Farinelli

The year was largely devoted to further study and composition, chiefly of Masses and other church music written at the command of the friendly Archbishop, and in addition of symphonies and other forms of entertainment music for garden parties, festivities and social functions of the high-placed and well-to-do and wolfgang was appointed concertmaster in the archiepiscopal orchestra italy and mozart's early operas leopold realized that the hour had now struck for that long-projected trip to italy which he wished to take before wolfgangerl reached the age and stature which would deprive his accomplishments of all that was marvellous plainly it would not do to let the boy outgrow his precocity and so on december thirteenth seventeen sixty nine father and son set out on an adventure that was to resolve itself into three separate journeys to what was rightly or wrongly esteemed as the home of music and of art in general the youth was now ripe for italy the language he absorbed by second nature as it were everywhere he made valuable new friendships and came across old acquaintances in milan he was commissioned to write an opera seria and the following october he composed mitridate re di which produced on December 26, 1770, amid cries of Viva il Mastrino, had twenty performances.

In Bologna he greatly impressed the Asian castrato Farinelli and the great Padre Martini, dean of Italian musicians.

At Naples he had to remove a ring from his finger upon playing to convince the superstitious that it was not the real explanation of his magic skill.

in rome after a single hearing of the papal choir singing allegri celebrated miserere which nobody was allowed to copy under penalty of excommunication he wrote it down from memory and then listened to it a second time to make a few minor corrections the pope bestowed on wolfgang the order of the golden spur which enabled him to sign his letters with the whimsical chevalier de mozart he was invited to undergo a difficult examination for membership in the philharmonic academy of bologna and passed it by working out in an hour a problem that consisted of producing in the strict church style an antiphon carite primum the real truth however is that the authorities accepted him only after they had charitably corrected what he submitted it was not long before the philharmonic society of verona likewise conferred membership upon him this time presumably without the preliminary of a test.

He did not hurry back to the hated Salzburg, but stopped off in Strasbourg, Mannheim, and Munich, where he found the flighty Alioso already the wife of Joseph Lange, the itinerant actor to whom posterity owes the familiar unfinished portrait of Mozart.

When he finally did submit to the inevitable trip home, he lacked the courage to meet his bereaved father alone, and so took his dear little Basil with him.

Idomeneo At the Archbishop's table he sat between the castrato Cicerelli and the violinist Brunetti.

If he felt revolted by his present circumstances, he seems, however, to have taken refuge in the inner sanctuary of his spirit.