The Debut of Mozart's 'The Marriage of Figaro'

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If you mention "The Marriage of Figaro" to most people my age or younger, the image that probably comes to mind is of Bugs Bunny conducting a performance of the opera in a Warner Bros. cartoon.

That is an entertaining memory for me — and, probably, for many members of my generation. I grew up watching — and loving — Bugs Bunny cartoons on Saturday mornings. Most Bugs Bunny fans would probably mention the cartoons that included Yosemite Sam or the Tasmanian Devil or that weird interplanetary character as their favorites, but I always liked the takeoffs on the operas, like "The Marriage of Figaro" or "The Barber of Seville."

I owe that to my parents, I suppose. They liked other kinds of music, too, as I have mentioned here before, but they both liked classical music. Most opera was probably not their preference — they tended to like symphonies and such as that — but sometimes the music or the composers they liked overlapped in opera.

As a child I was exposed to it all — and, as a result, I tended to recognize music that was used in cartoons (and, thus, get the humor of some inside jokes that even most adults didn't get).

(When I was in college, I recall that my German professor once tried to trip up the class by asking us classical music trivia questions. I frustrated her by correctly answering all of them — and, in the process, spoiling her punchlines.)

It was as a child that I learned to love the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose opera based on the play "The Marriage of Figaro" made its debut at Vienna's Burgtheater 230 years ago today. Nearly a quarter of a millennium later, it is still one of his most loved compositions — and that really is saying something.

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In keeping with the custom of the time, the composer conducted the first two performances of the opera, then Mozart handed the baton to a 20–year–old Austrian conductor.

It was a glorious achievement, one that was featured in the movie "Amadeus," which is one of my all–time favorite movies. In the movie, Salieri, Mozart's rival composer who has long been suspected of being behind Mozart's untimely death, described how the opera bestowed "perfect absolution" on all who heard it.

Truer words have seldom been spoken.

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But the success or failure of a composition in the 18th century depended less upon its quality than the responses of the prominent people who heard it. And, as Salieri observed, the emperor's yawn during the premiere 230 years ago today was believed to have been the reason why the opera closed after nine performances.

That seems to be something of an urban legend. The premiere appears to have been a success with a five–number encore. There were seven encores the night of the second performance.

The original story on which the opera was based was regarded as somewhat bawdy for the sensibilities of 18th–century people. Could that have been why it closed after nine performances? Well, the emperor, who had approved the libretto before Mozart began composing any of the music, doesn't appear to have been worried about the content, but he was concerned, it seems, about the length of the performances with all these encores so he issued a directive "that no piece for more than a single voice is to be repeated."

The new policy was in effect for the third performance and was probably behind the rumors that swirled around the opera after its nine–performance run.

"The Marriage of Figaro" was not performed in Vienna in 1787 or 1788, but a revival production ran there from 1789 to 1791. In the interim it enjoyed a successful run in Prague.

Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major: The Gold Standard

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I have long admired the music of Mozart. In fact, I wrote as much when I observed the 30th anniversary of the premiere of the movie "Amadeus" a couple of weeks ago.

But his "Clarinet Quintet in A major," which he finished writing 225 years ago today, has always been special to me. I don't really know why except to say, in that somewhat vague way, that it speaks to me. That isn't really an adequate answer, I suppose, but it's the only one I have.

Not everyone knows what a clarinet quintet is so I will briefly explain. A clarinet quintet is an ensemble of a clarinet and a string quartet (two violins, one viola, one cello). Clarinet quintet is also used as a reference to compositions for such a combo.

I am not sure if it is my favorite Mozart composition, but it is certainly one of them. If I ever get into a debate with someone over the greatest Mozart composition (hardly likely but not impossible), his clarinet quintet will be in the conversation.

I love the way the clarinet sets the mood for the piece, and its notes hang in the air for a short time before the other instruments join in. I knew of it before it held a prominent place in the record–shattering series finale of M*A*S*H; I wasn't asked for my input, of course, but I could hardly have picked a better piece to be associated with that episode.

It was a brilliant touch.

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In it, Charles encountered some Chinese soldiers who were, at heart, musicians (and, I suspected, peasants in civilian life), and they surrendered to him with no resistance; in fact, they were insistent about it. Their music offended Charles' patrician sensitivities, particularly when he was trying to listen to a recording of Mozart — and then one of the prisoners began playing that very piece. Charles was inspired to teach all of them to play the Mozart piece, which they eventually did admirably.

In spite of their language barrier, they bonded — through the universal language of music.

Mozart wrote the piece for renowned clarinetist Anton Stadler of Austria. It is said that, in Stadler's hands, a clarinet was "so soft, so delicate in tone that no one who has a heart can resist it."

That's a pretty good description of this piece, actually. For a piece from a composer who was known to be as prodigious as Mozart, it holds a unique place in the extensive library of his work. It is the only clarinet quintet he completed.

Although it was completed about two years before Mozart's death, the clarinet quintet was not his last composition. It wasn't even close. He wrote some of his most admired works in those last two years of his life.

Many of his works have been mimicked by others. In some cases, though, the word mimic really isn't appropriate. Maybe it is better to call such pieces homages. Beethoven, who was Mozart's junior by 15 years, is said to have written several pieces in Mozart's style. I'm sure Beethoven believed that what he was doing was a tribute to Mozart.

But I know of no instance in which a composer mimicked Mozart's clarinet quintet. Perhaps it couldn't be done.

Fact is, not many composers have written clarinet quintets. A few tried after Mozart did it, but I guess it was more than a century later, when Johannes Brahms wrote his clarinet quintet, that composers really began to write them. Brahms' clarinet quintet was good — but, along with being virtually the first of its kind, Mozart's composition really set the standard.

More than two centuries later, it is still the standard.

The Myth About Mozart and Salieri

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"All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?"

Salieri (F. Murray Abraham)

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All that Antonio Salieri, an 18th–century Italian composer, wanted to do was make music praising God.

But he wasn't a great composer. He was enough of a music lover to know how far off the mark he really was — and how close to that same mark his rival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was. And Salieri resented Mozart for that.

At least, it was that way in Peter Shaffer's 1979 play. Whether it was that way in reality is anyone's guess two centuries after the fact.

Personally, I don't have to guess — at least when it comes to Mozart's talent. I am convinced that Mozart is the greatest composer who ever lived. He's been a favorite of mine since I was a boy, frankly. I guess it goes back to when I was taking piano lessons in elementary school. To encourage me, my grandmother gave me a music box in the shape of a bust of Beethoven. When you wound it up, it played Beethoven's Minuet — a nice enough piece, but it just has that marble–bust sound to it. Stiff, virtually lifeless, by the book.

When I was taking piano lessons, I was assigned to learn a couple of the easier pieces written by Mozart, and, for me, there was really no comparison. I liked Beethoven well enough, but Mozart became my favorite when I was about 7 or 8. My musical tastes have expanded a great deal since that time, but I still love Mozart's work, and I am constantly meeting people who feel the same way.

It has long been rumored that Salieri was responsible for Mozart's death at the age of 35. Mozart himself may have been the origin of these rumors via letters he wrote to his father complaining about obstacles being thrown in his path, obstructing his access to prestigious posts or commendations, and speculating that the Italians were to blame.

For centuries, there has been a rivalry between the music communities of Italy and Germany. Germans like Mozart and his father resented what they believed was special treatment that Italians received from European nobility; when Mozart struggled in Vienna, the Italians were the most appropriate scapegoats.

"You know those Italian gentlemen; they are very nice to your face!" Mozart wrote once to his father.

One of Mozart's biographers contended that the rivalry between the two (if there was one) could have begun when the two were candidates for a position teaching music to a princess, and Salieri was selected, apparently because he was known to teach singing as well as music.

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That episode was re–created in Miloš Forman's "Amadeus," which premiered on this day in 1984.

Apparently, Mozart did not take that setback well, and it added fuel to the stories of a rivalry between Mozart and Salieri.

There is no other evidence that I have found, though, that indicates Salieri was a threat to Mozart. In fact, there seems to have been little, if any, acrimony between them. They appear to have regarded each other as friends and colleagues and supported each other's professional efforts.

But, after Salieri died about 30 years after Mozart, some fictionalized accounts of their relationship that promoted the myth of rivalry were published. Then Shaffer revived the rumors with his play, which was the basis of the movie.

Now, as I say, I have always loved Mozart's music. I thoroughly enjoyed "Amadeus," and, after I saw it, I did something I rarely do. I bought the soundtrack — in cassette so I could listen to it in my car — then I replaced it with the CD version about 10 years later.

But what I found particularly amazing was that, although very few adult Americans listened to classical music, that soundtrack was, for a time, one of the best–selling albums in the country. It reached #56 on Billboard's charts, making it one of the most successful classical recordings of all time.

I gave a copy to my mother for Christmas that year. Of all the Christmas gifts I gave Mom in her life, that may have been the one she liked the best.

The movie itself wasn't quite a blockbuster. It made nearly $52 million, but it cost $18 million to produce.

"Amadeus" was intriguing in that it gave a different twist to the rivalry idea. In "Amadeus," Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) was the victim of the charmed Mozart (Tom Hulce), who, when he composed, seemed to be doing little more than "taking dictation" from God.

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That may have been the key to it. Instead of presenting Mozart as some kind of stuffy, marble–bust figure from the recesses of the past, he was portrayed in the movie as more of a contemporary sort, a freewheeling 18th–century flower child, you might say, to whom things just seemed to come too easily.

His wife (Elizabeth Berridge) was more practical about some things, but she was, in essence, a flower child, too.

When I saw Berridge on the big screen, I had one of those moments when I was convinced I had seen her somewhere before. I just didn't know where; consequently, it turned into an extended moment of brain wracking that made me miss a few things on the screen.

She was a new face to a lot of folks in those days. I've looked her up online, and it seems she was in two other movies and a soap opera before she was in "Amadeus." I don't think I ever saw the movies, and I have never been a fan of soap operas so I probably mistook her for someone else.

Berridge wasn't the first pick to play Constanze. The first choice was Meg Tilly, but she got hurt and had to pull out. Berridge and Diane Franklin were flown to Czechoslovakia, where filming was under way, to audition for the part. I have heard that Berridge was chosen because Franklin was considered too pretty to be an innkeeper's daughter. Well, that's what Berridge says on the Director's Cut DVD of "Amadeus."

Frankly, I liked Berridge in the part. I don't know if Franklin was prettier, but Berridge just seemed right for it.

A word of advice: If you haven't seen "Amadeus" but would like to — and I certainly encourage you to do so — I recommend watching that Director's Cut. There were several things about the movie that I never understood until I saw the Director's Cut.

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"In a film of grand gestures," wrote Roger Ebert, "some of the finest moments are very subtle."

Ebert was right about that, especially in the way he chose to illustrate his point — by observing shifts, some of them barely perceptible, in facial expressions.

Ebert focused primarily on Jeffrey Jones, who played the emperor, and I have to admit his moments really were superb.

Emperor Joseph is one of my favorite supporting characters of all time — even if Jones did not receive recognition in the form of an Oscar nomination.

But Ebert had some things to say about Abraham, too.

"[W]atch Abraham's face as he internalizes envy, resentment and rage," Ebert wrote. "What a smile he puts on the face of his misery! Then watch his face again at Mozart's deathbed as he takes the final dictation."

At the time of the Oscars, Hulce and Abraham were both nominated for Best Actor. Abraham won, which at the time I didn't think was right. The movie was about Mozart. Shouldn't the actor who played Mozart win?

I must confess that, at the time, I still hadn't seen the movie. I saw it after the Academy Awards. I don't recall now whether it had finished its run and was brought back to theaters after it won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, or if it was still showing in (or just getting around to) the Little Rock market. Either one certainly is possible.

Whichever it was, I went to see it some time after Abraham received the Best Actor Oscar.

When I had seen the movie, I had to admit that Abraham deserved it.

"Amadeus" won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. Shaffer won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

And "Amadeus" picked up Oscars for costumes, makeup, art direction and sound mixing. In fact, Dick Smith, who died recently at the age of 92, won the Oscar for makeup.

It was recognition that was long overdue. A brilliant makeup artist, Smith did the makeup for such classics as "Little Big Man," "The Exorcist" and "Taxi Driver" as well the Oscar–winning makeup for "Amadeus."

The Music of Our Lives

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"Music is my life and my life is music. Anyone who does not understand this is not worthy of god."

Wolfgang A. Mozart

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Sometime in 1779 — 235 years ago — Wolfgang Mozart composed "Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra." The 23–year–old Mozart was on a tour of Europe when he composed it while dabbling with the sinfonia concertante genre.

In a brilliant example of how art transcends media, the composition was mentioned in William Styron's "Sophie's Choice." After being molested by a stranger on the subway, Sophie heard "Sinfonia Concertante" on the radio, and she was taken back, in her mind, to her childhood in Poland, lifting her spirit.

A writer for the New York Mirror once wrote that Mozart was the Shakespeare of music. "As long as the immortal bard is read," wrote the author (whose identity is lost to history), "Mozart will live in the admiration of mankind."

That's an appropriate comparison. Shakespeare wrote about the human condition, and Mozart's music has been the soundtrack for countless lives.

"Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra" is but one reason why Mozart is my favorite composer; anyone who wants to know more needs only to listen to it.

Director's Cut Adds to 'Amadeus' Tale

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I went to a theater near where I lived and saw the screen version of Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus."

It changed the way I looked at music and human relationships.

The film brought to the screen a tale that has been an urban legend for a couple of centuries — that composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Viennese colleague and rival, Antonio Salieri, was responsible for Mozart's death in 1791.

It was an intriguing story that I heard at various times when I was growing up. But, like so many other things in life, the story didn't always hold up under scrutiny.

It's been a source of contradictions.

Shaffer's play and the film version that followed told a wonderful story of jealousy and rivalry between two contemporaries, but it may well have been as fictitious as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," which is a great film about greed among gold prospectors but it's totally fictional.

There is evidence that Mozart and Salieri had a cordial, even friendly, relationship — and there are even hints of it in "Amadeus." Salieri was acquainted with many of the great musicians of his day and was regarded as a great musician himself. In fact, he taught music to Mozart's young son — but he did so years after Mozart's death.

In their correspondence, Mozart and his father wrote of "cabals" of Italians in Vienna who actively sought to derail Mozart's career. But such conspiracies may have been more imaginary than real.

It has been speculated that Mozart himself may have been the initial source of rumors of Salieri's jealousy and conspiratorial inclinations — when Mozart sought a post but was passed over for Salieri.

The episode was re-created in the film, but there was nothing in the movie that suggested Mozart's suspicions of Salieri's actions or motives were aroused by it.

In fact, tales of Salieri's alleged "confession" of his complicity in Mozart's death did not begin to spread until after Salieri's own death.

In the film, it is suggested that Salieri tried to cut his own throat while despondent over Mozart's death more than 30 years earlier — and begged the forgiveness of the long-dead Mozart. He was taken to an asylum, where he "confessed" his role in Mozart’s death to a priest — although the three people who were with Salieri in his last days denied that it ever happened that way.

Another factor that may have contributed to the public's acceptance of the tale was the fact that Germany had undergone a revival of nationalism in the decades since Mozart’s death, which may have led to the de-emphasis of the Italian Salieri and the simultaneous elevation of the Austrian-born Mozart in the public's eye.

That may or may not have been the case. Salieri lived and worked in Vienna for most of his life; in spite of his Italian roots, he was regarded as a German composer by many Germans at the time of his death.

Whatever the reason, so complete was the conversion of the two men's public images that, for the most part, Salieri's work has been forgotten while Mozart's has grown increasingly popular.

True or not, the rumors persisted — and, in 1984, they made for a great cautionary tale, even though I felt, when I saw the film in the theater, that there were gaps in the story.

I found, when I saw the "Director's Cut DVD" many years later, that the restored scenes filled in the gaps nicely. They illustrated, for example, the problems Mozart had earning a living in the conventional way — through teaching music — when what he yearned to do was compose.

The extended version, which was released in 2002, also included scenes that would have caused ratings problems when the film was released theatrically — even though the story made more sense with the deleted material included.

For example, there was a scene in which Mozart's wife visited Salieri to make an appeal on her husband's behalf. Salieri was a member of a panel charged with the task of selecting someone to teach music to the emperor's niece, and Mozart's wife, without her husband's knowledge, came to Salieri with samples of Mozart's sheet music to submit his application for him.

When she refused to leave the music with Salieri, she was forced to admit that Mozart didn't know she was there and that he would be "frantic" if he discovered any of the sheet music was missing. "They're all originals," she confided. "He doesn’t make copies."

Salieri was astonished that all the sheet music in the binder were "first and only drafts of music" which showed no signs of corrections. He was overcome with awe — and envy — that Mozart had been chosen to be the "voice of God."

Deleted from the original theatrical release — at that point — was a segment in which Elizabeth Berridge, the actress who played Constanze Mozart, was enticed to return to Salieri's home that night — alone.

Salieri said he was dining with the emperor the next evening. This was a job that all the composers in Vienna coveted, but "[o]ne word from me, and the post is [Mozart's]," he told Mozart's wife. However, he said, "Some service deserves service in return."

That, he told her, was "the price."

In the expanded version, Constanze returned to Salieri's home, and her breasts were exposed for a few seconds before she was sent to her own home.

At the theaters, the film was rated PG. The inclusion of the deleted nudity almost certainly would have resulted in an R rating — which might have limited the film’s performance at the box office.

But the deleted scene helped to put a fine point on Salieri’s growing alienation from God that was missing from the theatrical release.

And, while they contained no additional nudity or objectionable language, the additional and extended scenes did help to clarify other things that weren't totally clear or given a strong enough emphasis in the originally released theatrical version.

Earlier in the film, when Salieri concluded that Mozart had been intimate with a singer, who happened to be the object of Salieri's unrequited affection, the original version was ambiguous. It showed the singer becoming angry upon being introduced to Mozart’s fiancée — but the extended version went into greater detail, making Salieri's conclusion easier to understand than it was at the theater.

It remained unclear, though, how Salieri intended to kill Mozart. Overworking him — as the film implied — by insisting (as an anonymous benefactor) that he complete the requiem mass (which Salieri intended to pass off as his own at Mozart’s funeral) while he also strove to complete the opera that promised more lucrative, long-term income was an uncertain proposition.

But the film never revealed the method Salieri chose, even though he himself pondered, in his conversation with the priest, the difference between fantasizing about murder and performing it "with your own hands."

History suggests Mozart died of acute rheumatic fever.

If some of the deletions were intended to produce a more favorable rating to help the movie at the box office, they didn't propel "Amadeus" into the top 10 moneymakers of the year. But the movie went on to win eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

And, in one of the most intriguing of contradictions, F. Murray Abraham, the actor who portrayed Salieri in the film, was named Best Actor — instead of the castmate who played Mozart, Tom Hulce.

"Amadeus" didn't ignite a public revival of classical music, but it did have a modest influence on popular music. Austrian pop star Falco had a #1 hit with a song called "Rock Me Amadeus" in the spring of 1986.

A Magical Anniversary

Most, if not all, students of classical music revere the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Equally, his personality is considered repulsive by many, creating a true contradiction.

And his untimely death fueled speculation — which has never been substantiated — that he was murdered by Salieri, a jealous rival composer.

That speculation formed the basis for one of my all-time favorite films, "Amadeus."

But, even if there was no truth behind the speculation on the nature of Mozart's relationship with Salieri, it was a remarkable film, written, directed and performed by people who understood music as well as they understood their own craft — filmmaking.

That is, indeed, a rare combination in an art form that tries to relate the story of another art form.

And, at the heart of the film was always the music, Mozart's music. "It is miraculous," says Salieri at one point in the movie. And so it was.

But it could also be a burden for the admittedly "vulgar" Mozart.

Even so, it appears that composition came easily to Mozart. I can't verify the accuracy of this comment, but in the film, Mozart's character says a particular piece of work that has not yet been committed to paper is "all right here in my noodle." The rest, he says, "is just scribbling. Scribbling and bibbling, bibbling and scribbling."

It is strongly suggested in the movie that Salieri commissioned Mozart to compose the demanding "Requiem" with the intention of killing his rival and then passing off the "Requiem" as his own at Mozart's funeral — and it is also suggested that working on the ultimately unfinished composition was what really killed Mozart.

In the film, the scene of Mozart's death includes the act (by his widow) of locking up the sheet music of the "Requiem" while a disappointed Salieri watches helplessly. As he bitterly relates the experience to a priest, the aged and guilt-ridden Salieri says, "Your... merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved, rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory."

But it is also suggested in the film that Mozart may have been overworking himself before being hired to write the "Requiem" — that the "Requiem" hastened what Mozart had brought on himself.

The movie shows him collapsing while conducting, as well as playing music in, "The Magic Flute," Mozart's final opera, which premiered 217 years ago today in Vienna. Less than three months after the premiere, Mozart died at the age of 35.

"The Magic Flute" was the last of several hugely popular collaborations for Mozart with Emanuel Schikaneder's theatrical troupe.

More than two centuries later, "The Magic Flute" remains a popular opera, consistently one of the most frequently performed operas in North America.

That's the kind of lasting legacy that few artists ever achieve.