Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

GOETHE HEAVEN

O

ne year later and Mozart is still reigning supreme. Globally, 178S is an interesting time. The flavour of the month seems to be coming from the literary world and goes by the name of Robbie fiMmm, what a great essay subject: 'Mozart Piano Concerto slow movements the power ballads of their day. Discuss.' Extra points if you can compare and contrast Piano «loncerto 21 with ''Ihe Power of Love' by Jennifer Rush. Burns and his Poems Chiefly in a Scottish Dialect. This is the year that sees seemingly everyone doing the Scottish thing - throwing Scottish parties, having Scottish theme nights, failing to qualify for major sporting events, the lot. Elsewhere, Goethe, the toast of Germany -not to mention future Chas and Dave song - is currently attempting to become the toast of Italy too. He's on tour there for a couple of years, taking in the culture, networking, that sort of thing. Other than that, very litde of major future significance to impart for 1786, apart from the fact that someone discovered uranium.

Mozart's year is going from strength to strength. For him, it's the year when all his opera experience really begins to pay off, in terms of the 'annals of time' and 'posterity' and all that nonsense. (Remember how we said opera would have its day again?) He's been writing opera for yonks now, of course, but, all of a sudden, he premieres an opera in which everything just seems to gel. Everything manages to just… come together. Right now. It's pardy due to the fact that his 'words' man, a new librettist for Mm called Da Ponte, is coming up with some great 'books' for the operas in the first place. (Very often, just as in musicals, the libretto to an opera is simply called the book.) As a result, it's in Italian - not Mozart's first, but certainly his first for a while, and appeals to the Viennese audience who, for some reason, like their operas in Italian - and it no doubt does no harm that it's a comedy. Da Ponte had taken the story from a play by Beaumarchais, written just a couple of years ago. It was called then, and indeed it is called now, The Marriage of Figaro.

Its first night was the 1st of May, 1786, in Vienna, and it is said that its opening night was twice as long as it should have been because virtually every aria had to be encored immediately it was sung! In fact, its popularity led to the introduction of a royal order stating that opera houses were not allowed to do over-long encores - just the odd aria.