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The Fandango Scene in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Dorothea Link
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Abstract

This article concerns the use of dance in the Act 3 finale of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, starting from the problem articulated by Alan Tyson in his Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores. Tyson points out that the absence of the fandango from the Viennese musical sources is at odds with Da Ponte's statement that the dance scene was restored at the emperor's command. New evidence shows that the fandango was performed for the three performances that constituted a première at this time in Vienna and was then removed from the score. However, before its removal, the score with the fandango intact was copied for at least one other theatre, hence accounting for the two versions that circulated through Europe. The article goes on to consider the dramatic function of the fandango by exploring the nature of the dance itself and examining the stage directions in the autograph in combination with those in Beaumarchais's play, several early librettos and editions, and the original first-desk first-violin part.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 133 , Issue 1 , 2008 , pp. 69 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Royal Musical Association

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References

An early version of the first part of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Antonio Salieri e il teatro musicale a Vienna’ in Legnago, Italy, 18–19 April 2000, and in the Mozart Society Study Session at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Toronto, 1–5 November 2000. The complete paper was read at the University of Georgia, 6 October 2005. A condensed version of the second part was read at the autumn general meeting of the American Philosophical Society, San Francisco, 9–11 November 2006. Michael Malkiewicz read the complete version in January 2005. Parts of it and our subsequent discussion fed into his article ‘“Frames and Fringes”: Zur Lektüre von Balletquellen”, Kongressbericht Leipzig 2006, ed. Malkiewicz and Jörg Rothkamm (Berlin, 2007), 69–84.Google Scholar

1 Alan Tyson, Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1987), 311–12.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Figure 18.7 in Tyson, Mozart, 313, for another score (Budapest, Orszhágos Széchényi Könyvtár, MS mus. OK-11/a-3) that omits the fandango. This is the score (of Acts 3 and 4 only) Haydn ordered from Vienna no later than 1789 for a planned but never realized production of the opera at Eszterháza. It shows the same page layout for the join between the chorus and the recitative as KT 315 (Figure 1).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 311.Google Scholar

4 Lorenzo Da. Ponte, Memorie, ed. Giovanni Gambini and Fausto Nicolini, 2 vols. (Bari, 1918), i, 118–20; Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's Librettist, trans. Leslie Alfred Sheppard (Boston, MA, 1929), 138–41.Google Scholar

5 ‘Il signor poeta non sa che l'imperadore non vuol balli nel suo teatro?’, Da Ponte, Memorie, ed. Cambini and Nicolini, i, 118. ‘Doesn't the Signor poet know that the Emperor won't have ballets in his theatre?’, Memoirs, trans. Sheppard, 139. The more widely used translation by Elisabeth Abbott has the infelicitous choice of the word ‘forbidden’ — ‘The signore poeta does not know that the Emperor has forbidden dancing in his theatre?‘, Memoirs of Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's Librettist, trans. Elisabeth Abbott (Philadelphia, 1929; repr. New York, 1967), 160.Google Scholar

6 Confirmed in the diary of Count Karl Zinzendorf, 29 April 1786, as first noted by H. C. Robbins Landon, Mozart: The Golden Years 1781–1791 (London and New York, 1989), 156–7. The diary entry reads: Apres 11h je cherchois l'Empereur a l'Augarten. Il etoit en ville, il etoit a la repetition del'opera' (‘After 11:00 I looked for the emperor in the Augarten. He was in town, he was at the opera rehearsal‘). Transcribed in Dorothea Link, The National Court Theatre in Mozart's Vienna: Sources and Documents 1783–1792 (Oxford, 1998), 270. Zinzendorf clearly expected to find the emperor at home in his Augarten residence, which suggests that his attending a rehearsal in the morning was not his usual practice. Nor was it convenient, since the Augarten was situated outside the city walls. It appears the emperor responded to what he was persuaded was an emergency requiring his presence.Google Scholar

7 While the reliability of Da Ponte's memoirs is repeatedly questioned, his facts, where they can be substantiated, are by and large correct, allowing for his penchant for telling a good story and his desire to present himself in a good light. Therein lies the problem. Concerning his relationship with Mozart, Da Ponte reveals more by what he does not say than by what he does. On the one hand, he proudly claims co-authorship of the three great operas he created with Mozart. On the other, he is noticeably less forthcoming about his collaboration with Mozart than about that with his favourite composer, Vicente Martín y Soler. Martín seems to have been far more acquiescent with regard to Da Ponte's artistic decisions than Mozart, who, as we know from the family correspondence, routinely demanded changes in the libretto once he started setting it to music.Google Scholar

8 Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Hofarchiv: Generalintendanz der Hoftheater, Sonderreihe 18–27 (1781–94): Rechnungen der k. k. Theatral- Hof- Directions Cassae (hereafter HHStA, Hoftheater, S.R.), 23 (1786–7), p. 60, no. 175.Google Scholar

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10 Tyson, Mozart, 295.Google Scholar

11 See Edge, ‘Mozart's Viennese Copyists’, 1469–83, for a description of the original performance score; 1483–1515, for a discussion of the parts; and 1546–60, for a discussion of the third-act finale.Google Scholar

12 For example, Landon, Mozart, 243, n. 13, quoting Otto Michtner, Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne: Von der Einrichtung des deutschen Singspiels (1778) bis zum Tod Kaiser Leopolds II. (1792) (Vienna, 1970), 401, n. 15.Google Scholar

13 ‘Both Da Ponte and tenor Michael Kelly (the first Don Curzio) claim that it was Mozart's idea to turn Beaumarchais's play into an opera, but there is no indication in Mozart's correspondence one way or the other.’ Mary Hunter, ‘Le nozze di Figaro’, The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, ed. Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe (Cambridge, 2006), 353–64 (p. 356).Google Scholar

14 ‘Meine oper ist gestern wieder |: und zwar auf begehren des glucks:| gegeben worden; – gluck hat mir vielle Complimente darüber gemacht. Morgen speise ich bey ihm.‘ Mozart to his father, 7 August 1782; Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen: Gesamtausgabe, ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch and Joseph Heinz Eibl, 7 vols. (Kassel, 1962–75), iii, 219.Google Scholar

15 By a curious coincidence, La fiera di Venezia was also performed that year in Munich, where Leopold Mozart happened to see it. In a letter of 28 November 1785 to his daughter, he criticized the opera as being old-fashioned and full of worn-out ideas. Quoted in John Rice, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera (Chicago, 1998), 194.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 220–31, 471–3.Google Scholar

17 HHStA, Hoftheater, S.R. 22 (1785–6), p. 57, no. 134. In elucidation of payment no. 133, to which reference will be made below, ‘Die Prennerin’ (Frau Prenner) was a singer in the German opera company, in 1782–3, and in the Italian opera, 1784–6, and was paid 400 gulden a year. In 1785–6 she was given singing lessons for six months by Vincenzo Righini at the court company's expense. Giovanna Nani was an apprentice singer taken on by Joseph when he heard her in Milan in June 1785. She received a salary of 600 gulden a year from 1 August 1786 to the end of the theatre year 1787–8. She is known to have sung on 22 and 23 December 1785 in a concert of the Tonkünstler-Societät (in which Mozart also performed) and on 14 March 1787 in the academy of the visiting oboist Friedrich Ramm. Link, The National Court Theatre, passim.Google Scholar

18 HHStA, Hoftheater, S.R. 22 (1785–6), p. 63, no. 180.Google Scholar

19 The première of La grotta di Trofonio was scheduled for the beginning of June, but the opera was not performed until 12 October 1785. Link, The National Court Theatre, 247.Google Scholar

20 Memoirs, trans. Sheppard, 140. ‘In men di mezz'ora giunsero ventiquattro ballerini, ossia figuranti’, Da Ponte, Memorie, ed. Cambini and Nicolini, i, 120.Google Scholar

21 Memoirs, trans. Sheppard, 140. ‘Ve ne sono – diss'egli – negli altri teatri?‘, Da Ponte, Memorie, ed. Cambini and Nicolini, i, 119.Google Scholar

22 Franz Hadamowsky, Wien Theater Geschichte: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs (Vienna, 1994), 458.Google Scholar

23 Gustav Zechmeister, Die Wiener Theater Nächst der Burg und Nächst dem Kärntnerthor von 1747 bis 1776 (Vienna, 1971), 329, 332–3.Google Scholar

24 For a description of the numerous small theatre companies and ballet troupes, see Hadamowsky, Wien Theater Geschichte, 455–82.Google Scholar

25 Zechmeister, Die Wiener Theater, 332.Google Scholar

26 Dorothea Link, ‘Vienna's Private Theatrical and Musical Life, 1783–92, as Reported by Count Karl Zinzendorf’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 122 (1997), 205–33 (p. 220).Google Scholar

27 Edge, ‘Mozart's Viennese Copyists’, 1550.Google Scholar

28 Wiener Zeitung, 1 January 1785, 9–10.Google Scholar

29 HHStA, Hoftheater, S.R. 20 (1783–4), p. 51, no. 113: ‘Extra Ausgaben … No. 113 Dem Decamp, Johann für Instruirung des Acteurs Zieglers im Tanzen ut No. 113. 25 [fl.] 36 [x]‘.Google Scholar

30 Link, The National Court Theatre, 437, 444.Google Scholar

31 Edge, ‘Mozart's Viennese Copyists’, 1550, reports that Decamp went missing some time in 1786. In the municipal records written at the death of his wife in 1795 Decamp is listed as the surviving spouse ‘whose whereabouts have been unknown for nine years’.Google Scholar

32 On the basis of contemporary reports, such as the following by Joseph Weigl, it is generally assumed that Vienna followed the Italian practice of having the composer conduct the first three performances of his opera. ‘Thus it was that I accompanied Mozart's Figaro, D. Juan etc. for all rehearsals & to his satisfaction, & after the first 3 performances, which Mozart himself directed from the keyboard, I had to take over his place for all subsequent performances.‘ Quoted in Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, 519.Google Scholar

33 The policy is spelled out by Joseph on 8 February 1782 in the ‘Punkten für die Theatral-Direction’, nos. 3 and 12, transcribed in Rudolph Payer von Thurn, Joseph II. als Theaterdirektor: Ungedruckte Briefe und Aktenstücke aus den Kinderjahren des Burgtheaters (Vienna, 1920), 28–30. The practice was observed until spring 1789, when the theatre was reorganized. See also Edge, ‘Mozart's Fee’, 225–6.Google Scholar

34 This policy, too, is laid out in the ‘Punkten’, no. 12 (Payer, Joseph II. als Theaterdirektor, 29–30). See also Dexter Edge, ‘Mozart's Reception in Vienna, 1787–1791‘, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. Stanley Sadie (Oxford, 1996), 66–117 (p. 79). Since the spoken theatre and opera companies alternated on the stage of the court theatre, neither company normally performed three nights in a row.Google Scholar

35 The policy of scheduling the first three performances as closely as possible could not be followed as rigorously for opera as for the spoken theatre, owing to the frequent indisposition of the singers (Link, The National Court Theatre, 486). By rights, Le nozze di Figaro should have been performed on 1, 3 and 5 May, but for some reason the third performance was deferred to 8 May, the next evening allocated to opera.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 486–7.Google Scholar

37 Storace repeated her success with this aria in London in 1791, when she inserted it into the opera The Siege of Belgrade. The Gazetteer, 4 January 1791, reported that ‘Storace danced her favourite air with much grace – it was encored’ (Rice, Antonio Salieri, 372–3). The aria is included in Dorothea Link, Arias for Nancy Storace, Mozart's First Susanna, Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 66 (Middleton, WI, 2002), 58–60.Google Scholar

38 Edge, ‘Mozart's Viennese Copyists’, 1828.Google Scholar

39 Rice, Antonio Salieri, 220–31, 471–3.Google Scholar

40 La fiera di Venezia contains a minuet, a second minuet with two trios, and a forlana, a dance performed by the common people of Venice. Don Giovanni presents a minuet, a contredanse and a teitsch or Deutscher, the last two dances representing the lower classes, although by 1787 they were also danced by the nobility.Google Scholar

41 Rice, Antonio Salieri, 200, points out that Mozart had known Salieri's ballroom scene already in the autumn of 1773, when he wrote variations on the theme of its Minuet in G, ‘Mio caro Adone’, K.180. The variations were advertised by the music copyist Lorenz Lausch in the Wiener Zeitung on 5 October 1785, at the time of the opera's revival. Deutsch, Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, 223.Google Scholar

42 In a first attempt to contextualize Mozart's dance scenes in opera within operatic practice elsewhere, Daniel Brandenburg surveyed a number of opere buffe, mainly from Naples. He found very few dance scenes in multi-act operas. Those that he found occur mainly within finales, were performed by the singers, either the soloists or the chorus, and were sometimes accompanied by onstage musicians. Very rarely did the dancing involve the participation of professional dancers. Brandenburg suggests that the repertory of operatic centres that had ballet companies, such as Florence, might reveal a different picture. See his ‘Zu Tanz und Bewegungsphänomenen in der Opera buffa des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Tanz und Bewegung in der Barocken Oper, ed. Sibylle Dahms and Stephanie Schroedter (Vienna, 1996), 159–73.Google Scholar

43 Letter of 24 December 1764 in Beaumarchais: Correspondance, ed. Brian Morton, 4 vols. (Paris, 1969), i, 129; my translation.Google Scholar

44 The dance differed radically from the French court dances not only in its bodily gestures but also in the harmonic and motivic construction of the music. See Allanbrook, Wye Jamison, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni‘ (Chicago, 1983), 153–4, for a close analysis of Mozart's fandango.Google Scholar

45 Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Histoire de ma vie, xi, Chapter 1; ed. Francis Lacassin (Paris, 1993), iii, 594.Google Scholar

46 Giacomo Casanova, The Story of my Life, trans. Stephen Sartarelli and Sophie Hawkes, selections by Gilberto Pizzamiglio (New York, 2000), 473.Google Scholar

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48 Casanova, The Story of my Life, trans. Sartarelli and Hawkes, 462.Google Scholar

49 Henry Swinburne, Travels through Spain in the Years 1775 and 1776 (London, 1787), cited in Judith Etzion, ‘The Spanish Fandango: From Eighteenth-Century “Lasciviousness” to Nineteenth-Century Exoticism’, Anuario musical, 48 (1993), 229–50 (p. 234).Google Scholar

50 Joseph Townsend, A Journey through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787 (2nd edn, London, 1792), cited ibid., 234. Edward Clarke confirms that the dance was performed by all levels of society: ‘[The Fundungo (sic) is] danced by the first of the nobility, as well as by the common people.‘ Letters Concerning the Spanish Nation: Written at Madrid during the Years 1760 and 1761 (London, 1763), cited ibid., 233.Google Scholar

51 Carlo Blasis, The Code of Terpsichore (London, 1828), cited in Monika Woitas, ‘“… Bewegungen von unvergleichlicher Sinnlichkeit…”: Auf den Spuren des berühmt-berüchtigten Fandango’, De editione musices: Festschrift Gerhard Croll zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Wolfgang Gratzer and Andrea Lindmayr (Laaber, 1992), 203–18 (p. 205).Google Scholar

52 John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776), cited in Etzion, ‘The Spanish Fandango’, 235.Google Scholar

53 Encyclopädie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften, oder Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst, ed. Gustav Schilling, 6 vols. (Stuttgart, 1835), ii, 652, as quoted in Woitas, ‘“… Bewegungen von unvergleichlicher Sinnlichkeit…”‘, 212; my translation.Google Scholar

54 This fandango is usually thought to have served as the model for Mozart.Google Scholar

55 Bruce Alan Brown, ‘Beaumarchais, Mozart and the Vaudeville’, Musical Times, 127 (1986), 261–5 (pp. 261–2).Google Scholar

56 Act 4, scene ix, of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le mariage de Figaro, Oeuvres, ed. Pierre Larthomas with Jacqueline Larthomas (Paris, 1988), 459–60; my translation.Google Scholar

57 Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786), facsimile in The Librettos of Mozart's Operas, introduction by Ernest Warburton (New York, 1992), iii, 81.Google Scholar

58 The autograph's fandango has been in part discussed by Gerhard Croll, ‘Figaro und Don Juan: Über das spanische Kolorit bei Mozart’, Internationaler Musikwissenschaftlicher Kongreß zum Mozartjahr 1991, Baden-Wien, ed. Ingrid Fuchs, 2 vols. (Tutzing, 1993), ii, 515–19 (p. 517), and Malkiewicz, ‘“Frames and Fringes”’, 81. I am grateful to Michael Malkiewicz for sending me a copy of his article in advance of its publication. He is the first scholar to point out that the direction ‘Il Conte cava il biglietto …’ occurs in bar 18 in the autograph.Google Scholar

59 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Werke, ser. 5, vol. 17 (Leipzig, 1879), 303–5; hereafter MW.Google Scholar

60 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro (Figaros Hochzeit), ed. Hermann Abert (Mainz, London and New York, 1926), 541–6.Google Scholar

61 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Die Hochzeit des Figaro: Le nozze di Figaro, ed. Georg Schünemann (Leipzig, 1941; repr. New York, 1979), 331–2.Google Scholar

62 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, ed. Ludwig Finscher, NMA, II/5, Vol. 16, part ii (Kassel, Basle, etc., 1973), 450–5. As explained in the Vorwort, Finscher had no access to the Mozart autograph of Acts 3 and 4, which disappeared during the Second World War, and he consequently relied for those acts on the MW, Abert and Schiinemann editions.Google Scholar

63 The title page of the copy in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (hereafter A–Wn) states ‘Rappresentata nel Teatro di Praga l'Anno 1786‘; an advertisement by Kucharz appeared in the Wiener Zeitung on 6 June 1787 (Tyson, Mozart, 297, 299). This score reflected the Prague version of the opera (ibid., 311).Google Scholar

64 Copy in A-Wn, MS 10220-qu4, identified as the seventh printing, made after 1799, in Gertraut Haberkamp, Die Erstdrucke der Werke von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Bibliographie, 2 vols. (Tutzing, 1986), i, 259.Google Scholar

65 Plate number 1603; mentioned in Haberkamp, Die Erstdrucke, 261, and Ludwig von Köchel, Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts, ed. Franz Giegling, Alexander Weinmann and Gerd Sievers (6th edn, Wiesbaden, 1964), 545.Google Scholar

66 Le nozze di Figaro: Figaro's Hochzeit (Berlin, 1790), 128–9; copy in Washington, Library of Congress, Schatz 6827.Google Scholar

67 Croll may be thinking of this translation when he states that ‘Selbstverständlich tanzt Figaro mit Susanna (die Regie-Anweisung Da Pontes macht dazu präzise Angaben)’ ('Of course Figaro dances with Susanna (Da Ponte's stage directions are precise on that)'), even though the marking ‘Figaro balla’ in the autograph, which he discusses several sentences later, is clearly in the singular (Croll, ‘Figaro und Don Juan‘, 517).Google Scholar

68 Die Hochzeit des Figaro (Vienna, 1798), 81; copy in A–Wn, shelf number MS 1724-ATB.Google Scholar

69 The cue ‘Figuranti’ at bar 21 signals the end of Figaro's dancing and the re-emergence of the figuranti into the foreground.Google Scholar

70 Un almanaco drammatico: L'indice de' teatrali spettacoli, 1764–1823, facsimile reprint with an introduction by Roberto Verti, 2 vols. (Pesaro, 1996), i, 108, 155, 211. Also, D. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Origines y establecimiento de la opera en España hasta 1800 (Madrid, 1917), 206.Google Scholar

71 By 1820, the stage is the only place where the fandango can still be found, according to Antonio Cairon, Compendio de las principales reglas del baile (Madrid, 1820), 100, quoted in Woitas, ‘“… Bewegungen von unvergleichlicher Sinnlichkeit…”‘, 204.Google Scholar