Bella mia fiamma - Resta, oh cara K528

Bella mia fiamma was written for the Czech soprano Josepha Duscheck, wife of the composer Franz Duscheck and one of Mozart’s favourite sopranos. He had written Ah, lo previdi! for her in 1777 and, according to the composer’s son, he had long promised her another concert aria but without, “as usual”, actually getting round to writing it down. So, when Mozart was in Prague, staying in the Duschecks’ country villa for the first performance of Don Giovanni in 1787, Josepha took the opportunity to lock him in a summer house and keep him there until he had completed the promised aria. Mozart duly wrote the piece (to words for a male character in Sarcone’s Cerere placata) but threatened not to let her have it unless she could sing it perfectly at sight.

Apparently, Josepha passed the test. She must have been a very remarkable musician since, from the harmonic point of view, her new aria was not so much progressive for its time as actually ahead of it. The expressive modulations of the introductory recitative she might have been expected to cope with but, in the Andante section of the aria (beginning “Resta, oh cara”) the augmented fourths and diminished fifths on “Addio” were intervals that an eighteenth century singer would not have anticipated. The meltingly beautiful chain of diminished sevenths on “Quest’affano” would have been another problem, and no less so on its repetition a semitone lower a few bars later. The Allegro finale (beginning “Ah, dov’e il tempio?”) is harmonically less surprising but it would be a very agile singer indeed who, reading at sight, could safely negotiate the brilliant leaps and runs of the coloratura line.

Ah, lo previdi! - Ah, t’invola agl’occhi miei - Deh, non varcar K272

Mozart first met Josepha Duscheck when she came Salzburg in August 1777 to visit her grandfather, whose fortune she was eventually to inherit. Whether or not Mozart fell in love with her on that occasion, as has been suggested, he certainly set out to impress her. The piece he wrote for her in Salzburg, Ah, lo previdi!, is the most spectacular of all his works for solo voice and orchestra. Its dramatic effect is all the more remarkable in that it plunges without preparation into the climax of a full-scale opera libretto, Cigna-Santi’s Andromeda, which he probably knew through a recent setting by Giovanni Paisiello. Andromeda’s lover having been fatally wounded by Perseus, she longs for her own death so that she might accompany him on his voyage to the far bank of the river Lethe.

Not just a matter of an introductory recitative and a brilliant aria, Mozart’s scena features two main sections, an Allegro aria in C minor and an Andante cavatina in B flat major, each preceded by an expressively detailed recitative. In the opening recitative the orchestra’s violent gestures, chromatic harmonies and syncopated rhythms encourage Andromeda to work up her fury with Perseus, which she proceeds to hurl at him in a impressively sustained fit of vituperation (“Ah, t’invola agl’occhi miei”). The longer second recitative effects a gradual change of mood from anger to pathos, the latter reflected in some compassionate writing for strings. In the cavatina (“Deh, non varcar”), on the other hand, Andromeda’s most sympathetic ally proves to be a solo oboe which, accompanied by now muted strings, performs a virtual duet with the lamenting heroine.

piece he wrote for her, Ah, lo previdi!, is the most spectacular of all his works for solo voice and orchestra. Its dramatic effect is all the more remarkable in that it plunges without preparation into the climax of a full-scale opera libretto, Cigna-Santi’s Andromeda, set by several composers including Giovanni Paisiello in 1774. Not just an introductory recitative and a brilliant aria, Mozart’s scena features two main sections, an Allegro aria (beginning “Ah, t’invola agl’occhi miei”) and an Andante cavatina (beginning “Deh, non varcar”), each preceded by an expressively detailed recitative.