1 Overture: Lo sposo deluso K430

2 'Ah, che ridere' from Lo sposo deluso K430

3 'Voi avete un cor fedele' K217

4 'Basta vinceste' K486a

5 'Un bacio di mano' K541

6 'Con ossequio, con rispetto' K210

7 'Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle' K538

8 'Mandina amabile' K480

9 'Alcandro, lo confesso' K512

10 'Vado, ma dove? - oh Dei!' K583

11 'Dite almeno, in che mancai' K479

interval

12 'Siano pronte' from L'Oca del Cairo K422

13 'Vorrei spiegarvi' K418

14 'Per pietà, non ricercate' K420

15 'Chi sà qual sia' K582

16 'Che accidenti' from Lo sposo deluso K430

17 'Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo' K584

18 'Per questa bella mano' K612

19 'Clarice cara mia sposa' K256

20 'Alma grande e nobil core' K578

21 'Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner!' K383

Mozart enjoyed composing arias, not only in his operas and church music but on any occasion. Between his tenth year and his last he wrote nearly fifty arias - the earliest ones at the behest of his father to show off his precocious skill, the later ones for a variety of professional and personal reasons but always to the highest standard and with no lack of pride in his accomplishment. “I like an aria to fit a singer as perfectly as a well-made suit of clothes,” he boasted in a letter to his father from Mannheim in 1778, and his singers certainly appreciated his extraordinary ability in this respect. One of them, the soprano Josepha Duscheck, went so far as to lock him in a summer house in her villa in Prague and refused to let him out until he had completed an aria he had long promised her.

Arias written for specific singers, like Josepha Duscheck’s hard-won “Bella mia fiamma” K528 (not included in this programme), were mostly intended for concert performance rather than as part of an opera. There is, however, another, larger category of arias which were originally intended for performance in an operatic context, even though they are now stray items in the Mozart catalogue with no natural home. These are the “insertion” arias provided, as was common in Mozart’s day, as additional or replacement material in already existing operas by other composers. In just about every case, the operas - by, say, Galuppi, Anfossi, Bianchi, Soler, Cimarosa - have long since fallen out of the repertoire while Mozart’s contributions have proved to be too inspired to be allowed to go the same way.

This evening’s programme begins with representatives of a third source of homeless items, the unfinished opera project. Mozart started work on Lo sposo deluso, ossia La Rivalità di tre donne per un solo amante (The Deluded Bridegroom, or the Rrivalry of Three Women for the Same Lover) in Vienna in 1783 or 1784 just after he had abandoned another ill-advised project, L’oca del Cairo. Realising that the new libretto was almost as bad as the other, however, he gave up after writing no more than the overture and four vocal numbers. The Overture to Lo sposo deluso (No.1), the second half of which so interestingly foreshadows the melodic style of Die Zauberflöte, leads directly into the opening number, an entertainingly comic quartet, “Ah, che ridere” (No.2).

L’oca del Cairo (The Cairo Goose) is represented by one of the six vocal items with which Mozart flattered the Varesco’s unworthy libretto, the aria and trio “Siano pronte” (No.12). Another ensemble from Lo sposo deluso, the beautifully written and prophetic trio “Che accidenti” (No.16), is followed by an aria in a similar category to that of orphans from unfinished operas. “Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo” (No.17), though written as an aria for Guglielmo in Cosí fan tutte, was discarded from that opera to be replaced by the rather more seductive “Non siate ritrosi.”

The first of the eleven insertion arias in this programme, “Voi avete un cor fedele” (No.3), which offers its soprano soloist an effective contrast between a melodious Andantino grazioso and a bravura Allegro, was composed in Salzburg in 1775, possibly for Galuppi’s Le nozze di Dorina. Written thirteen years later, the comic arietta Un bacio di mano (No.5) - which later provided a theme for the first movement of the “Jupiter” Symphony - was destined for Anfossi’s Le geliosie fortunate and the bass Francesco Albertarelli, who was singing the role of Don Giovanni in Vienna at much the same time. “Con ossequio, con rispetto” (No.6) and “Clarice cara mia sposa” (No.19) are both comic tenor arias intended for a Salzburg production of Piccini’s L’astratto. The musical director of La villanella rapita at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1785 must have felt that Bianchi’s score was short of ensembles: certainly, Mozart provided both a trio, “Mandina amabile” (No.8), and a quartet, “Dite almeno, in che mancai” (No.11), for that production.

Whether Mozart was ever tempted to outshine the composers of the operas he was supplementing, he can scarcely have failed to do that with the pair of arias, “Vado, ma dove?” (No.10) and “Chi sà qual sia” (No.15) he wrote in 1789 for Il burbero di buon cuore by his major rival in Vienna at that time, Martín y Soler. No doubt he was encouraged by the prospect of hearing them sung by Louise Villeneuve, for whom he had recently written “Alma grande e nobil core” (No.20) for insertion into Cimarosa’s I due baroni and who was to be the first Dorabella in Cosí fan tutte. As for “Vorrei spiegarvi” (No.13), the enchanting dialogue between oboe and soprano must have made everything round it in Anfossi’s Il curioso indiscreto at the Burgtheater in 1783 seem pale in comparison. Anfossi would probably not have been sorry to hear that “Per pietà, non ricercate” (No.14), which was intended as an extra aria for the tenor Johann Valentin Adamberger in the same work, was omitted from the production.

The superior quality of “Vorrei spiegarvi” is surely not unconnected to the fact that it was written for Aloysia Lange (née Weber), Mozart’s first real love, later his sister-in-law and always one of his favourite sopranos. He composed the first of his concert arias for her shortly after he met her in Mannheim in 1778 and completed several more in the following ten years. The first concert aria in this programme, however, Basta vinceste (No.4), was written for another Mannheim soprano, Dorothea Wendling, who, though clearly a sympathetic singer, was perhaps not as accomplished as Aloysia. “Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle” (No.7), which was written (or recycled) for Aloysia in 1788, is a brilliantly resourceful demonstration of the prodigious extent of her technique.

The setting of “Alcandro, lo confesso” (No.9) included in this programme is not the one Mozart wrote for Aloysia in Mannheim but an eloquent and wide-ranging bass aria composed for Ludwig Fischer (the first Osmin in Die Entführung) nine years later. Another bass, Franz Gerl (the first Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte) was the recipient, of “Per Questo bella mano” (No.18). With its adventurous double-bass obbligato, it is one of the most extraordinary products of Mozart’s last year. The last word, however, and the only one in German, goes to Aloysia with “Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner!’ (No.21), which was written for a benefit concert arranged for her in Vienna in 1782 and was no doubt all the more effective for its comparative simplicity on what must have been a largely virtuoso occasion.

Gerald Larner ©2006