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''La clemenza di Tito'' (English: ''The Clemency of Titus''), K. 621, is an ''opera seria'' in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by , after Metastasio. It was started after the bulk of ''The Magic Flute'', the last opera that Mozart worked on, was already written (Mozart completed ''The Magic Flute'' after the Prague premiere of ''Tito''). The work premiered on 6 September 1791 at the Estates Theatre in Prague. == Background == In July 1791, the last year of his life, Mozart was already well advanced in writing ''The Magic Flute'' when he was asked to compose an ''opera seria''. The commission came from the impresario Domenico Guardasoni, who lived in Prague and who had been charged by the Estates of Bohemia with providing a new work to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, as King of Bohemia. The coronation had been planned by the Estates in order to ratify a political agreement between Leopold and the nobility of Bohemia that rescinded efforts of Leopold's brother Joseph II to initiate a program to free the serfs of Bohemia and increase the tax burden of aristocratic landholders. Leopold desired to pacify the Bohemian nobility in order to forestall revolt and strengthen his empire in the face of political challenges engendered by the French Revolution. The ceremony was to take place on 6 September; Guardasoni had been approached about the opera in June. No opera of Mozart was more clearly pressed into the service of a political agenda than ''La clemenza di Tito'', in this case to promote the reactionary political and social policies of an aristocratic elite. No evidence exists to evaluate Mozart's attitude toward this, or even whether he was aware of the internal political conflicts raging in the kingdom of Bohemia in 1791.〔The political and social conditions surrounding the performance of ''La clemenza di Tito'' in Prague in 1791 are carefully documented in Freeman, ''Mozart in Prague'', esp. 148–177.〕 In a contract dated 8 July, Guardasoni promised that he would engage a castrato "of leading quality" (this seems to have mattered more than who wrote the opera); that he would "have the libretto caused to be written...and to be set to music by a distinguished maestro". The time was tight and Guardasoni had a get-out clause: if he failed to secure a new text, he would resort to ''La clemenza di Tito'', a libretto written more than half a century earlier by Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782). Metastasio's libretto had already been set by nearly 40 composers; the story is based on the life of Roman Emperor Titus, from some brief hints in ''The Lives of the Caesars'' by the Roman writer Suetonius, and was elaborated by Metastasio in 1734 for the Italian composer Antonio Caldara. Among later settings were Gluck's in 1752 and Josef Mysliveček's version in 1774; there would be three further settings after 1791. Mozart was not Guardasoni's first choice. Instead, he approached Antonio Salieri, the most distinguished composer of Italian opera in Vienna and head of the music establishment at the imperial court. But Salieri was too busy, and he declined the commission, although he did attend the coronation. The libretto was edited into a more useful state by the court poet Caterino Mazzolà, whom, unusually, Mozart credited for his revision in his own catalogue of his compositions. Mazzolà added more ensemble numbers and a concerted act 1 finale to Metastasio's original layout of recitatives and arias. Guardasoni's experience of Mozart's work on ''Don Giovanni'' convinced him that the younger composer was more than capable of working on the tightest deadline. Mozart readily accepted the commission given his fee would be twice the price of a similar opera commissioned in Vienna. Mozart's earliest biographer Niemetschek alleged that the opera was completed in just 18 days, and in such haste that the ''secco'' recitatives were supplied by another composer, probably Franz Xaver Süssmayr, believed to have been Mozart's pupil, although no other documentation exists to confirm Süssmayr's participation. Some Mozart scholars have suggested in the past that Mozart had been working on the opera much longer, perhaps since 1789, however all such theories have now been thoroughly refuted in the English-language musicological literature.〔See Freeman, ''Mozart in Prague'', esp. the notes on pp. 300–301, for an evaluation of the relevant literature.〕 The opera may not have been written in just 18 days, but it certainly ranks with Rossini's ''L'italiana in Algeri'', ''Il barbiere di Siviglia'' and ''La Cenerentola'' as one of the operas written in the shortest amount of time that is still frequently performed today. It is not known what Leopold thought of the opera written in his honor. Reports that his wife Maria Luisa of Spain dismissed it as ''una porcheria tedesca'' (literally in Italian "German swinishness," but most idiomatically translated "A German mess") do not pre-date 1871, in a collection of literary vignettes by Alfred Meissner about the history of Prague purportedly based on recollections of the author's grandfather, who was present for the coronation ceremonies.〔Meissner, A. ''Rococo-Bilder'' Prague, 1871. The passage from Meissner's collection of stories that contains the remark is translated in Freeman, ''Mozart in Prague'', 173–74. As further evidence to cast doubt on the authenticity of the remark, Freeman points out that members of the imperial court of Austria always spoke to each other in French, not Italian or German.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「La clemenza di Tito」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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