Wolfgang Mozart and La Finta Giardiniera
This opera is one of my favorite operatic works, among my favorite works of Mozart, and indeed of all comedic operatic masterpieces. It is exuberantly youthful, genuinely humorous (with jokes as old as the pyramids) and it sees directly into the human heart with the MRI of Mozart’s musical probing — yes! it sees into your heart too; you’ll feel it tonight.
It may seem astounding that he wrote this when he was ‘only’ 18, but truth, he had already written around seven professionally produced operatic works, so he was already an operatic force. Although La Finta Giardiniera, I feel, is his first mature opera written in his voice. It is the prototype for his later great works, especially Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così. Though Finta is an opera buffa, it is the serious plaintive arias of Sandrina, the gardeness and the stunning last act reunion duet of the lovers that are among the real treasures of this garden with their rapturous melodies and emotional depth. Other staggering musical moments are the kaleidoscopic Act I and Act II finales, worthy of standing beside Mozart’s later masterpieces, where he sweeps us along with the action with vibrant, continually changing dramatic music.
What amazes and amuses me the most however is the young Mozart’s accurate renderings of these inflated personalities, still so familiar to us today. As a child, Mozart had been exhibited before the crowned heads and the elite of Europe and was well familiar with their preening and self-importance. He paints them hilariously, without shame, with his music, both the upper class and the servants who would soon rise to equality; these are people he knows intimately and within a few bars of his glorious music, we know them too, and despite their ridiculous behavior, we fall in love with them and their vain, foolish antics.
Finally, what the opera is about, and what obsessed Mozart constantly was love; in the final chorus, everyone sings: ‘Viva amore!’ Mozart never ceased being in love with his aptly named wife Constanze. After nine years of marriage, five months before his death he wrote to her: ‘My one wish is to settle my affairs so I can be with you again. You cannot imagine how I have been aching for you. I can’t describe what I have been feeling — a kind of longing that is never satisfied, which only increases daily. Even my work gives me no pleasure…’ Love.
So welcome to our garden, where love always blossoms anew, and we can always hope to find true love renewed or found for the very first time.
Gary Thor Wedow, October 25, 2024
