24
PARTISAN REVIEW
and monographs which the anniversary must promote. Will someone
perhaps trigger a reaction against Mozart-as Professor Edward
J.
Dent, a famous Mozartian, tried to do with Beethoven in 1927? But
Mozart is less shadowed with misapprehensions and sentimentalities
than Beethoven, even to the present day. His prestige as a dramatist,
in particular, can only be enhanced by a serious analysis of his operas
from a contemporary point of view. As always, the hope is to deepen
our understanding of the artist's virtues, at the same time as we
recognize his limitations and failures more frankly.
Ordinary opinion is not wrong to regard
The Marriage of Figaro
as Mozart's first great opera. It is the first opera of his maturity.
Idomeneo
and
Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail
are beautiful works,
and it is with some pain that I pass them by, but neither of them
can be called fully developed products of Mozart's imagination-no
more so than beautiful early instrumental compositions like the Violin
Concertos, the Divertimento-Sextet in D, and the B-flat and "Haff–
ner" Symphonies. Though Mozart's phenomenal sensitivity was very
early in evidence, his vision and his sorrow did not grow to meet
it until after 1782. He first took full artistic responsibility in the six
great Quartets dedicated to Haydn, the unfinished Mass in c-minor,
the Viennese Piano Concertos, and then in
Figaro.
The emotional
maturity reflected in these works came evidently out of several crucial
events of a few years earlier : Mozart's escape from Salzburg to inde–
pendence and struggle in Vienna, his rupture with his father, and
especially his marriage to Constanze Weber. In this new atmosphere
Mozart faced up to Haydn and Bach, and found his own certain,
complete voice. Vienna also meant a widening of intellectual horizons.
In
Figaro,
for the first time, Mozart addressed himself to a dramatic
problem with full insight and understanding.
For Mozart,
Figaro
was also an initiation in theatrical sophisti–
cation. He was working with Lorenzo da Ponte, not with a Varesco
or a Stephanie.
An
operatic version of
Le Barbier de Seville
had just
made a success in Vienna-a bright, innocent play, innocently com–
posed by Giovanni Paisiello, who was a leading
opera bulfa
com–
poser of the day. But Beaumarchais' sequel
Le M ariage de Figaro
was politically and morally so suspect that it could not be staged at
