Marc Niubo: Italian opera in Mozart’s Prague
Marc Nuibo, working at Charles University, wrote a book about Italian opera in Prague, just before Mozart’s triumph in Prague in 1787 and the creation of the opera Don Giovanni. Ex Libris magazine will present the Prague theaters of the time, their operation and financing, all of which are largely connected to the phenomenon of Italian Baroque opera.
Mozart experienced the happiest moments of his life in Prague, and the heart of a domestic lover of classical music is always filled with joy and pride at the fact that it was here that Mozart received such an understanding. For the Viennese audience, his Marriage of Figaro was very innovative, but the people of Prague fell in love with it.
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The reason was apparently the general musicality of our nation and also the fact that, thanks to Count Špork, there was already a public opera stage in Prague from 1724, where anyone who could afford tickets could come. And this possibility lasted until Mozart’s birth.
Nuib’s book Italian Opera in Mozart’s Prague, but it is not actually about Mozart at all. It deals with the period ending in 1785, The Marriage of Figaro was created only a year later, and Mozart did not visit Prague until 1787. The period that the book covers was not yet very Mozartian. However, the events of this period were a necessary condition for Prague to become Mozart’s. The title of the book thus has a kind of implicit logic.
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The book offers a revised and in many respects supplemented view of the fortunes of Italian opera in the first half of the 1980s, i.e. a time in which not only important personnel changes, but also when the entire environment in which Italian opera operates is beginning to change more rapidly.
“Prague’s theater institutions and audiences are changing, habits and expectations, as well as the relationship of the state and the monarch to the theater. Italian opera as an artistic genre and its operating practice are also experiencing changes. The time frame of the book – the autumn of 1781 to the carnival of 1785 – is perhaps surprising for the layman. But it reflects the theater seasons that determined the operation of opera companies.”
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