Theatrical Life in Mozart 'S Vienna

chapter 19
Theatrical Life in Mozart’s Vienna

Lisa de Alwis
Mozart’s move from Salzburg to Vienna surely contributed to his great

productivity in the final decade of his life. In addition to its multifaceted
cultural influences, the imperial capital boasted a vibrant theatrical scene.
But the particular decade of Mozart’s residency, 1781 to 1791, was also
significant: had he lived in Vienna earlier or later, he would not have
enjoyed quite the same experience. These years coincide with the reign of
Emperor Joseph II, who was just coming into his own as sole ruler when
Mozart arrived, following the death in 1780 of his co-regent and mother,
Maria Theresia, who exerted a powerful influence on him. In his new
position, Joseph was able to put his own policies in place, which generally
included greater freedoms, more tolerance and less emphasis on
Catholicism than hitherto. He also had an important impact on the theatre
and theatrical culture in Vienna.
The Court Theatres

In the mid eighteenth century, under Maria Theresia, French was given
pride of place as the main language spoken at court, whereas Italian was
considered more suitable for the theatre (at least opera). German, especially
as spoken in Viennese dialects, was the language of the lower classes. Since
the tastes of this segment of the population tended, in the eyes of the
authorities, towards the objectionable, German works were often subjected
to heavy censorship. In the Enlightenment-era project of educating the
public to become morally upright, French and Italian works were rather
mildly censored, since only the elite understood these languages.
In 1778, as part of an attempt to raise the profile of German as an
operatic language, Joseph added a German troupe that was supposed to
have its own repertoire to compete with the Italian and French fare so
enjoyed by audiences. At the same time, in order to save money, Joseph
dismissed the court theatre’s expensive Italian opera buffa singers and ballet
161
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162 lisa de alwis
troupe. But the German Singspiel that was offered instead was not parti-
cularly successful – unlike Italian opera, it did not have a long and
venerable tradition upon which to draw. While its greatest success came
with Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), many other offerings
were simply translations of French and Italian works. These changes were
consistent with Joseph’s wishes to unite German-speaking lands and to
instil a deeper sense of German nationalism in the population as a whole.
As with many of his ideas, though, the implementation of theatrical
reforms was too sudden and impractical, with many employees losing
their jobs in the process, and Joseph earned the displeasure of the
aristocracy.1 In 1783, Joseph, finally conceding to the wishes of the nobility,
removed the German troupe and rehired an Italian one, thus enabling
Mozart, Salieri and others to write Italian operas for the Habsburg capital.
The librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte was employed as court poet to write
librettos for Salieri, the official court composer, as well as for composers
under contract, such as Martín y Soler and Mozart. The collaboration
between Da Ponte and Mozart is one of the most famous in all of opera,
yielding Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte.
By the end of Mozart’s lifetime, the court supported three troupes that
gave performances in two court theatres, the Burgtheater and
Kärntnertortheater: a ballet ensemble, a troupe of actors for German plays
and an Italian opera troupe. In general, operas were offered in rotation with
ballets and plays, with fifteen or so staged each season including a new work
at least once every two months. The more popular an opera was, the more it
was repeated. Older repertory was rarely heard during the eighteenth cen-
tury: each season might include an acclaimed opera from the previous season
or two but not an old one in the sense we would understand the word today.
By tradition, operas were usually not performed during Lent. One
notable exception was the performance of Da Ponte’s L’ape musicale
(The Musical Bee), which included vocal music by various composers,
including Mozart and Salieri. Although the idea for this pasticcio was
a good one, with the inclusion of many popular pieces, it worsened Da
Ponte’s already strained relationship with Salieri because the poet chose for
most of the arias his favourite Italian soprano (and mistress) the famous ‘La
Ferrarese’ or Adriana Del Bene and neglected Salieri’s preferred singer and
student (and later mistress) Caterina Cavalieri.2
1
John Rice, ‘Vienna under Joseph II and Leopold II’ in Neal Zaslaw (ed.), The Classical Era (London:
Macmillan, 1989), p. 135.
2
John Rice, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 458.
Theatrical Life in Mozart’s Vienna 163
Four years earlier, Salieri had quite dramatically sworn that he would
rather chop off his fingers than work with Da Ponte again after a failed first
collaboration on Il ricco d’un giorno (Rich for a Day).3 Da Ponte, for his
part, blamed Salieri’s music for the failure of the opera, noting that upon
the composer’s return from Paris, his ears were full of a ‘shrill screaming
music’, and that his once beautiful style had been ‘drowned in the Seine’.4
A good example of Joseph’s liberal policies towards press freedom that
continued until his successor Leopold II shut them down in 1791 is a
slanderous pamphlet published that year entitled Anti-Da Ponte.5
An anonymous author takes the poet to task for the various crimes against
the arts that he has committed and even subjects him to a mock trial with
Mozart, Salieri and other notables as character witnesses. Da Ponte’s
dismissal as theatre poet by Leopold that same year (together with La
Ferrarese) was probably due in part to the accusations in the pamphlet.
In his memoirs, Da Ponte recounts (and in all probability largely invents)
a dialogue with the emperor in which Leopold becomes Da Ponte’s
mouthpiece, stating ‘Salieri is an insufferable egotist . . . I don’t want either
him or his German woman [Cavalieri] in my theater anymore’.6 Although
much of Da Ponte’s memoirs must be taken with a pinch of salt, John Rice
has argued that Leopold’s actions, particularly with regard to Cavalieri, are
consistent with what the librettist reports: Leopold fired her and several
other female singers who were associated with Salieri.7
Since Mozart’s operatic work in Vienna was largely contractual, mean-
ing that he had no permanent position and was paid per piece, he was
pragmatic about work undertaken. Although he enjoyed writing dramatic
music, he would do so only if he had a clear sense that a piece would be
approved by the authorities and consequently staged. As he considered
setting Die Entführung aus dem Serail, for example, he made it clear he
would not begin work on the music until Count Rosenberg, director of the
court theatres, deemed the libretto worthy of producing. Otherwise, he
wrote to his father in 1781, ‘I would have the honour of writing for free’.8
Even composers with permanent positions such as Salieri had to write what
was asked of them: total creative freedom was afforded Beethoven some
years later, but that was an exceptional case.
3
Otto Michtner, Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne (Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1970), pp.
193–4.
4
Lorenzo Da Ponte, Memoirs (New York: New York Review of Books, 2000), p. 117.
5
Lisa de Alwis (trans. and ed.) Anti-Da Ponte (Malden, MA: Mozart Society of America, 2015).
6
Da Ponte, Memoirs, p. 185. 7 Rice, Salieri and Viennese Opera, p. 504.
8
MBA, vol. 3, p. 132; LMF, p. 746 (16 June 1781; translation amended).
164 lisa de alwis
The Suburban Theatres
On account of Joseph’s liberal policies towards theatres, some local
troupes, which had previously had temporary, seasonal housing, were
able to find permanent homes. These included the two examined below:
the Theater in der Leopoldstadt and the Freihaustheater auf der Wieden,
where Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte was first performed. Other important
theatres include the Theater in der Josefstadt, and the Theater an der
Wien, both of which still stand today. These venues attracted a wide range
of audience members from different classes and were quite competitive
with the court theatres, mainly because a lot of money was put into
decorations and theatrical effects. Reviewers of the time mention that
certain effects, such as magical transformations, always worked seamlessly
in the suburban theatres but were often delayed in the court theatres thus
ruining their impact.9
Viennese traditions, including those of stock characters similar to the
characters of the Italian commedia dell’arte, were able to flourish in the
suburban theatres. Most popular among such characters was Hanswurst,
a silly, cowardly peasant focussed on his own bodily needs, who often
manages to outwit authority figures. The character’s roots in improvised
theatre also remained evident in scripted pieces, in that he often comments
on politics or current scandals in spite of efforts by Maria Theresia to
outlaw improvisation all together as well as the ongoing battles of her
successors’ censors to control what was said on stage.
Works in the suburban theatres almost always included a Hanswurst-
like figure, and although many of the works performed were spoken ones,
there was usually a musical element comprising simple, repetitive songs, in
which the content of the text was more important than the music itself.
In commenting on musical life in Vienna’s theatres, Mozart complained to
his father in 1781 that ‘the music of Hanswurst has not yet been
eradicated’.10 The complaint comes in the context of a discussion about
serious versus comic music in the theatres. Mozart’s thoughts on the matter
were quite strict; he maintained that an opera seria should not include any
comic numbers and that an opera buffa, correspondingly, should consist
only of lighter fare. Interestingly, Mozart himself ended up creating genres
of opera that mixed the comic and the serious in the same sense that
a Shakespearean tragedy often integrated comic moments or even whole
9
Kritisches Theater Journal von Wien (6 November 1788), p. 261.
10
sections into the drama. Leopold Mozart shared his son’s opinion of
Viennese theatre: ‘That the Viennese, generally speaking do not care to
see serious and sensible things [performances], have little or no under-
standing of them, and only want to see foolish stuff, dances, devils, ghosts,
magic, Hanswurst, Lipperl, Bernardorn, witches and apparitions is well
known, and their theatres prove it every day.’11 The Mozarts’ opinion
about Viennese popular theatre notwithstanding, Papageno from Die
Zauberflöte owes most of his character traits to Hanswurst and his theatrical
successors.
The Theater in der Leopoldstadt shares its name with Vienna’s second
district and was founded in 1781 by Karl Marinelli, an actor in a travelling
troupe, who applied for a so-called privilege from the emperor to erect
a permanent house. The personnel consisted mainly of married couples, in
accordance with how most travelling troupes were constituted.
The repertory they performed was largely comic and included Johann
Laroche, who created the wildly popular Viennese stock character of
Kasperl, essentially the successor to Hanswurst.12 Since the troupe’s reper-
tory was limited, Marinelli brought in musicians and singers to augment
the new theatre’s offerings with opera. In 1786, Marinelli hired the com-
poser Wenzel Müller as Kapellmeister, and, other than a short period in
Prague, Müller remained in the post until his death in 1835. His light,
melodic music was heard in the full breadth of the theatre’s repertory as
operas, pantomimes and incidental music for plays were added to the
regular rotation of works. Müller’s handwritten diary, which covers
every day of the theatre’s existence until 1830, provides valuable informa-
tion about political incidents in Vienna, the attendance of various famous
figures at the theatre (including members of the imperial family) as well as
about fires and floods and illnesses and deaths that all affected daily life.
With the help of librettist Karl Friedrich Hensler, comic, musical plays
based on the experiences of a Kasperl character involved in a relatively
simple plot full of local allusions became the bread and butter of the
Theater in der Leopoldstadt. Hensler also created several traditions that
later became inextricably linked to the city’s culture. Most famous was the
character das Donauweibchen (the nymph of the Danube), from the play
of the same name. Hensler’s affinity for German ghost stories as well as his
interest in Schiller, Lessing and Goethe are also evident, but in a foreword
to a collection of his works he emphasized that they were written purely for
11
MBA, vol. 1, p. 254; LMF, p. 80 (30 January 1768).
12
Otto Rommel, Die Alt-Wiener Volkskomödie (Vienna: Anton Schroll & Co., 1952), p. 417.
166 lisa de alwis
entertaining the audience and not for artistic edification.13 Marinelli also
hired a second Kapellmeister, Ferdinand Kauer, who, in addition to his
compositional duties (which included writing the music for Das
Donauweibchen), created and directed a theatrical school for children.
The performers mainly comprised offspring of the theatre personnel,
who also appeared in many of the plays as well as in children’s operas
written by Kauer. Children’s operas and ballets, particularly those dealing
with magical subjects, eventually became very popular, but children’s
participation in theatrical performances was unregulated until the second
decade of the nineteenth century, when substantial evidence of sexual
abuse, mainly by members of the aristocracy, came to the attention of
the emperor.
The first director of the Theater auf der Wieden, Christian Rossbach,
was unable to keep it financially solvent, so in 1788, Johann Friedel, the
leader of a travelling acting troupe, took over with his partner and lover,
Eleonore Schikaneder. Friedel, fairly well known as a writer, preferred
higher-class works, such as those of Lessing and Schiller, and disliked the
Viennese taste for – and preponderance of – Lokalstücke that emphasized
local traditions and experiences. On Emperor Joseph’s ultimate failure to
endow German-language theatre with the same prestige as French and
Italian works, Friedel had a clear opinion: ‘One cannot say that German
rulers don’t support German theatre; one must rather say that German
theatre does not deserve to be supported by them.’14
In 1789, Friedel added operas to the theatre’s roster and hired members
of a German-language troupe to perform translated versions of Italian
comic operas. Since it was generally always members of the troupe per-
forming each evening, theatre posters of the time advertised shows simply
with the names of the characters in the plot; in the role of Pamina at the
Theater auf der Wieden in 1791, for example, the audience could expect to
hear Anna Gottlieb, a soprano who generally sang dramatic leading roles.
In addition to the date and time of the performance, it was important for
advertising purposes that posters emphasized either a new attraction or an
extremely popular work being performed for the umpteenth time.
Friedel’s writings corroborate much of what is known about theatrical
performances of this time, for example that famous or particularly effective
pieces may have been well attended but that not everyone was there to
13
Rommel, Die Alt-Wiener Volkskomödie, p. 443.
14
Johann Friedel, Briefe aus Wien: verschiedenen Inhalts an einen Freund in Berlin (Leipzig: 1784), pp.
394–5.
experience the performance. ‘The theatre’, Friedel explains, ‘is the place for
the rendez-vous’, and there are many ‘miniature duodramas’ (presumably
romantic liaisons between audience members with the music as back-
ground entertainment). Friedel claims that these activities intensified
when the emperor was not in attendance and that some of the loges in
the theatre could be considered ‘little beerhouses’.15
According to theatre reviewers in several newspapers, the early perfor-
mances at the Theater auf der Wieden were mediocre as Friedel gave
performers insufficient rehearsal time and (for example) put on six differ-
ent works on six consecutive days; the public, unhappy with Friedel for his
poor business decisions, felt that the job should be given to a more
experienced man.16 And they got their wish when Friedel, who had been
ill for some time, died in 1789 at the age of thirty-eight. Eleonore
Schikaneder, in the unusual position of being a woman in charge of
a theatre, reconciled with Emanuel, her estranged husband, and brought
him back to run it with her. Schikaneder is best known as the librettist of
Die Zauberflöte, but he also played the first Papageno and was, like Da
Ponte, one of the more colourful figures in Vienna during Mozart’s
Viennese decade. He befriended the Mozarts in 1780 when his troupe
performed in Salzburg for an extended period. The Mozarts were especially
happy to attend Schikaneder’s shows because he gave them complimentary
tickets for the entire season. And Schikaneder sometimes went shooting
with them on Sundays, playing a game called Bölzelschiessen, in which air
guns were used to hit targets painted with various, sometimes obscene
scenes.
On 12 July 1789, Schikaneder presented his first work at the Theater auf
der Wieden, a comic opera entitled Der dumme Anton im Gebürge (Stupid
Anton in the Mountains). The title character was played by Schikaneder,
and the Anton series became so popular that Schikaneder produced several
sequels. Mozart wrote to his wife in the summer of 1790 that he too enjoyed
the Anton operas;17 he even composed a set of variations for the piano,
K. 613, based on one of its arias, ‘Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding auf der
Welt’ (A woman is the most wonderful thing in the world). The music for
most of the shows at the theatre was written by Johann Baptist Henneberg,
the Kapellmeister of the theatre, who often collaborated with Johann
Benedikt Schack and Franz Xaver Gerl, members of Schikaneder’s troupe
15
Johann Friedel, Briefe aus Wien, p. 408.
16
Otto Erich Deutsch, Das Freihaustheater auf der Wieden: 1787–1801 (Vienna: Deutscher Verlag für
Jugend und Volk, 1937), pp. 10–11.
17
MBA, vol. 4, p. 110; LMF, p. 940 (2 June 1790).
168 lisa de alwis
and later creators of the roles of Tamino and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte.
This collaborative approach to writing music for the Theater auf der
Wieden was a necessity on account of time pressures related to rehearsing
and performing new works. Mozart, who worked under contract and did
not have permanent employment at the Theater auf der Wieden, also
contributed to the collaborative compositional environment and at least
one piece, a duet from Schikaneder’s Der Stein der Weisen (The
Philosopher’s Stone), has been attributed to him. Schikaneder began
presenting magical operas of this sort as soon as he took over the theatre,
beginning with Paul Wranitzky’s Oberon, König der Elfen (Oberon, King of
the Elves), and its success prompted the Theater in der Leopoldstadt to
produce its own similarly successful magical opera, Das Glück ist kugelrund,
oder Kaspars Ehrentag (Luck is Rotund, or Kaspar’s Day of Glory). Both
theatres continued with the trend of magical operas, and their directors
also revisited older magical works to fill out the repertory. In general, such
operas were either completely light-hearted, such as all works involving
Kaspar, or they mixed the serious and the comic, such as Oberon, and Die
Zauberflöte. The main competitor with Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die
Zauberflöte in 1791 was Wenzel Müller and Joachim Perinet’s Kaspar der
Fagottist, an extremely popular magical opera about which Mozart, upon
attending a performance, noted that ‘there’s absolutely nothing to it’.18
****
One cannot underestimate the importance of Viennese theatre, particu-
larly opera, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. People
living in German-speaking cities went to the theatre to hear works not only
by Mozart, Salieri and Martín y Soler but also by Müller and Kauer, which
were equally popular. Kauer’s Das Donauweibchen became one of the most
performed works of the nineteenth century; countless versions of its
libretto still exist, as well as several sequels. Although they were intended
and condoned as a distraction from various political problems that people
in Austria were experiencing, the carefree, even silly works that came after
Mozart’s time, contributed to the fun-loving character of Vienna as a city,
a reputation that was eventually cemented in the Viennese waltzes of
Johann Strauss Jr. Much more could be added to this overview of the
intertwining forces that created the unique environment of Mozart’s final
decade. There is more to be learned about the interactions between
members of theatre troupes and their audiences, about the circumvention
18
of the censors, about the factions supporting various sorts of theatre and
about the many cultural norms of the time that can be surprising to the
modern reader. By broadening our view to encompass issues beyond the
music and biography of Mozart and by placing them in a larger context, we
can better understand both the concerns of individuals and the larger
movements of the period. In so doing, we also add texture to our relation-
ship with Mozart’s sublime achievements.

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chapter 19

Theatrical Life in Mozart’s Vienna

Mozart’s move from Salzburg to Vienna surely contributed to his great

The Court Theatres

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