,

Mozart’s Mannheim Hopes

By

November 12″, 1778. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote to his father in Salzburg:

“Mannheim loves me as much as I love Mannheim. And I’m not absolutely sure, but I think that I may yet win an appointment here. Here, not in Munich. Because my hunch is that the Elector will be happy to relocate his residence in Mannheim since he won’t he able to put up with the insolence of those Bavarian gentry.

“You know that the Mannheim company is here. Well, the Bavarians have already hissed the two best Mannheim actresses and there was such a commotion that the

Elector himself leaned out from his box and called out Shhh! And when nobody paid the least attention he sent someone down to put and end to it, and the go-between was told by the noisemakers that they had paid to come in and would take orders from no one.

“Now for something important. I have a crack at making forty gold louis here! Of course, I’d have to stay six weeks or at most two months in Mannheim. The manager of the Seyler company refuses to let me go until I have composed a duodrama for him. You know of course that there is no singing in it, only recitation to which the music is a sort of constant accompaniment. Now and then the words are spoken while the music continues and it the effect is quite nice. You can imagine my delight at getting to comprise precisely the kind of work I have desired!

“Do you know what that blasted scoundrel Sccau has been saying here’? That my opera buffa was hissed from the stage in Munich! Too had for him that he said it in a place where I’m very well known! But what irks me is his nerve because when people go to Munich they’ll hear the exact opposite!”

Stay informed on the latest news

Sign up for WPR’s email newsletter.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Related Stories