Mozart, a Freemason

The greatest opera composer of the last half of the 18th century, and one whom Gluck greatly influenced, was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although Gluck was 42 years old and undeniably successful when Mozart was born in 1756, the younger composer instinctively understood Gluck's aim and wrote a series of operas that strike an infallible balance between the competing claims of dramatic coherence and vocal display. While Mozart's mature operas give singers many chances to display their vocal gifts, the operas are never disfigured by music that weakens the dramatic structure of his works.

Mozart's first major opera, and the last significant piece he wrote before moving to Vienna from his birthplace of Salzburg, is Idomeneo (1781). Written for the opera in Munich, the work is an opera seria like two of his earlier stage works—Mitridate (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772). Unlike these earlier pieces, Idomeneo shows Mozart in full mastery of his powers. The score is full of bold dramatic and pictorial strokes such as a storm at sea and a shipwreck. Conspicuous use is made of the chorus, and there are notably larger ensembles and striking recitatives accompanied by a large and varied orchestra. Although the music is unmistakably Mozart's—full of the composer's sweetness and poignancy and graceful turns of phrase—it also shows the dramatic influence of Gluck and of the French tragédie lyrique. With the exception of La clemenza di Tito (The Mercy of Titus, 1791), which was composed at the end of his life, Mozart wrote no other opera seria.

Dramatically he went in the opposite direction, presenting characters recognizable in everyday life rather than remote mythological figures. The Marriage of Figaro (1786), while a comic opera, was revolutionary in the way it presented dramatically plausible characters and not the stock figures drawn by Mozart's contemporaries.

Mozart's insights into human emotions and motivations were profound, and he had the ability to express these insights through his music. In The Marriage of Figaro Mozart not only created characters whose actions are explained by and through their music but who gain in dramatic dimensions when they engage in ensembles. It is in these larger numbers, even more than in the solo arias, that Mozart presents his characters in all their complexity.

Although Figaro was coolly received in Vienna, it was warmly welcomed in Prague, and its ardent reception led to the commissioning of Mozart's next opera, Don Giovanni (1787). Mozart called the work a dramma giocoso, or “playful drama,” but the piece is not without its serious side. The Don Juan story set by Mozart was first treated by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina in the early 1600s. The great French playwright Molière had also dealt with the story (in Le Festin de Pierre, 1665), inventing the character of Donna Elvira. But despite these and other literary treatments, it was Mozart who fashioned a story that presents Don Giovanni as a truly romantic hero. Mozart's Don is not the unlikely mixture of bumpkin and blasphemer but a rebel whose targets are conventional authority and traditional morality. The presence of Mozart's Don is enhanced by instrumental effects—such as the use of trombones—that give the opera a dark and solemn side. Throughout the opera Mozart weaves a psychological counterpoint of his characters' feelings: Don Giovanni's menace, Donna Elvira's hurt, Donna Anna's vengefulness, Zerlina's innocence, Don Ottavio's eagerness to please his beloved Donna Anna, and Masetto's naïve devotion to his adored Zerlina. More than any other of his operas, Don Giovanni shows stylistic influences of Gluck, who had composed a Don Juan ballet based on Molière in 1761. Among Mozart's works it is unique for its blending of comic and tragic elements.

Another opera buffa, or comic opera, is Cosí fan tutte (1790), a work that questions conventional notions of love, fidelity, and devotion. Mozart deals with these themes in the most melodious way. Cosí is thought by many opera lovers to be Mozart's most tuneful score, and in fact its writing is especially rich in the prominent melodic use of the mellifluous intervals of the third and sixth—those intervals most removed from dissonance. Cosí also makes notable use of wind instruments, especially of Mozart's favorite clarinet, which is often associated in his scores with expressions of love and devotion. Of all Mozart's operas, Cosí is the clearest and most symmetrical in its dramatic construction. Two pairs of lovers are at the center of the action, which is kept in motion by the wily cynic Don Alfonso and the women's maid Despina. For its theatrical clarity, dramatic irony, and abundant melodiousness, Cosí has won a special following among Mozart's operas.

Two operas in German complete the Mozart canon. The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) is a romantic and comic rescue story that features exotic locales and equally exotic characters. Like many other pieces of its time, The Abduction takes advantage of the popular interest in things thought to be Turkish. Not only are the characters and locales special, but the music features such percussion instruments as cymbals and bass drum associated with an interest in the exotic.

The Magic Flute (1791) is altogether different. Strongly influenced by the rituals known only to Mozart and his fellows in the fraternal order of Freemasons, The Magic Flute is an amalgam of comic action, vocal virtuosity, and moral instruction. Strictly speaking it is a singspiel, a work with spoken dialogue rather than recitative between scenes, but it is a singspiel far more advanced than other works of this genre. The character of Papageno provides the humorous element found in works of this sort, but the piece is made exceptional by, among other features, the virtuoso arias for the Queen of the Night and the somber arias, full of didactic wisdom, of the High Priest Sarastro.

Mozart's librettist for The Magic Flute was Emanuel Schikaneder, a friend of the composer as well as a fellow Mason. Mozart's librettist for what are considered his three major operas—Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosí—was Lorenzo da Ponte, a poet and man of letters. While in no way distinguished as literature, the texts he made for Mozart were ideally suited to the composer's needs. Neither artificial nor redundant like earlier librettos, they provided a framework that let Mozart write different sorts of pieces—recitatives, arias, and ensembles—with the flexibility that instinctively he knew to be right.

More than any of his contemporaries, Mozart increased the role of the opera orchestra. In Mozart's opera the orchestral parts are highly profiled and deftly characterized, making instrumentalists participants in the dramatic action.

Mozart also set new standards for fusing operatic structure and symphonic forms. In the Act II finale from Figaro, he creates an extended structure that shares with symphonic music large-scale relationships of tempo and harmony that meld the different ensembles—solos, duets, and larger ensembles—into a coherent and elegant whole. (See also Mozart.)

After Mozart's death the next significant opera was Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio (1805). Beethoven's only work in this form, Fidelio shows the influence of such contemporary composers as Ferdinando Paer, who composed an opera to the story of Fidelio a year before Beethoven; Luigi Cherubini; and Étienne-Nicolas Méhul. Fidelio is a more intense score than any produced by these other men—a work that, in its touching story of the triumph of good over evil, has come to be valued as a moral statement and not just as an opera.