The latter cautioned him from home to take care of himself. He knew his son. And, indeed, Wolfgang had a slight attack of illness at this time. He writes ingenuously enough: “A man gets easily over-heated when honor or fame is at stake.” But he was soon well again, and able to write: “A person is indeed glad when he is at last done with so great and so toilsome a piece of work; and I am almost done with it; for, all that is wanting now is two arias, the final chorus, the overture, the ballet—and adieu partie.” The father had reminded him not to forget to make his music popular. It was the “popular” in music that tickled the long-eared. Wolfgang replied that there was music in his opera for all kinds of people, the long-eared excepted. And indeed the work contained ballet-interludes, and besides the most popular of all kinds of music, the dance. Mozart’s genius permitted him, as we have seen, to make many a concession to the peculiarities of the singers, spite of the gravity of the subject. But where this same gravity was paramount, as in the quartet of the third act, he had trouble enough. The oftener he put it on the stage, the greater was the effect it produced on himself, and it was liked by all, even when only played on the piano. Raaff alone found it too long, and not easy enough to sing.
Mozart replied to his objections: “If I only knew a single note that could be changed! But I have not been as well satisfied with anything in this opera as with the quartet;” and Raaff was himself afterwards, as he said, “agreeably disappointed;” and just as delighted were the four musicians: Wendling, Ramm, Ritter and Lang, who had an obligato accompaniment to the aria of Ilia, in the first act, and who were thus given an opportunity to appreciate Mozart’s skill; for it was the profound rapture that comes from joy and love which was here to be expressed in music. And as Mozart had once given expression to that rapture in his Non so d’onde viene, he again gave it a voice in the premature evening of his life in the aria:
Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schoen.[5]
The aria of Ilia reminds us of both. But the quartet is the crowning glory of Gluck’s endeavor to allow each singer to express himself, at every moment, as far as possible, in accordance with his own individuality. Even in Mozart’s works, we find little like it; and at that time such musical wealth was entirely new and unheard of.
The elector said laughingly, after the thunder-storm in the second act: “One would not think that that small head could carry so much.” And then the choruses, when the people, during the storm, utter their cry of horror! The members of the orchestra said that this chorus could not but freeze the blood in one’s veins. And yet the third act was incomparably richer. Mozart himself says: “There is scarcely a scene which is not exceedingly interesting,” and that “his head and hands were so full of it that it would be no wonder if he were to become the third act himself.” He thinks, however, that it would prove as good as the first two. He says: “but I believe infinitely better, and that it may be said: Finis coronat opus (the end crowns the work).” For the address of the high priest on the sufferings of the people, caused by the sea monster, the solemn march, and the oracle itself, Gluck’s Alceste may have served as a model. The magnitude of these tragic elements at least were well understood; and no one can, even to-day, remain unmoved by these tones. But it became also a school of the genuine dramatic style in music; and the orchestration was the best that Mozart had produced. From it, all who followed him learned the best they knew.
Of the presentation of the opera itself on the stage, in January, 1781, we have no detailed information. But the impression made by it must have been in keeping with that created by the rehearsals. That the Idomeneo lives now only in the concert hall, is due to the Italian words, which interrupt the acting at almost every step. Mozart put an end to the absolute rule of the Italian opera by his Idomeneo. It henceforth had only a national character. Mozart compelled the composers of opera, from this time forward, to take another course, and to comply with Gluck’s demands, which have lifted the opera of our age to the height of the genuine drama.
But the first and fully decisive steps in this direction, were the Figaro and Don Giovanni. We now turn to them. The Idomeneo, as it was Mozart’s first masterpiece, monumental in its style, constituted, together with the operas which followed it, the transition to an entirely new epoch in his life, to the period of his complete independence, both as an artist and as a man.
CHAPTER IV.
1781-1787.
THE ELOPEMENT FROM THE SERAGLIO—FIGARO—DON GIOVANNI.