Heartz, D: Mozart's Operas

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List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Editor's Preface
1. Sacrifice Dramas
2. The Genesis of Idomeneo
3* Mozart's Tragic Muse
4. Coming of Age in Vienna: Die Entfohrung aus dem Serail
5. The Poet as Stage Director: Metastasio, Goldoni, and DaPonte
6. From Beaumarchais to DaPonte: The Metamorphosis of Figaro
7. Setting the Stage for Figaro
8. Constructing Le nozze di Figaro
9. Don Giovanni: Conception and Creation
IO. An Iconography of the Dances in the Ballroom Scene of Don Giovanni
II. Goldoni, Don Giovanni, and the Dramma Giocoso
12. Donna Elvira and the Great Sextet
13. Three Schools for Lovers, or "Cosl fan tutte le belle"
14. Citation, Reference, and Recall in Cosi fan tutte
15. La Clemenza di Sarastro: Masonic Beneficence in the Last Operas
! 6. At the North Gate: Instrumental Music in Die Zauberflote
17. Mozart and His Italian Contemporaries
18. The Overture to La clemenza di Tito as Dramatic Argument
Works Cited
Index of Mozart's Works
General Index

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In this title, renowned Mozart scholar Daniel Heartz brings his deep knowledge of social history, theater, and art to a study of the last and great decade of Mozart's operas. Mozart specialists will recognize some of Heartz's best-known essays here; but six pieces are new for the collection, and others have been revised and updated with little-known documents on the librettist's, composer's, and stage director's craft. All lovers of opera will value the elegance and wit of Professor Heartz's writing, enhanced by thirty-seven illustrations, many from his private collection. The volume includes Heartz's classic essay on "Idomeneo" (1781), the work that continued to inspire and sustain Mozart through his next, and final, six operas. Thomas Bauman brings his special expertise to a discussion of "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail" (1782). The ten central chapters are devoted to the three great operas composed to librettos by Lorenzo da Ponte - "Le nozze di Figaro" (l786), "Don Giovanni" (l787), and "Cosi fan tutte" (l790). The reader is treated to fresh insights on da Ponte's role as Mozart's astute and stage-wise collaborator, on the singers whose gifts helped shape each opera, and on the musical connections among the three works. Parallels are drawn with some of the greatest creative artists in other fields, such as Moliere, Watteau, and Fragonard. The world of the dance, one of Heartz's specialties, lends an illuminating perspective as well. Finally, the essays discuss the deep spirituality of Mozart's last two operas, "Die Zauberflote" and "La Clemenza di Tito" (both l79l). They also address the pertinence of opera outside Vienna at the end of the century, the fortunes and aspirations of Freemasonry in Austria, and the relation of Mozart's overtures to the dramaturgy of the operas.

Reviews

Heartz's style is easy, almost conversational in tone. He has the great gift of being able to describe a complex sequence of shifting tonalities and textures so lucidly that he makes the drama come excitingly alive in purely verbal imagery. . . . A most welcome addition to the classics of the Mozart literature

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