La clemenza di Tito, K. 621: Overture

Composer: MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus
  • Mozart composed this opera in 1791 for the celebrations in Prague surrounding the coronation of Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II as King of Bohemia.1
  • The commission for this coronation opera was originally offered to Antonio Salieri, but he declined.2
  • La Clemenza di Tito is an opera seria. By Mozart’s time, this Baroque genre was rather old-fashioned.3
  • The libretto is by Pietro Metastasio, the preeminent opera seria librettist whose texts were set countless times by generations of composers. (This particular libretto had already been set over 40 times)4
    • Mozart’s opera updated the libretto and genre by adding ensemble numbers and removing a number of solo arias. 
    • According to Mozart, thanks to the cuts and changes, the libretto was “ridotta a vera opera” (“reduced to a proper opera”)
  • Story: Roman Emperor Titus escapes an assassination plot and displays his enlightened attitude by pardoning the plotters.5
    • Opera seria in general, and this story in particular, celebrate the wise and noble rulers (unlike the more classical genre of opera buffa, which tends to highlight class conflicts).6 This makes Clemenza di Tito an appropriate choice for the coronation of Joseph II, who has gone down in history as one of the 18th century’s “enlightened despots.”7

Sources

  1.  Julian Rushton, “Clemenza di Tito, La (opera seria by Mozart),” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed November 20, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000003425.
  2.  Cliff Eisen, and Stanley Sadie, “Mozart, (Johann Chrysostom) Wolfgang Amadeus,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 19, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-6002278233. 
  3. Rushton, “Clemenza di Tito, La (opera seria by Mozart),” Grove Music Online
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6.  J. Peter Burkholder et al, A History of Western Music, 7th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 485, 490.
  7.  Reinhold F. Wagnleitner et al, “Joseph II,” Encyclopædia Britannica (March 9, 2019), accessed November 20, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-II. 

Cut IDs

40596, 42419