Theatrical Mozart and Burgon

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1782, Mozart’s opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” opened at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The libretto of Mozart’s opera was full of the high-minded ideals of the Enlightenment. These same ideals were expounded by the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II, who had recently curtailed censorship and established religious tolerance in Vienna. For spice, Mozart included some colorful Turkish music, and for comic relief, what he himself called “a boozy drinking song.”

It was also an opera written in German, Vienna’s native tongue, and not in Italian, the customary language for the court operas in Mozart’s day. Apparently, the reforming Emperor Joseph II also encouraged the development of operas performed in a language that most of his subjects could understand.

These days, supra-titles can provide instant translations for staged productions of operas written in a foreign language, and sub-titles can do the same for foreign films. Television programs are more often than not re-dubbed into the language of the land where they are shown.

Today’s date also marks the birthday in 1941 of an English composer, Geoffrey Burgon, who achieved international fame when his scores for the successful British TV adaptations of John Le Carré’s espionage thriller “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and Evelyn Waugh’s novel “Brideshead Revisited” were broadcast worldwide. Burgon has composed successful works for the concert hall as well, including, like Mozart, a setting of the “Requiem Mass.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgart Mozart (1756-1791) The Abduction from the Seraglio Robert Gambill, tenor; Vienna Symphony; Bruno Weil, cond. CBS/Sony 53500

Geoffrey Burgon (1941 - 2010) Brideshead Revisited Philharmonia Orchestra; Geoffrey Burgon, cond. Silva 1005

On This Day

Births

• 1858 - Belgian composer, violinist and conductor Eugène Ysaÿe, in Liège

• 1901 - Austrian conductor and composer Fritz Mahler, a nephew of Gustav Mahler, in Vienna; He studied composition with Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern; He emigrated to America in 1936, where he taught at the Juilliard Summer School and conducted the Erie Philharmonic and the Hartford Symphony

• 1904 - Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi, in Zagarolo (near Rome

• 1941 - English composer Geoffrey Burgon, in Hambleton, Hampshire

• 1959 - Scottish composer James MacMillan, in Kilwinning, Ayrshire

Deaths

• 1729 - Burial date of German composer and lawyer Johann David Heinichen, age 46, in Dresden

• 1763 - French flutist and composer Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, age 89, in Paris

Premieres

• 1782 - Mozart: opera "The Abduction from the Seraglio," in Vienna at the Burgtheater

• 1998 - Carol Barnett: "Meeting at Seneca Falls," for soloists, narrator, and chamber ensemble, at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, with Apo Hsu conducting