Mozart at his happiest?

Synopsis

If Mozart’s widow, Constanza, is to be believed, the happiest days of his life occurred in 1780, when he was 24 years old and writing the music for “Idomeneo,” an opera that premiered in Munich on today’s date in 1781.

Mozart had good reasons to be happy. For starters, the best orchestra in Europe, the Mannheim Court Orchestra, had relocated to Munich, and they would be the pit band for his new opera. The lead role was being written for Anton Raff, a famous tenor of his day, and, even better, there were some exceptionally talented – and exceptionally good-looking – young sopranos in the cast. Mozart promptly fell in love with one of them, a strikingly beautiful diva named Aloysia Weber, but ended up marrying her sister Constanza instead.

By contemporary accounts, Aloysia, with her high cheekbones and magnificent carriage, was close to the ideal beauty of the day. But Mozart came to appreciate Constanza’s more sympathetic personality, not to mention, in his own words, her “black eyes and pretty figure.”

Mozart had written several operas already, but the canon of truly great Mozart operas begins with “Idomeneo,” a work that must have been, literally and figuratively, a labor of love.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756 – 1791) Idomeneo Overture Bavarian Radio Symphony; Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips 422 537

On This Day

Births

• 1715 - Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil, in Vienna;

• 1782 - French composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, in Caen;

• 1852 - British composer Frederic Hymen Cowen, in Kingston, Jamaica;

• 1862 - English composer Fritz (Frederick) Delius, in Bradford, Yorkshire;

• 1876 - English composer Havergal Brian, in Dresden, Staffordshire;

• 1924 - Italian composer Luigi Nono, in Venice;

Deaths

• 1946 - British composer Sydney Jones, age 84, in London, age 84;

• 1962 - Austrian composer and violinist Fritz Kreisler, age 86, in New York City;

Premieres

• 1728 - Gay & Pepusch: ballad-opera, “The Beggar’s Opera,” at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London; This work, mounted by the London impresario John Rich, proved so popular that it was staged 62 times that season; As contemporary wags put it, the wildly successful work “made Gay Rich and Rich Gay&rdquo(Gregorian date: Feb. 9);

• 1781 - Mozart: opera, "Idomeneo" in Munich at the Hoftheater;

• 1826 - Schubert: String Quartet in D minor, "Death and the Maiden," as a unrehearsed reading at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, two amateur musicians; Schubert, who usually played viola on such occasions, could not perform since he was busy copying out the parts and making last-minute corrections;

• 1882 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera "The Snow Maiden," in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Feb. 10);

• 1892 - Chadwick: “A Pastoral Prelude,” by the Boston Symphony. Arthur Nikisch conducting;

• 1916 - Prokofiev: "Scythian" Suite ("Ala and Lolly"), Op. 20, at the Mariinsky Theater in Petrograd, with the composer conducting (Julian date: Jan. 16);

• 1932 - Gershwin: "Second Rhapsody" for piano and orchestra, in Boston, with the Boston Symphony conducted by Serge Koussevitzky and the composer as soloist;

• 1936 - Constant Lambert: "Summer's Last Will and Testament" for chorus and orchestra, in London;

• 1981 - John Williams: first version of Violin Concerto (dedicated to the composer's late wife, actress and singer Barbara Ruick Williams), by Mark Peskanov and the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin; Williams subsequently revised this work in 1998; This premiere date is listed (incorrectly) as Jan. 19 in the DG recording featuring Gil Shaham;