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''La finta semplice'' (''The Fake Innocent''), K. 51 (46a) is an opera buffa in three acts for seven voices and orchestra, composed in 1768 by then 12-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Young Mozart and his father Leopold were spending the year in Vienna, where Leopold was trying to establish his son as an opera composer. He was acting on a suggested request from the Emperor Joseph II that the young boy should write an opera. Leopold chose an Italian libretto by the Vienna court poet Marco Coltellini, which was based on an early work by Carlo Goldoni. During rehearsals, the opera was the victim of intrigues from competing composers claiming that the work was not from the 12-year-old boy, but from his father. Threatened with a sabotaged first night by the impresario Giuseppe Affligio, Leopold prudently decided to withdraw. The opera was never staged in Vienna. It was performed the following year in Salzburg at the request of the Prince-Archbishop on 1 May 1769. Mozart produced a full score of three acts, 26 numbers, in a manuscript of 558 pages. It includes an overture/Sinfonia, one coro, one duet, three ensembles (at the end of each act), and 21 arias. The opera was recorded in its entirety by Leopold Hager for Orfeo in January 1983 with Helen Donath and Teresa Berganza, a performance lasting two hours 45 minutes. Another recording was made in November 1989, with Barbara Hendricks and Ann Murray, and conducted by Peter Schreier. This version was selected by Philips to be part of ''The Complete Mozart Edition'' of all the works of Mozart, published in 1991. However, since its premiere in 1769, the opera was not staged until modern times. It was performed at the 2006 Salzburg festival, as part of the production of all of 22 Mozart's operas. The performances were published in the collection of DVDs known as ''M-22'' by Deutsche Grammophon. ==Composition history== The opera was something of a temporary career setback for Mozart, amid a childhood otherwise characterized by universal success and stardom. The instigation of the work was a suggestion made by Emperor Joseph II to Mozart's father Leopold during a visit made to the Imperial capital of Vienna by the Mozart family (10 January 1768 to the end of December 1768). Leopold wanted to promote the exceptional talent of young Mozart with the hope of establishing him as an opera composer. The Emperor suggested to Leopold that Wolfgang write an opera for performance in Vienna to show his remarkable skills to the Viennese public as he had already done all over Europe. Leopold needed a good libretto, and he had the choice between seria and buffa. He noted that the seria singers available in Milan were mediocre, while the buffa singers were excellent. "There are no singers here for serious opera. Even Gluck's tragic opera ''Alceste'' was performed entirely by ''opera buffa'' singers. He too is now writing an ''opera buffa'' " (30 January 1768). Leopold thus chose a buffa libretto, and for so doing, he simply went to the established librettist in Vienna, who happened to be the Florentine Marco Coltellini, an Italian "poet" who was to replace Metastasio as "poeta cesareo" at the Imperial court of the Habsburgs in 1769. Together they selected a libretto by Goldoni, the master of the commedia dell'arte genre. Coltellini modified the libretto somewhat, especially act 3. He abandoned some arias, replaced a few with his own, and in some cases, kept the original Goldoni aria in the scene while adding a new one of his own, with the result that a few scenes ended up with two arias instead of one, as was the norm, usually coming at the end of the scene. In Coltellini's version, four scenes start with an opening aria and end with another (Act 1: Sc. 3: No. 4 & No. 5 Arias; Act 2: Sc. 6: No. 16 & 17 Arias; Act 3: Sc. 1: No. 22 & 23 Arias; Act 3: Sc. 2: No. 24 & 25 Arias.) Some writers claim that, when the opera was finished, "the performers apparently disliked it"〔This is the view taken by Maynard Solomon (1995)〕 The "failure" of ''La Finta Semplice'' in Vienna, which went through rehearsals, but didn't reach full performance, has been the object of similar hazy and cursory descriptions. Hermann Abert (1871-1927) describes the problems in more precise detail the facts of this "fiasco" in his monumental book "W.A. MOZART" (1919, transl. 2007). This was to be the 5th edition of the famous book of the same title by Otto Jahn (1856-9), the first scholarly biography of Mozart, done with rigorous scientific conscientiousness (''Deutsche Gründlichkeit'') by a professional archeologist who had become a scholarly expert of ancient Greek vase paintings. Cliff Eisen, who edited the translation of Abert's book in 2007 for Yale University Press with the best scholarship then available, does not dispute Abert's historical facts and reasonings, presented in chapter 5, "First operas in Vienna", p. 82-95, which provided the following quotes. The first act completed, "Mozart sent it off to the singers, who, according to Leopold, expressed their total satisfaction." Then, Coltellini started making alterations, on the request of Mozart and the singers, and took so long that Easter of 1768, the projected date of the first performance, went by. "Mozart refused to be troubled by this, but continued to work on the opera, eagerly and enthusiastically, writing new arias whenever he was asked to do so", (Abert, p. 86), soon completing a score in three acts, with 26 numbers, covering 558 manuscript pages. Young Mozart thus ended up composing a substantial major opera, lasting (in Leopold Hager's 1983 recording) 2 hours and 45 minutes. The controversy arose, above all, from the jealousy of other composers, who started circulating the story that the opera had not been written by a 12-year old, but by his father, Leopold. Christoph Willibald Gluck was in town supervising the production of his new opera ''Alceste'', and Leopold wondered whether he was also part of the intrigue against young Mozart. Leopold resorted to a test of improvisation to prove young Mozart's authentic composition skills to elite aristocrats. "He would throw open a random volume from Metastasio's works and invite Wolfgang to provide a musical setting with orchestral accompaniment, of whichever aria he hit upon" (Abert, p. 87). The impresario, Giuseppe Affligio, an independent contractor, alone in charge of the theater and all opera performances, and bearing all the costs and the risks, made the final decisions about all details of retaining the singers, organizing the rehearsals, and staging the final production. He became influenced by the systematic gossip and started worrying about a negative outcome. He began to have doubts, fearing that the appeal of an opera by a 12-year old prodigy would fade under the suspicions of fraudulent authorship. He found successive reasons to delay the performance. Things dragged on, until the artists started worrying in turn about the damage to their own reputations if the opera was a flop. The same singers who had "declared themselves well satisfied with music that they described as grateful, now began to fear for the success of the production when they saw how much effort was being expended on preventing it from going ahead. Leopold complained at the singers' duplicity," as the Viennese aristocrats "knew nothing of the inner wickedness of these beasts" (14 September 1768, Abert, p. 87). Abert gave an extensive musical analysis of the opera, and underlined the high quality of many arias written by Mozart, such as: * - No.5 Aria: "Guarda la donna in viso" (Fracasso); * - No.6 Aria: "Colla bocca, e non col core" (Rosina) * - No.9 Aria: "Senti l'eco, ove t'aggiri" (Rosina) * - No.13 Aria: "Con certe persone Vuol essere bastone" (Simone * - No.15 Aria: "Amoretti, che ascosi qui siete" (Rosina) (highlight of the opera", with "nobility of utterance" "achieving the expressive intensity of the later Mozart", Abert p. 94 ) * - No.16 Aria: Ubriaco non son io" (Cassandro) * - No.17 Aria: "Sposa cara, sposa bella" (Polidoro) * - No.19 Duetto: "Cospetton, cospettonaccio!" (Cassandro, Fracasso) * - No.22 Aria: "Vieni, vieni, oh mia Ninetta" (Simone) * - No.24 Aria: "Che scompiglio, che flagello" (Giacinta) * - No.25 Aria: "Nelle guerre d'amore Non val sempre il valore" (Fracasso) and the 3 ensembles of the finales of each act, where young Mozart displays his remarkable facility in synchronizing the parts of 7 singers: * - No.11 Finale: "Dove avete la creanza?" (Rosina, Fracasso, etc.) * - No.21 Finale: "T'ho, detto, buffone" (Cassandro, Polidoro, etc. * - No.26 Finale: "Se le pupille io giro" (Polidoro, Rosina, etc.). It is not credible that the singers could have shown displeasure at such charming arias. Here Leopold's account must be trusted against other commenters of the time. In fact, the turmoil put everybody's reputation at stake, including that of the Salzburg Prince-Archbishop, whose employees the Mozarts were, representing him in Vienna. Leopold wrote that the artists employed and recommended by the archbishop should not be treated as "liars, charlatans, and impostors who venture forth, with his gracious permission, to throw dust in people's eyes like common conjurors" (30 July 1768, Abert, p. 88). Affligio got so worked up that he even threatened, if the work got to first night, to make sure the opening would be a disaster. "He would ensure that it was a fiasco and that it was booed off the stage." Leopold could not take the risk for himself and to thus endanger the unblemished reputation of his son, and "was left with no alternative but to abandon the production." Leopold withdrew from the rehearsals. In fact, "Affligio was an adventurer and gambler who had obtained his officer's commission by fraud...His complete lack of any understanding of art is clear...He was finally sent to the galleys for forgery." (Abert, p. 88). The whole affair had "dragged on for 9 months" and in order "to salvage his reputation", Leopold wrote "an indignant petition to the emperor on 21 September 1768, complaining of a conspiracy on the part of the theatre director Giuseppe Affligio, who apparently claimed that Wolfgang's music was ghost-written by his father, and proving Mozart's output by including a list of his compositions to that time." (See also Eisen/Sadie, ''Grove Online'', also Cliff Eisen, ''Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia''). Leopold was also requesting the payment of the 100 ducats promised on delivery of the score in the initial Affligio contract plus the reimbursement of his expenses. The petition failed. The letter is reprinted in English translation in Deutsch (1965, pp. 80–83). The Emperor ordered an inquiry, but its result was that the opera was not to be produced.〔Pietro Melograni (2007, p. 28)〕 The Mozarts left Vienna at the end of December 1768, with ''La finta semplice'' still unperformed. It was later produced in their home town of Salzburg, on 1 May 1769, at the request of Leopold's employer, Prince-Archbishop Schrattenbach. 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 finta semplice」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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