Paris, to which they returned in May 1766, seemed less stirred by the prodigies than it had been on the earlier visit, though Prince Karl Wilhelm of Brunswick, on hearing Wolfgang, exclaimed in amazement, “Many a kapellmeister dies without ever having learned anything like what this child knows!” In July they left the French capital and arrived in Salzburg the last day of November 1766, laden with gifts and rich in glowing memories. A considerable quantity of new music from Wolfgang’s pen filled their luggage. The artist was supplanting the prodigy. Wolfgang had seen something of the world and had made many valuable contacts. The Archbishop, Sigismund von Schrattenbach, skeptical of the brilliant reports he had heard, asked him to compose a cantata—Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes—and isolated him for a week to see how much truth there was in all the talk.
Vienna and La Finta semplice
Not quite a year later the Mozarts were off again, this time to Vienna, for the betrothal festivities of the Archduchess Maria Josepha and King Ferdinand of Naples. But their great expectations were hardly realized. A smallpox epidemic in the capital carried off the royal bride, and Leopold fled with his family to Olmütz, where both the children contracted the disease. Wolfgang lay blind for nine days and for some time had to be careful of his eyes. Only on Christmas Eve were they well enough to set out again. On their return to Vienna, Maria Theresia received them kindly, but things had changed. Economy was the order of the day: the aristocracy followed the example set by the imperial household, musical activities were reduced, and the Mozarts felt the pinch. Interest in the prodigies diminished.
Joseph II, who had succeeded his mother on the throne, expressed a desire to hear in Vienna an opera of the twelve-year-old boy’s composition and suggested such a work to the lessee of the court theater, Giuseppe Afflisio. The result was La Finta semplice, its libretto based on a Goldoni farce, and it was arranged that the composer should lead it from the harpsichord. Nothing came of the scheme, however, presumably because of intrigues.
The youth was partly consoled for this check by a noted physician, the celebrated Dr. Anton Mesmer (an early practitioner of mesmerism), at whose suburban home the one-act German Singspiel, Bastien und Bastienne, based on a parody of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous pastoral Le Devin du village, was performed. The little piece for all its simplicity lives on. Perhaps the most striking thing about the score is the fact that the prelude, or intrada, begins with the theme that was to be the main subject of Beethoven’s Eroica.
The travelers came back to Salzburg early in 1769. The trip had not been a financial profit, but Wolfgang was undoubtedly richer in experience and had added to his creative store. The Archbishop delighted them by ordering a performance of La Finta semplice, though he had no genuine opera buffa personnel at his disposal. The leading soprano part of Rosina was sung by Maria Anna Haydn, Michael Haydn’s wife. 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 marvelous.” Plainly, it would not do to let the boy outgrow his precocity. And so on December 13, 1769, 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 Ponto, which, produced on December 26, 1770, amid cries of “Viva il Maestrino,” had twenty performances. In Bologna he greatly impressed the aged 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’s 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 Quaerite 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. Now “Maestro di Cappella,” he was ordered to provide a serenata—Ascanio in Alba (Wolfgang completed its fairly voluminous score in twelve days)—for the impending marriage of Archduke Rudolf and the Princess Maria of Modena.
Leopold imagined his son “made” for life. But the boy’s music, for all its charm and fluency, still wanted the unmistakably creative touch. The tireless traveler, Dr. Burney, wrote a little later: “If I may judge of the music which I have heard of his composition, in the orchestra, he is one further instance of the early fruit being more extraordinary than excellent.” And the composer Hasse believed that “young Mozart is certainly a prodigy for his age. The father adores his son overmuch and does all he can to spoil him; but I have so good an opinion of the innate goodness of the boy that I hope that, despite his father’s adulation, he will not allow himself to be spoiled.”