Overture: Der Schauspieldirektor (“The Impresario”), K.486

As a musician only too well aware of the problems associated with presenting opera, Mozart was well qualified to write the music for Der Schauspieldirektor. As a composer, on the other hand, he was vastly over-qualified. Gottlieb Stephanie’s libretto - a one-act comedy commissioned by Joseph II for a banquet in the Orangery at Schönbrunn Palace in 1786 - is entertaining enough but it is scarcely worthy of the composer who had written the music for the same librettist’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail five years earlier and who was now working on Le Nozze di Figaro.

This is not to say that Mozart did not welcome the opportunity. Certainly, he entered into the festive spirit of the enterprise, producing four choice vocal numbers with a particularly brilliant trio for two rival sopranos and the hapless tenor who comes between them. In the Overture, on the other hand, he seems to be demonstrating that he is capable of greater things. The structure is not too imposing and the thematic material, which is comparable to that of the Figaro overture, is not too serious. But the development, with its disturbing modulations and its enterprising contrapuntal textures, would not have been out of place in the most ambitious of Mozart’s symphonies.

As a musician only too well aware of the problems associated with presenting opera, not least the inevitable jealousies and rivalries between the star performers, Mozart was well qualified to write the music for Der Schauspieldirektor. As a composer, on the other hand, he was vastly over-qualified. Gottlieb Stephanie’s libretto - a one-act comedy commissioned by Joseph II for a banquet in the Orangery at Schönbrunn Palace in 1786 - is entertaining enough but it is scarcely worthy of the composer who had written the music for the same librettist’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail five years earlier and who was now working on Le Nozze di Figaro.

This is not to say that Mozart did not welcome the opportunity: he needed the money, he had a congenial cast of singers and actors, and he could hope that the engagement might lead to a permanent court appointment. Certainly, he entered into the festive spirit of the enterprise, producing four choice vocal numbers with a particularly brilliant trio for the two rival sopranos and the hapless tenor who comes between them. In the Overture, however, he seems to be demonstrating that he is capable of greater things. The structure is not too imposing and the thematic material, which is comparable to that of the Figaro overture, is not too serious. But the development, with its disturbing modulations and its enterprising contrapuntal textures, would not have been out of place in the most ambitious of Mozart’s symphonies.