La clemenza di Tito
Dramma per musica by Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWikipedia
20
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6
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6
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Search complete. 20 mentions across 6 episodes found for "La clemenza di Tito".
Nov 1, 2026
James VaughanGUEST
So I have been lucky, but some just escaped the net.
James VaughanGUEST
And one is, and that I would dearly love to do, is La Clemenza di Tito.
James VaughanGUEST
It's just something very valuable, missing from the Mozart canon.
James VaughanGUEST
One likes to get all the Mozarts, so you can't get all the young ones, but...
speaker_6UNKNOWN
Who gets to own and produce and put on your works, right? So let me paint the picture here.
speaker_6UNKNOWN
Mozart is, in his sort of later days as a composer, he's sort of finishing up Clemenza di Tito, is about to start working on... uh magic flute he's not doing well financially at all he hasn't been for some time uh so when someone comes to his door uh who is very intimidating dressed all in gray and um offers him an anonymous commission for a requiem he's like yeah sure but this wasn't a normal uh commission uh After some digging, you find out that the commissioner of the Requiem is the Count Franz Walsegg, whose wife, Anna Prenner von Flamberg, had recently died.
speaker_6UNKNOWN
He never remarried.
speaker_6UNKNOWN
He was very attached to her.
Steven FoxGUEST
Because it's so dramatic and it brings out all of Mozart's operatic experience.
Steven FoxGUEST
Keep in mind, as he was writing the Requiem, he was also writing the Magic Flute and Clemenza di Tito.
Steven FoxGUEST
So other than sacred music and this piece, he was very much focused on opera at the end of his life.
Steven FoxGUEST
And in this opening movement, this is where we hear the combination of all of Mozart's different influences.
7 MINS LATER
Steven FoxGUEST
He was finishing The Magic Flute, which is such a completely different piece from this.
Steven FoxGUEST
But actually, there are some things that the two pieces perhaps have in common.
Steven FoxGUEST
And Clemenza di Tito, which was his final opera.
Steven FoxGUEST
So I think that...
speaker_6NARRATOR
He had reason for his enthusiasm.
speaker_6NARRATOR
The score of Edomeneo is one of its composer's most superb achievements, and if it lives on today, chiefly as a museum piece, it does so because, like Mitradate, Lucio Silla, and Il Re Pastor before it, and La Clemenza di Tito after it, the work is a specimen of opera seria, a form that had lost every trace of vitality and dramatic punch.
speaker_6NARRATOR
Yet to the end of his days its creator valued it highly, and made some unavailing efforts to reanimate it.
speaker_6NARRATOR
Mozart's Break with Salzburg Mozart had reason to suppose that the work might gain him a permanent and rewarding position.
Peter CudlipHOST
I say opera, it is more typically described in German as a festspiel, or in Italian as a festa teatrale.
Peter CudlipHOST
There's no exact English term, but the idea is something a bit like an opera for a festival or celebration, and it was generally derived from the traditions of opera seria.
Peter CudlipHOST
And since I've thrown that term in, I'm going to quickly digress into the different types of operas in Mozart's time.
Peter CudlipHOST
First, opera seria.
Peter CudlipHOST
It was the prestige form of the court theatre.
Peter CudlipHOST
Serious drama, usually.
Peter CudlipHOST
And then there was opera buffa, comic opera, opera serie's lively, socially broader cousin, comic stories about servants, merchants, peasants, and the occasional foolish nobleman in contemporary settings and full of wordplay.
Peter CudlipHOST
Its music favoured brisk tempos and character types drawn from the commedia dell'arte theatre traditions of Italy.
Peter CudlipHOST
We've come to think of the Mozart da Ponte operas as containing deeper characters of more complexity than works about Roman emperors.
Peter CudlipHOST
And I think that is true, but when you are the people running an opera company in Prague and you want to celebrate the coronation of a new emperor when he visits town, then a libretto about a forgiving autocrat, which has already been set by 40 other composers over the five previous decades, is probably what you need and that is what la clemenza di tito the clemency of titus is all about a celebrated and wise all-powerful ruler and what you also need is a composer who can work fast who has already had some hits in prague and so mozart who was already at work on another opera had two months from the signing of the contract until the opening night in September 1791 to write the music.
Peter CudlipHOST
Here is the overture to La Clemenza di Tito.
Peter CudlipHOST
Colin Davis conducts the Royal Covent Garden Opera Orchestra.
Peter CudlipHOST
It's about five minutes long.
Peter CudlipHOST
¦ ¦ © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you.
Peter CudlipHOST
Thank you.
Peter CudlipHOST
That was the overture to La Clemenza di Tito, The Clemency of Titus.