Turn we now to the artistic results of this new existence in Vienna. Of course much piano and chamber music had been produced. The craving for something new continued great in all Viennese circles. And who was better prepared to satisfy that craving than Mozart whose fame and even support now depended on the reception he met with in the imperial city? Everything turned on the opera given him to compose, and fortunately its composition was resumed in the following spring, that of 1782. And spite of all the vexation he had to endure from his own father and the mother of his betrothed, he was ready with it, in time. To accomplish his task, he had frequently to write until one o’clock at night and to be up again at six in the morning. And although he could not devote to it all his time, all his strength, all his mind, all the powers of his fancy nor such minute labor as he had to the Idomeneo, he was able to tell his father that he felt exceedingly well pleased with his opera. He generally followed only his own feelings, but on this occasion he had as much regard as possible for the taste of the Viennese people; and their taste in such matters inclined to subdued hilarity and to the comic. These therefore, are the prevailing characteristics of the work. Of Belmonte’s O wie aengstlich he writes himself: You can see the trembling, the shaking. You can see how the swelling bosom heaves. It is expressed by a crescendo. You can hear the whispering and sobbing in the first violins with sordines and a flute in unison. The O wie der aengstlich was everybody’s favorite aria as well as his own. And yet the rondo Wenn der Freude Thraenen fliessen,[8] was still more enrapturing. It contains also that celebrated passage:
“Ach Constanze dich zu sehen
Dich voll Wonne und Entzuecken
An dies treue Herz zu druecken.”
in which German music for the first time fully learned the language of manly love and devotion, just as it first had found the musical sublimity of religious feeling in the chorale. Through Belmonte, the character of the “German youth,” was, so to speak, fixed in music for all time. Think only of Beethoven’s Florestan, and Wagner’s Walther von Stolzing.
But the character of the stupid, coarse and wicked master of the Harem, Osmin, thus comically and powerfully drawn, but with all the nobility of style as to its form, was new also. He is no other than the “starched stripling,” the son of a puffed-up Augsburg bourgeois. We have here a picture of the brutal haughtiness of the Salzburg harem, with its model steward of the kitchen. But the vengeance of the artist is noble, and produces an ennobling effect on whole generations. We must read his letters to see how fully he was conscious of the comic even in Osmin’s aria: Drum beim Barte des Propheten, and that all folly and excess are their own punishment, and become an object of derision. We find here in this sketch the entire material from which, two generations later, the “Dragon” of the Niebelungenring was built. The heavy rhythm in the very first song, the rudeness of the entire movement, the almost roaring “trallalara”—are the expression of the untamed savagery of brute nature, the grandeur of coarseness in miniature.
We now turn to the performance. This took place on the 12th of July, 1782. It seemed as if the applause of the crowded house would never cease. The audience was surprised, charmed, and carried away by the beauty and euphony of the music—music full to overflowing with life, and which did not sacrifice nobility of form to truth of portraiture, nor depend for its seductive power on glittering dialogue. Performance followed performance in quick succession, and this spite of the fact that intrigue in theatrical circles labored strenuously to prevent its repetition. The Italians, with Salieri at their head, looked with displeasure at the rise of the German operatic stage. It disturbed them, and threatened to do away with their exclusive rule. They went so far even as to entice the performers away so that the presentation of the opera became very difficult; whereupon Mozart writes: “I was in such a rage that I did not know myself.” But they could not prevent the audience’s crying bravo! and Mozart himself says: “It does one good to get such applause.” The “Elopement” is the first link in the unbroken chain of effects and triumphs which ends in the dramatic production of our days, confined to no one nation—a production destined, in a generation, to rule Europe more powerfully than did the Italian opera in those days, and which even now succeeded in impeding the success of this first German opera and banishing it from the stage.
This actually happened, and the emperor Joseph was weak enough to allow the Italian school to obtain the upperhand to such an extent that Mozart himself could not help joining in the chorus of those priests of Bacchus; but then he gave that chorus a beauty and fullness which it had not possessed before. This result was attained in the Figaro, of which we shall speak next.
The first thing that occupied his mind after the completion of his great task was, of course—and it was very natural that it should be so—his union with Constance. And, indeed, after the success he had met with, what reason was there why he should not venture to get married and to found a home of his own? Speaking of the work, Joseph II. had said: “Too pretty for our ears, and an infinity of notes, my dear Mozart!” To which the latter with noble frankness replied: “Just as many notes as are necessary, your majesty!” But Gluck, who was by far the highest authority in Vienna on theatrical matters, had the opera performed for himself specially, although it had been given only a few days before, and he complimented the composer very highly and invited him to dinner. This augured better for Mozart’s future than all else. He had, however, other patrons. Prince Kaunitz, known as the “Kutscher von Europa,” the Coachman of Europe, expressed great dissatisfaction with the emperor because he did not value men of talent more, and allowed them to leave the country. Among other things he told the archduke Maximilian, on one occasion when the conversation turned on Mozart, that men like him appeared in the world only once in a century, and that for that reason some effort should be made to keep them.
Mozart now brought every influence he could to bear on his father. The vexation already caused him by the girl’s mother brought it to such a pass, that he was forced to take her to his friend and patroness Frau von Waldstaedten. He writes about this time: “My heart is troubled, my brain is crazed! How can a man think or work under such circumstances?” But the father looked upon the marriage as a misfortune to him, and instead of his consent to it, he gave “only well-meant advice.” Mozart, therefore, made short work of it, and, with the assistance of his patroness, he acted the Elopement from the Auge Gottes, as he afterwards jocosely called his marriage. The baroness herself wrote to the father, smoothed over the difficulties in the way as best she could, even procured the money necessary to have the marriage contract drawn and dispensation from having the bans called in the church. The two who loved each other so well, were married on the 4th of August 1782. We must turn to Mozart himself for an account of it.