Opera
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
The first opera I got to know was Don Giovanni. That’s a priority many romantics would have approved, certainly E.T.A Hoffmann, enthusiast for Mozart, who changed his third name to Amadeus, and called Don Giovanni ‘the opera of all operas’...
There are those who believe Mozart shouldn’t have attempted to set Mitridate’s libretto at all, not because it was a bad one, but because it was such a good one. Alfred Einstein thinks someone should have told the 14 year–old ‘Keep your hands off! This is beyond your powers’. Nevertheless, even as a 14 year–old Mozart managed in Mitridate what he said he had done much later with another opera seria La clemenza di Tito: made it into a real opera...