Mozart and the Enlightenment

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Till, who has directed operas at the Glyndebourne Festival, approaches the interpretive difficulties involved in staging Mozart's operas by analyzing the works in relation to the social, political, moral, philosophical and religious climate of the late 18th century. In the early opera, La Finta Giardiniera , Till finds an expression of the moral sentiments of the bourgeois Enlightenment and the influence of Rousseau; Le Nozze di Figaro illustrates the importance of contractual relationships in bourgeois society; the character of Don Giovanni represents a destructive force threatening the codes of conduct that separated the Enlightenment from the supposed age of chaos that preceded it. Till draws on the authority of an impressive array of writers and thinkers to develop his ideas, but his excessive erudition and convoluted writing style obfuscates rather than resolves the problems he addresses. He also ignores the music, the component of opera that is fundamental to discussion of the drama. Illustrated. (Apr.)

Library Journal

One might have hoped there would be a moratorium on books about Mozart after the excesses of his recent bicentennial, but this reviewer would gladly make an exception for this one. This critical study grew from practical necessity: the author, who has directed operas at the Glyndebourne Festival, encountered seeming contradictions in staging Mozart and felt that their resolution lay in learning more about the age that gave rise to them. The result of his investigations brims with fascinating and original insights into aspects of Mozart's life as well as his operas. A few examples: Till sheds new and favorable light on two of Mozart's adversaries, his father and the despised Archbishop Colloredo. He links Mozart's Catholicism and his involvement with the Freemasons. He reassesses Mozart's own marriage in light of the world view implicit in Le Nozze di Figaro . He juxtaposes Cosi fan tutte with Die Zauberflote . Highly recommended for large music collections.-- E. Gaub, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.

Kirkus Reviews

An erudite mix of music, history, philosophy, biography, sociology, and even depth psychology—adding up to a triumphant study of Mozart's supreme masterworks. Writers faced with Don Giovanni or The Magic Flute have generally retreated into plot summary or musical analysis. Not so here. Stage-director Till, needing to find practical theatrical solutions to the paradoxes of Mozart's operas—why are those peasants loose in Count Almaviva's palace?—turns for help to Mozart's own intellectual milieu, the "German enlightenment." He weaves the chronology of Mozart's professional progress into a tapestry of 18th-century ideas: the social contract; the "enlightened despot"; the pursuit of happiness; the moral worth of sentiment; the status of the individual. In a text dense with apt quotation from Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Goethe, and others, Mozart's personal and artistic ambitions are seen playing themselves out against the larger tension of a society striving to reconcile the freedom necessary for bourgeois prosperity with the authority thought necessary to hold that society together. In his early travels, Mozart fed on Enlightenment ideals (e.g., the artist as honored public figure rather than private lackey). He went to Vienna upon the accession of Germany's most enlightened prince, Joseph II, and in the next five "years of optimism" produced a host of mature masterpieces. Each opera from La finta giardiniera onward receives full discussion of its connection to contemporaneous social thought, and there is a particularly compelling treatment of the final operas within the context of the "collapse" of Joseph's reform program. Mozart's Masonic associationsalso receive an illuminating presentation. Not all of Till's propositions can be accepted without question, and his occasional forays into psychobiography prove the weakest link, but no matter: Few books provide such a satisfying exploration of the thoughts and feelings from which great art is born. The subtlety and richness of Till's argument cannot be conveyed by pr‚cis: A feast for the intellectually adventurous. (Photographs—not seen)