Grand finale 1791: Mozart's last year brought a great creative explosion, including his two final operas, La Clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflote. Few works could seem less alike, but Anthony Rudel finds the connections between them.

Publication: Opera News

Publication Date: 01-APR-05

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1791 was Mozart's final year, the year that saw the creation of two of his most heavenly masterpieces, Die Zauberflote and La Clemenza di Tito. Given the remarkable depth and breadth of Mozart's last burst of glory, the question arises: how did he manage to produce two operas with the wildly divergent subjects, styles and situations of Die Zauberflote and La Clemenza di Tito?

He didn't. The truth is, beyond their obvious differences--one is a comic German singspiel, the other a sober, Italian opera seria--these two final works are of a piece.

La Clemenza di Tito is one of Mozart's three major opere serie; Lucio Silla, from his earlier years, and Idomeneo, from his middle period, preceded it. These highly stylized works followed a formula that limited dramatic action, virtually eliminating the complex human interaction Mozart and da Ponte had mastered in their three great operas, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi Fan Tutte. La Clemenza di Tito was commissioned by the same Prague theater that had given Don Giovanni its premiere in 1787. Designed to mark the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, the work aimed to celebrate royalty in an era when European royalty was losing some of its security; after all, in just two years, Leopold's younger sister, Marie Antoinette, and her French husband would lose their thrones and their...

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