Overture: Die Entführung aus dem Serail

Unlike most of Rossini’s, every one of Mozart’s mature operas – from Idomeneo onwards – begins with an overture that relates to it in some significant way. If it does not anticipate the melodic material of the opera it is designed at least to put the audience in the right frame of mind for the drama that is to follow. Mozart’s priority in writing an overture for Die Entführung aus dem Serail (also known for no good reason as Il Seraglio) was to furnish it with music which – in rhythm, harmony and orchestral colouring – would create an atmosphere appropriate to the opera’s Turkish setting. That much is clear from the bustling, exotically inflected Presto with which it begins. In the middle of the piece, however, the tempo slows down to Andante to accommodate an anticipation of the aria in decorously European style that Belmonte, the Spanish hero of the opera, is to sing as soon as the curtain rises on the first act.

First performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1782, Die Entführung inspired the Emperor’s famous remark, “Too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and vastly too many notes,” to which Mozart truthfully replied, “Just as many as are necessary, your Majesty.”

There was music in Vienna before Johann Strauss – quite a lot of it, in fact. Composers like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert contrived, while contributing to the pre-history of the waltz by writing hundreds of German Dances and Ländler, to write those operas, symphonies and other large-scale works that made Vienna the musical capital of the world. Although Schubert was the only of the four actually born in the city, Mozart was no less Viennese in his love of the ballroom and the dances that were performed there. He was delighted rather than offended to find on a visit to Prague in 1787 that “people were flying about in sheer delight to the music of my Figaro arranged for quadrilles and waltzes.” In that same year he was appointed Chamber Musician to the court in Vienna, which meant that he was to spend most of every December and January writing dances for the coming Lenten Carnivals. During the course of his duties he wrote more than 60 examples of the German Dance, which was the forerunner of the waltz not only in its musical characteristics but also its universal appeal – as is neatly symbolised in the ball scene in his opera Don Giovanni, where the aristocratic Giovanni and the peasant Zerlina find that it is the one interest, apart from lust, they have in common.

Set as it is in Turkey, the libretto of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (also known as Il Seraglio) offered the composer no opportunity to introduce German Dances. As the hectic Presto outer sections of the Overture indicate, Mozart’s priority here – in rhythm, harmony and orchestral colouring – was to create an atmosphere appropriate to the exotic setting. In the middle of the piece, however, the tempo slows down to Andante to accommodate an anticipation of the aria in decorously Europe style that Belmonte, the Spanish hero of the opera, is to sing as soon as the curtain rises on the first act. First performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1782, Die Entführung inspired the Emperor’s famous remark, “Too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and vastly too many notes,” to which Mozart truthfully replied, “Just as many as are necessary, your Majesty