Lecture 2 - Music & Drama - Mozart's Great Operas

Mozart was an unparalleled musical dramatist, shown in his music for the three Da Ponte operas – Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte – it not merely complements the text but takes the drama to a new and deeper level of meaning. Another side of Mozart is his teaching, the care that he took over musical craftsmanship revealed in the notebooks of Thomas Attwood, the young English composer who studied with Mozart around the time of Figaro (1786). The causes of Mozart’s financial woes in the late 1780s are examined, with a tally of his income and expenditure that contains much to surprise. Mozart’s final year saw an upswing in his fortunes, with an opera (La Clemenza di Tito) commissioned for the coronation of the new Emperor in Prague, and the runaway success of The Magic Flute, that so impressed Mozart’s old rival Antonio Salieri. Finally, Peter will attempt to penetrate the layers of myth and misinformation surrounding Mozart’s last weeks to get to the likely truth about his final illness, his funeral, and the immediate aftermath for family and friends of his early death.