Salzburg was undeniably beautiful – an ideal place to be born, yet a dreadful place to remain. My spirit thrived on improvisation, spontaneity, and unpredictability. Salzburg preferred order, discipline, and reliably dreary weather, all three delivered with impressive consistency. This mismatch between us was persistent and, increasingly, exhausting.
I felt a brief surge of optimism when my family moved from our house in the Getreidegasse to a larger, newer home[i] just across the Salzach River. The scenery changed. The feeling did not. It quickly became clear that crossing a river was not the same as escaping a city.
Then, as if my restlessness had finally been answered, I received a commission to write an opera buffa[ii] for the Munich carnival. An opera! A promise of payment! And most importantly, a legitimate reason to leave Salzburg! This combination was irresistible.
I titled the opera La finta giardiniera, The Pretend Garden Girl[iii]. I wanted the music to sparkle and the stage to feel alive. As with any respectable comic opera, the plot required confusion, jealousy, mistaken identities, and at least one dramatic act of violence, strictly figurative. There were noble characters behaving foolishly, in a brief flirtation with madness fancying themselves Greek gods, and, eventually, recovering their senses just in time to fall in love.
This was opera buffa at its best: chaos followed by clarity, all set to melodies cheerful enough to hum on the way home. In many ways, the story mirrored my own life at the time: full of excitement, restless for change, and determined to find a little creative freedom wherever it was allowed to appear.
[i] From 1773 to 1787, the Mozarts lived at the so-called “Dance Master’s House”, standing on today’s Makartplatz. The spacious eight-room apartment on the first floor is now home to a museum.
[ii] Opera buffa is a genre of opera that can be described as comic and characterized by everyday settings and people, local dialects, and simple vocal writing.
[iii] La finta giardiniera (“The Pretend Garden-Girl”, K. 196), is an Italianlanguage opera first performed on 13 January at the Salvator Theater in Munich.