Bard Music Festival Presents
Program Five • Rivalries and Conspiracies
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Habsburg Emperor Joseph II pitted Mozart against his Italian peers in two historic contests, both brought back to life in Program Five, “Rivalries and Conspiracies.” On the first such occasion, the emperor invited Mozart and pianist-composer Muzio Clementi, then newly arrived from Italy, to compete at the piano. Clementi played his own virtuosic B-flat-major Sonata, and Mozart responded by improvising a set of variations on a theme from André Grétry’s Les mariages samnites. Both pianists were then challenged to sightread music by Giovanni Paisiello, another Italian rival, after which — despite privately collecting on a bet in Mozart’s favor — Joseph II officially declared the duel a draw. Five years later, he commissioned Mozart and the Imperial Court Composer Antonio Salieri to write one-act operas on the same subject for a contest at Vienna’s vast Schönbrunn Palace, where Salieri’s Prima la musica, poi le parole (“First the Music, then the Words”) and Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor (“The Impresario”) premiered back-to-back before a court audience, tasked to choose between them. Keen to promote a German-language Singspiel tradition, Joseph II hoped that Mozart’s offering would prevail, but it was Salieri’s fashionable Italian opera buffa that won the day.
For more information, call 845-758-7900, e-mail [email protected],
or visit https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/bmf26-p5/.
Time: 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
Save this Event: