Lucio Silla

Scarcely were the travellers home once more than the kindly archbishop died.

His successor was the former bishop of Goerk, hieronymus count of colorado like many others the mozarts scented trouble for colorado was a hard-boiled bigot and in every respect the reverse of his predecessor he lives on in history principally as mozart's evil genius and as the man who in the end was to fan wolfgang's detestation of salzburg to white heat and to drive him to open mutiny hieronymus knew by a kind of intuition that his new subjects were not well disposed to him so in the words of a contemporary chronicler he despised them and held himself aloof his rule says palmgartner was something other than the ancien regime of his forerunner the musical highlights of which had been leopold mozart ernst eberlin and cagetin a de colorado was a revolutionary and a deadly foe of routine and sought to put his ideas into force by sharpest disciplinary measures his taste however ran to the easy grace of italian music yet he did in his chilly way at first look upon wolfgang as a talent he might use for the greater glory of his court for his new master's festive installation in seventeen seventy two the composer wrote a one-act serenata along the lines of his escagno entitled il sogno di seppione to a text by metastasio adapted from cicero the score was a typical occasional work of allegorical character far more important in the creative sense are at least eight symphonies and four divertimenti in all of which are traces of the ripening genius shortly to emerge the third italian visit differed in some ways from the earlier ones lucio silla produced in milan in december twenty sixth seventeen seventy two was not acclaimed as mitridate had been outwardly it was successful and enjoyed more than twenty performances but did not hold the stage to begin with the opera had an inferior libretto and wolfgang absorbing other musical influences was less concerned about catering meticulously to italian tastes moreover he was no longer the child prodigy whose every action was to be considered phenomenal but the real reason lay deeper a prophetic ear might have detected the vibrations of a storm and stress period beginning to ferment in the spirit of the artist leopold made a vain effort to secure his son a post at the grand ducal court of tuscany but wolfgang received no more operatic commissions for italy so early in march seventeen seventy three taking a last leave of that land they returned to salzburg where leopold was angered to see colavedo appoint an italian rather than a german to the position of conductor the elder mozart now determined to try his luck in vienna after the death in seventeen seventy four of florian gassmann the court composer leopold hoped to secure the appointment for wolfgang and the two obtained an audience with maria theresa who for all her graciousness merely replaced gassmann by one giuseppe at the moment there was no opportunity to earn anything in the capital but the young man became acquainted with something that in the long run was to prove even more rewarding this was the music of joseph haydn whom he was not to meet personally until later the influence of haydn on mozart as of mozart on haydn was to be incalculable from every standpoint On December 9, 1774, father and son were on a journey once more, this time to Munich, where the Bavarian elector, Maximilian III, had commissioned wolfgang to write an opera for the following carnival it was a buffa la finta giardiniera and on january fourteenth seventeen seventy five the composer wrote to his mother my opera went so well yesterday that i find it impossible to describe the applause in the first place the theatre was so packed that many had to be turned away after every aria there was a wild tumult with hand-clappings and shouts of viva maestro which began again as soon as it ended and christian daniel schubart wrote in the i heard an opera buffa by the marvellous mozart the fires of genius lurk and dart in it yet this is still not the sacred fire which rises to the gods in clouds of incense if mozart does not become a hot-house plant he will be the greatest composer who ever lived il However, Archbishop Collaredo was growing irritable over these continual absences of his servants.

He had not been able to refuse the request of the elector to permit the Mozarts to go to Munich, but he at last wanted his vice-kapellmeister and his son back.

henceforth it was not going to be so easy to obtain the great cleric's leave to go wandering whatever the reason so for the immediate future the impatient young genius settled down to compose and to perform A stream of works were put on paper in 1775 and 1776.

Nevertheless, Sidomeneo, when brought out late in January 1781, was warmly acclaimed, and the elector, who had followed the rehearsal from the first, marveled that so small a head should contain such great things, insisting he had never been so stirred by any music.

He had reason for his enthusiasm.

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.

Yet to the end of his days its creator valued it highly, and made some unavailing efforts to reanimate it.

The second one was loosely an opera seria, Ascanio in Alba.

And next up is the overture to Mozart's first complete opera seria, Lucio Silla.

By the way, I think you might find it helpful to think of opera as the 18th century's movies.

And in the same way that we divide movies broadly into comedies and dramas with subdivisions of black comedies, satires, and the truly awful term dramedy, that is the similar sort of thing that we are doing with these different terms for operas.

But back to Lucio Silla, very definitely an opera seria, written for Milan when Mozart was 16 and taking an old libretto based on some ancient Roman history that had been used for four earlier operas.

And because we are only talking about overtures, I do not need to go on about the plot at all.

But I think in the music you can hear a more serious tone, one that befits the weightier mood and mission of opera seria.

And it is longer than Mozart's opera buffa overtures, coming in at about eight minutes.