Chapter IV (2)

And yet the _Figaro_ was attended by very immediate success even to its composer. It gave occasion to the writing of the _Don Giovanni_; and this leads us to the conclusion of a chapter in Mozart’s life descriptive of a portion of that life as important as it was replete with action.

The love of the Bohemians for music and their skill in the art are well known. After Mozart had made his first appearance in Vienna, the people of Prague appropriated him just as they have Richard Wagner in our own day, and the _Figaro_ which followed the _Elopement from the Seraglio_ was received with an amount of applause which can be compared only with that subsequently accorded to the _Magic Flute_. It was given almost without interruption during the whole of the winter 1786-87. The enthusiasm of the audiences was unparalleled. They never tired of hearing it. Arrangements for the piano, for wind-instruments, quartets, dances, etc., were made from it. _Figaro_ was re-echoed in the streets, in gardens, and even the harper had to play its _Dort Vergiss_ if he wished to be heard.

It was the orchestra and a society of “great” connoisseurs and amateurs that invited him to Prague. Nothing could have been more agreeable to Mozart than to be able to show his enemies in Vienna that he was not yet without friends in the world. His wife accompanied him. It was in January, 1787. Count Thun, one of the first chevaliers and musical connoisseurs of Prague, was his host. He gave every day a musical entertainment at his own home. He found great delight in the intercourse of loving friends of his art, friends who recognized his genius. The very first evening, a ball was given by a well-known society in Prague--the “elite of the beauties of Prague.” Writing of it himself, Mozart says: “I was delighted to see all these people moving about so truly happy, to the music of the _Figaro_ transformed into counter dances and waltzes. Nothing is talked of here but the _Figaro_. The people visit no opera but the _Figaro_. It is nothing but _Figaro_!”

He was to direct the work in person, to the infinite delight of all. He himself paid a high compliment to the execution of the orchestra. They always played with great spirit. Two concerts followed. An eye-witness writes: “The theatre was never seen so full of human beings. Never was delight more universal. We did not, indeed, know what most to admire, the extraordinary composition or the extraordinary playing. The two together produced an impression that was sweet enchantment. But when Mozart, towards the close, played a number of fantasias alone, this condition was resolved into one of overflowing expressions of approval.” Mozart appeared, his countenance radiant with genuine satisfaction. He began with an enthusiasm that kept increasing from the first, and had accomplished greater things than had ever before been heard, when a loud voice cried out: “From Figaro!” whereupon Mozart played the favorite aria, _Dort vergiss_, improvised a dozen of the most interesting and artistic variations and closed this remarkable production amid thunders of applause.

This was certainly one of the brightest days in Mozart’s life. He had reached the climax of success. In the applause of the multitude, he saw a reflection of his own intellectual features which called that applause forth. Strange thoughts now possessed his soul. Feelings never felt before stirred within him. When a person has reached a height like that now obtained by Mozart, he is in a position to embrace in his horizon all that lies below and around him. It was the first time that his life-sparkling mind did this, but we shall see that it did so now. The incessant intrigues of his opponents and enemies--intrigues so violent and great, that, when he died, it was rumored he had been poisoned--devoured his life like a vulture, and ended it before his time. The consciousness of this first came to him with all its melancholy amid the infinite jubilation we have just described, in the midst of all this joy and recognition of his genius. He now, for the first time, had a perception of life’s close, of life’s tragic play, as reflected in _Don Giovanni_; and this was the result of his journey to Prague. For when, in the overflowing joy of his heart, Mozart said that he would like to write an opera expressly for such a public, the director of the theatre, Bondini, took him at his word, and closed the contract with him for the following autumn, at one hundred ducats.

Da Ponte relates that, on this occasion, he proposed the subject-matter himself. He had perceived that Mozart’s genius required a sublime and many-sided poem. And, indeed, this, like _Faust_, was a subject-matter on which writers of all nations had long labored. _Don Giovanni_ represents the indestructible instinct of life, as _Faust_ does the instinct of knowledge, showing how that instinct is ever annihilating and reproducing itself. The hero is given up to the fullest enjoyment of life regardless of consequences. Cheerfully and freely he surrenders himself to it. No shackles bind him. Opposition only adds to his strength. But this very wantonness is, at last, the cause of his ruin. This was the conclusion of the whole, extended, original Spanish play chosen by the poet of the libretto.

Don Giovanni rushes into the apartment of Donna Anna, who is waiting for the arrival of her beloved Don Octavio. Her cry for help calls out her father. A duel puts an end to his aged life. On the street, Don Giovanni and his servant Leporello, are met by the forsaken Elvira. She complains, gives expression to her grief and loads him with reproaches. He hastens on his way in the search after pleasure. Zerline, the bride of the young Marsetto is next snatched away from him by Elvira’s jealousy. But he has invited the whole company to the castle. He is again met, (everything even now foreshadows the catastrophe) by Donna Anna with Octavio. They seek his assistance on account of the murdered father. But Donna Anna, whose suspicions had been already awakened by Elvira, recognizes him as the murderer. They next appear masquerading in black at the banquet, and just as Don Giovanni is on the point of carrying away the rustic beauty, they come up to him; a struggle ensues, and master and servant are saved only by the most masculine boldness. This is the first act of this opera, which is also considered an _opera buffa_.

The second act finds Don Giovanni engaged in a quarrel with Leporello. Leporello does not want to serve so dangerous a master any longer. But money atones for the anxiety he endures. Elvira appears on the balcony. Don Giovanni changes clothes with Leporello and swears love to her anew. She comes down and at an artificial noise, made by Don Giovanni, flees with Leporello into the darkness. This is followed by a serenade to her waiting-maid, Leporello’s beloved. Marsetto and his peasants, armed with guns, now appear. But Don Giovanni, dressed as Leporello, succeeds in getting his friends away, and in coaxing the weapons from Marsetto himself. He then cudgels him soundly, whereupon Zerline consoles him with her promises. Elvira now looks in the dark for the supposed lover. The anxious Leporello endeavors to escape. Don Octavio and Donna Anna suddenly appear with torches and see that this time they have the servant instead of his master. The former escapes and according to agreement meets Don Giovanni in the churchyard. Their godless conversation is suddenly interrupted by a voice which says: “Presumptuous man, let those rest who have gone to sleep!” It is the statue of the Comthur. Don Giovanni haughtily forces Leporello to invite him to dinner. In the midst of the revels of the table--for which Martin’s _Cosa rara_ furnished a part of the music, as, in Prague, did the _Dort vergiss_--in the midst of the most luxurious joys of life, which not even the warning voice of the loving Elvira could dispel, the stony guest approaches him, and announces his sentence to him:

“Down into the dust and pray!”

“Tell women to pray!”

“Be converted!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Now thy end has come!”

Yawning abysses open, and spirits of hell drag the dastard into the dismal grave, alive.

We know what the cheerful phase of the life of the past century was. It has found a more fiery expression in _Don Giovanni_ than even in the _Figaro_. The Renaissance had introduced anew the free enjoyment of life of the ancient world. Think only what the Borgias were! From Italy and Spain it had made its way to France, when people there, for the first time, became conscious that they were “dancing on a volcano.” The feeling that there hangs a necessary and tragic sentence over the mere sensuousness of life, which is, after all, but a powerful picture of the transitoriness of all things earthly--a transitoriness which will always remain a dark enigma to the living themselves, and which therefore fills the proudest life with a certain melancholy--this feeling, which constitutes the poetic nucleus of the whole story of _Don Giovanni_, no one of all who have treated the subject, in an artistic manner, has fathomed or shown the power of, even in a remote degree, as did Mozart. The music, on the appearance of the stony guest, springs from the same fountain as Faust’s most beautiful and profound monologues. It is the consciousness, the heart-felt knowledge of the permanent duration of human life; and we have seen how life itself led Mozart, the artist and the man, to this heart-felt knowledge and to the feeling of something really eternal in the changes that surround us.

The following further details as to the origin of _Don Giovanni_ are not devoid of interest.

Da Ponte’s boasting in his memoirs is indeed exquisite, and shows that, after all, he had no idea what the value of the material of _Don Giovanni_ was. He had the three distinguished opera composers of Vienna at the time to write for, and he quieted the doubts of the emperor as to the success of such a task, by telling him that he would write during the night for Mozart and keep thinking of Dante’s Hell, in the morning for Martin, and read Petrarca, in the evening for Salieri, when Tasso should be his companion. With a bottle of tokai and some Spanish tobacco before him, and the sixteen-year-old daughter of his hostess, as his muse beside him, he says he began his work, and in two months the whole was finished.

And how about Mozart? When at the beginning of April, the libretto of this poetical judgment on human life had come into his hands, his soul was directed with redoubled energy to its serious meaning. He received at that time, the news of the grave illness of his father, which led him to give expression to some remarkable sayings about death as the “true goal of our life--man’s true, best friend.” We shall yet see what suggested this. Besides, he had shortly before lost his “best and dearest” friend, Count Hatzfeld, and now, on the 28th of May 1787, he lost his beloved father also. The quintet in G minor dates from this time. The depths of his soul open up before us here. This quintet is a prelude to _Don Giovanni_. At this time, too, it was that the court organist, Ludwig Beethoven of Bonn, now in his sixteenth year, paid him a visit. Mozart paid no attention to Beethoven beyond predicting his world-wide fame, so entirely was he pre-occupied with his new work. The following September, his friend Dr. Barisoni, who had attended him two years before, when he was very dangerously sick, died; and Mozart wrote under some of his verses in his album: “It is well with him!--but it will never be well with me, with us and with all who knew him so well, until we are happy enough to see him in a better world, never to part again!” His thoughts went beyond the grave and endeavored to fathom the eternal relations of things. This was the mood in which he wrote _Don Giovanni_. Even into the brightest light of life, creep at last the dark shadows of annihilation!

In the beginning of September 1787, composer and poet were in Prague. Constance also had traveled with them. She had to see that no disturbance from without interfered with the workings of our artist’s laborious mind. Personal intercourse with the singers increased his intellectual activity. The first singer who took the part of Don Giovanni was lauded to the deaf Beethoven, almost forty years later, as a “fiery Italian.” The female singers were not by any means remarkable. Yet it was said that our artist had been guilty, during this sojourn in Prague, of all kinds of gay adventures; and this while he was writing himself to a friend in Vienna: “Is there not an infinite difference between the pleasure of a fickle, whimsical love and the bliss of a really rational one?” In after years, his acquaintances remembered the happy hours they had spent with him in Prague. He played at nine-pins with them in a wine-garden, which is now adorned with his bust, while at the same time he wrote out his score at the table in the place. And in the evening before the performance he was exceedingly cheerful and full of jokes. Finally, Constance told him it was eleven o’clock, that the overture was not yet written. At his home, with his glass of punch, such as he liked, he proceeded to perform the task which was so irksome to him. He had the work long since finished in his head. He had even already played it as well as two other drafts of it for his friends. On this account, Constance, in order to keep his thoughts flowing, was obliged to tell stories to him. These were fairy tales, like Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp, and Cinderella. Mozart frequently laughed over them until the tears came. Fatigue, however, overpowered him at last, and his wife allowed him to sleep a few hours. Yet the copyists received their work in the early morning. He had, moreover, according to his own confession to the director of the orchestra, never allowed himself to be prevented from producing something excellent for Prague, and at the same time assured him, that he had not acquired his art easily. No one, he said, had been more industrious to acquire it than he, and it would be hard to find a celebrated master whom he had not diligently studied.

It is said that he set the celebrated _Reich mir die Hand_ to music five times for _Don Giovanni_. He made the singers rehearse to him separately. He danced the minuet for them himself; for, strange to say, he once told Kelly that his achievements in dancing were more remarkable than his achievements in music. Hence, the players were full of good will and enthusiasm, the consequence of which was, that the performance this time, also, was a very good one. It took place on the 29th of October, 1787. The house was full to overflowing, and Mozart was received with a flourish of trumpets, repeated three times, and applause which it seemed would never cease. Such was the reception accorded the opera itself, that the director of the theatre wrote to the composer of the libretto, who, in the meantime had returned to Vienna: “Long live Da Ponte! Long live Mozart! Praise them, all ye directors and all ye singers! So long as they live theatres cannot fail to do a thriving business.” As usual, Mozart himself speaks modestly of “the loudest kind of applause,” and remarks to his friend in Vienna, mentioned above: “I could wish that my friends were here a single evening to share my pleasure. But probably the opera will not be performed in Vienna. I wish so. People are doing all in their power to prevail upon me to remain here a few months and write another opera; but, flattering as the invitation is, I cannot accept it.”

And now, as to the work itself. Schiller wrote to Goethe on the 29th of December, 1797, that he had always entertained the confidence that out of the opera as out of the choruses of the old feasts of Dionysos, tragedy would develop a nobler form. By the power of music, it attuned the heart to a finer susceptibility, and, in this way, it might happen that, at last, even the ideal might stealthily make its way to the stage. Goethe answered curtly: “You might have seen your hopes recently realized to a great extent in _Don Giovanni_. But in this respect, that piece stands entirely alone, and Mozart’s death has rendered all hope of anything like it, idle.” We owe it to _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_, more than to anything else, that we are able to-day, to assert the contrary, and that we witness the real dramatic art which was attained to by Italy in the revival of antiquity in a truly flourishing condition about us. What Gluck required should be the characteristic points of dramatic composition is here complied with to the fullest extent; to an extent which, in many particulars, has not been yet surpassed. This perfection Mozart owed to his more accurate acquaintance with the exigencies of the drama and his supreme command of all the capabilities of music. The separate and distinct pieces of music, indeed, with their pitiful, recurring cadences, remind us continually that it is with a musician we have to do, and one whose style was a development from the Italian school. But then such is the poetical intuition of this musician that the poetical material helps him always to some new invention in his own art. And while this art seems to demand that it should be necessarily confined to its own sphere and possess definite forms, genius is able to so arrange it that the dramatic action may lose nothing that properly belongs to it, and yet that the music may not become simply “the obedient daughter of poetry.”

Richard Wagner, the great master, who, in this sphere, is Mozart’s only real successor, says: “Mozart in his operas demonstrated the inexhaustible resources of music most fully to meet every demand of the poet on its power of expression; and considering his completely original course, this glorious musician did a great deal more to discover this power of music, both in respect to truth of expression, and in the endless varieties of its causes, than Gluck and all his successors.” And in this dramatic respect, the _Figaro_, and _Don Giovanni_, unquestionably occupy the first place. Who is there that does not recognize in _Keine Ruh’ bei Tag und Nacht_, _Wenn du fein artig bist_, _Treibt der Champagner_, a new language in tones? We here again witness the noblest acquisitions of the _Idomeneo_ and the _Elopement from the Seraglio_, in the highest possible perfection concentrated in all their energy. It is a miracle of strength and grace, of spirit and euphony, of buoyant force, of nobleness, and at the same time, of truest, deepest feeling.

Thus the _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_, together with Germany’s classic poetry, occupy a place at the beginning of a great dramatic epoch which commenced one hundred years ago. They are a part of the life of modern humanity in general. In them Mozart first fully developed his inexhaustible genius. And thus it is that these works, like the antique and the art of the Renaissance, belong to the whole cultured world.

Mozart’s concluding labors are a condensation of all the impressions of his life, and of all the perceptions of his mind, in their very depths. The _Magic Flute_, especially by its purely human and ethico-religious tendency, became the starting point of the efforts of an art which was peculiarly German, but of which the universal art-creations of the present day were born. This leads us to the fifth and last chapter of our biography.