on the operatic stage. Within a few months the effects of puberty had set in, as described by Leopold on 25 August 1770: “Stimme zum singen hat er itzt gar keine: diese ist völlig weg; er hat weder Diefe noch Höhe, und nicht 5 reine Töne. Dieß ist etwas, das ihn sehr verdriesst, dann er kann seine eigene Sachen nicht singen, die er doch manchmal selbst singen möchte.”22 There is no reason to think that Mozart's father would have been any less horrified than Haydn's father at the idea of “ihn sopranisiren zu lassen.” But I suspect Leopold was more annoyed than Wolfgang by the onset of puberty. The ruin of Mozart’s soprano voice meant the loss of a source of income for Leopold. More important, it meant that Mozart was growing up, his status as a prodigy would eventually fade, and he would seek a life independent of his father. He would lead much of that life in the theater, depending on its singers to realize the theatrical impulses that, as a boy, he expressed through his own soprano voice.

22. Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, I, 384.