As both an in-depth study of Mozart criticism and performance practice in Prague, and a history of how eighteenth-century opera was appropriated by later political movements and social groups, this book explores the reception of Mozart's operas in Prague between 1791 and the present and reveals the profound influence of politics on the construction of the Western musical canon. Tracing the links between performances of Mozart's operas and strategies that Bohemian musicians, critics, directors, musicologists, and politicians used to construct modern Czech and German identities, Nedbal explores the history of the canonization process from the perspective of a city that has often been regarded as peripheral to mainstream Western music history. Individual chapters focus on Czech and German adaptations of Mozart's operas for Prague's theaters, operatic criticism published in Prague's Czech and German journals, the work of Bohemian historians interpreting Mozart, and endeavours of cultural activists to construct monuments in recognition of the composer.

Aspects of Don Giovanni's compositional history are uncovered and the study provides for detailed evidence with which to evaluate Da Ponte's recollections. The essential truth of his account - that the revision of the operain Vienna was an interactive process - seems to be fully borne out. A general theory of transmission is proposed, which clarifies the relationship between the fluid text produced by re-creation and the static text generated by replication. In the year following its 1787 Prague première, Don Giovanni was performed in Vienna. Everyone, according to the well-known account by Da Ponte, thought something was wrong with it. In response, Mozart made changes, producing a Vienna 'version' of the opera, cutting two of the original arias but inserting three newly-composed pieces. The dilemma faced by musicians and scholars ever since has been whether to preserve the opera in these two 'authentic' forms, or whether to fashion a hybrid text incorporating the best of both. This study presents new evidence about the Vienna form of the opera, based on the examination of late eighteenth-century manuscript copies. The Prague Conservatory score is identified as the primary exemplar for the Viennese dissemination of Don Giovanni, which is shown to incorporate two quite distinct versions, represented by the performing materials in Vienna [O.A.361] and the early Lausch commercial copy in Florence. To account for this phenomenon, seen also in early sources of the Prague Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, a general theory of transmission for the Mozart Da Ponte operas is proposed, which clarifies the relationship between the fluid text produced by re-creation (performing) and the static text generated by replication (copying). Aspects of the compositional history of Don Giovanni are uncovered. Evidence to suggest that Mozart first considered an order in which Donna Elvira's scena precedes the comic duet 'Per queste tue manine' is assessed. The essential truth of Da Ponte's account - that the revision of the opera in Vienna was an interactive process, involving the views of performers, the reactions of audiences and the composer's responses - seems to be fully borne out. The final part of the study investigates the late eighteenth-century transmission of Don Giovanni. The idea that hybrid versions gained currency only in the nineteenth century or in the lighter Singspiel tradition is challenged. IAN WOODFIELD is Professorand Director of Research at the School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen's University Belfast.

A study of Mozart's Don Giovanni, one of the best known and most often performed opears of the last 200 years.

A study of the Prague Italian opera company and its role in performing Mozart's works in the late eighteenth-century.

This study analyzes chamber music from Mozart's time within its highly social salon-performance context.

Eighteenth Century Music in its cultural, social, and intellectual contexts. John Rice's Music in the Eighteenth Century takes the reader on an engrossing Grand Tour of Europe's musical centers, from Naples, to London, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and St. Petersburg —with a side trip to the colonial New World. Against the backdrop of Europe's largely peaceful division into Catholic and Protestant realms, Rice shows how "learned" and "galant" styles developed and commingled. While considering Mozart, Haydn, and early Beethoven in depth, he broadens his focus to assess the contributions of lesser-known but significant figures like Johann Adam Hiller, Francois-André Philidor, and Anna Bon. Western Music in Context: A Norton History comprises six volumes of moderate length, each written in an engaging style by a recognized expert. Authoritative and current, the series examines music in the broadest sense—as sounds notated, performed, and heard—focusing not only on composers and works, but also on broader social and intellectual currents.

Wye Jamison Allanbrook’s The Secular Commedia is a stimulating and original rethinking of the music of the late eighteenth century. Hearing the symphonies and concertos of Haydn and Mozart with an ear tuned to operatic style, as their earliest listeners did, Allanbrook shows that this familiar music is built on a set of mimetic associations drawn from conventional modes of depicting character and emotion in opera buffa. Allanbrook mines a rich trove of writings by eighteenth-century philosophers and music theorists to show that vocal music was considered aesthetically superior to instrumental music and that listeners easily perceived the theatrical tropes that underpinned the style. Tracing Enlightenment notions of character and expression back to Greek and Latin writings about comedy and drama, she strips away preoccupations with symphonic form and teleology to reveal anew the kaleidoscopic variety and gestural vitality of the musical surface. In prose as graceful and nimble as the music she discusses, Allanbrook elucidates the idiom of this period for contemporary readers. With notes, musical examples, and a foreword by editors Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin.