Overture: Lucio Silla

In spite of beginning two or three hours late and, with its three acts and three ballets, going on until two in the morning, the first performance of Mozart’s Lucio Silla in Milan on 26 December 1772 seems to have been a great success. Certainly, there were twenty-five more performances of the opera, all given to full houses, and the next production at the Teatro Regio Ducal had to be postponed to accommodate the demand for it. It then disappeared from view until it was revived in Prague more than a hundred and fifty years later. Partly because of the resemblance of its plot to that of Mozart’s last and much superior opera seria, La Clemenza di Tito - which also ends with a merciful gesture from an offended Roman Emperor - it has still not succeeded in finding a regular place in the repertoire.

The Overture to Lucio Silla, unlike those of Mozart’s more mature operas, does not give much away about either the music or the mood of the drama that is to follow. Its old-fashioned Italian-style construction in three distinct movements is appropriate, however, to an example of the already moribund opera seria form, and the sound of the opening Molto allegro, with its D major tonality and its prominent horns or trumpets and drums, is characteristic of the colouring of several of the major arias in the opera itself. Between the festive outer movements there is an effective little Andante which begins and ends in a charmingly gracious A major but which turns anxiously to the minor in the restless middle section.

Gerald Larner©