In the autumn of 1786, Bondini’s latest attempt to improve the provision of German theatre in Prague backfired badly. A company headed by Carl von Morocz opened on 10 September and the result, according to Teuber, was a ‘colossal fiasco’. The season was terminated almost immediately, though members of the failed company were permitted to stage three further performances in an attempt to defray some of their travel expenses. Following this debacle there were no German plays for three months, and Bondini’s looming financial crisis would have been obvious to all. Only on 26 December was a new company assembled. There was no repeat of the earlier failure, yet the new troupe still struggled to meet its costs in the early months of 1787.

It was against this very inauspicious background that the Bondini–Guardasoni opera company returned from its summer season in Leipzig. A successful winter programme in Prague was now imperative, and by a stroke of good fortune the newest operatic import from the Vienna stage was able to deliver a much needed success. Writing several years later, Niemetschek was well aware that the Prague production of Figaro had come at a critical moment in the fortunes of the impresario. He gives no details, but in commenting that the opera played the whole winter almost without a break, he implies that the opera received very much more than the usual Leipzig run of three performances. For Mozart this undoubted success marked the start of a highly productive relationship.

Even at this undoubted high point, one critic at least was sounding an unmistakable note of concern over the future of Guardasoni’s chosen genre. In December 1794, a very downbeat appraisal of the prospects for Italian opera in Prague appeared in the Brno Allgemeines Europäisches Journal. The main article ‘Einige Nachrichten über den Zustand des Theaters in Prag’ was followed by a less well-known continuation ‘Fortsetzung der Nachrichten über das Theater zu Prag’. The latter provides a commentary on German theatre, but the two parts should be read together. The review is often attributed to Niemetschek, but the first instalment is only signed ‘***k’, which hardly allows for a firm identification of a Czech surname. According to Volek, the continuation was signed ‘N**k’, which again is not conclusive. Given that Niemetschek took up an appointment in Prague in the autumn of 1793, it is certainly possible that he would have been sufficiently well informed about the state of opera in the city to have written the piece. Yet the sharp tone of the critique differs radically from the warmth of his biography, even though some of the themes are recognisably the same. While it is certainly possible that a writer might adopt a markedly different tone in signed and unsigned pieces, the authorship of the article must remain an open question. Whoever he was, this critic was deeply worried about the state of Italian opera in Prague. He contrasts the current level of support – boxes left unsubscribed or shared between families – with former years in which the music-loving nature of the Bohemian public was most evident. He attributes the decline of Italian opera not just to management failings on the part of Guardasoni and the poor calibre of his singers – a common gripe – but to a fundamental change in the taste of the Prague audience itself. More and more, he complains, they are being seduced by Singspiel productions. Writing with heavy irony, he notes that thanks to the popularity of works such as Zauberzyther and Das Sonntagskind, the public is steadily losing its once correct and respectable taste, in favour of the refined feeling of the aforementioned masterpieces of music and wit from the Fatherland (Vienna and Italy). Yet its taste has not become so corrupt that it has lost all liking for true beauty and greatness. Why then, the critic wonders, does not Guardasoni nourish what remains of it with respectable fare? A nationalist antipathy to the imperial capital (‘Hauptstadt’) is manifest. On the other hand, in his biography Niemetschek is fair to Vienna, for all that he takes justifiable pride in the supportive attitude of his home city towards Mozart. Harsh criticism of the cabals and conspiracies of the Italian singers in the Court Theatre aside, he is even-handed in his approach, noting the difficulties Mozart had with the expensive Viennese lifestyle, but acknowledging his successes there, such as Die Entführung and the piano concertos, and reporting both his immediate failure to win a court position (blamed on his unworldly nature rather than any institutional hostility) and his eventual success. There is a brief allusion to the supposed decline in Prague taste, but only in a footnote.

Outside Vienna, no theatre company was more receptive to Mozart’s music than the Italiänische Opera-Virtuosen, a small commercial ensemble based in Prague which also gave summer seasons in Leipzig. Directed by Pasquale Bondini and Domenico Guardasoni, it played a significant role in the composer’s later career. In 1786, its production of Figaro was received with such enthusiasm that Mozart was invited to visit Prague, where he reported with pride that tunes from the opera were being whistled in the street. The Italiänische Opera-Virtuosen did not make a practice of commissioning works, but because an opera was required to celebrate the imperial marriage of the Archduchess Maria Theresia an agreement was reached for a new work on the Don Juan story. Even though it was not ready in time for its festive première, Don Giovanni was a popular success, and Guardasoni began to consider the possibility of another commission for Mozart. In the summer of 1789, however, the Italiänische Opera-Virtuosen relocated to Warsaw and nothing further was heard about this proposal. During his second season at the Court of Stanisław August Poniatowski, Guardasoni introduced a programme of opera seria, a new venture for his company, but a timely one, as the troupe was recalled to Prague in the summer of 1791 in order to stage La clemenza di Tito in honour of the Coronation of Leopold II. In the years following Mozart’s death, the Italiänische Opera-Virtuosen, far from abandoning his Italian operas, continued to play a pivotal role in sustaining interest in them, while elsewhere German Singspiel versions swept the field. An especially notable success was a Leipzig production of Cosìfan tutte in 1792, and this was followed in 1794 by a well-attended second performance run for La clemenza in Prague. All these events were developed by Niemetschek, the composer’s early biographer, into a compelling narrative which saw the formation of a ‘special relationship’ between the discerning Prague audience and its favoured visitor. A powerful blend of history and myth, it remains to this day one of the central strands of Mozart historiography, but Leipzig was largely written out of the picture.

The significant role of concert performances in sustaining interest in Figaro and Don Giovanni following the departure of the Italiänische Opera-Virtuosen from Leipzig is very evident in the months leading up to Mozart’s brief visits to the city. At that period there were three regular series: the Gewandhaus subscription concerts under the direction of Johann Gottfried Schicht and his wife Constanze Valdesturla; a complementary series of ‘Extra’ concerts, usually held in the Thomäisches Haus; and a stream of one-off benefits promoted by visiting artists in a wide variety of venues including the Saal des Rannstädter Schießhauses, the Sala della Biblioteca del Magistrato, the Theater am Rannstädter Thore, the Hôtel de Saxe and the Saal der Drey Schwanen. Also very fashionable at Christmas and Easter were large-scale concerts spirituels. Despite the city’s relatively small size, it therefore enjoyed an exceptionally rich culture of public concerts.

The resources of the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum allow us to trace the slowly rising profile of Mozart’s music during the 1780s, and the sharp increase in interest that occurred in 1788. The first ‘Mozart’ work to be heard in Leipzig was by Leopold. On 9 September 1779, his Schlittenfahrt was advertised in a bill which gave full details of the instrumentation and movements. Then on 24 January 1782 there was a performance of a ‘Sinfonie vom jüngern Mozart’. Throughout the mid-1780s, a selection of Mozart’s keyboard and chamber music was advertised by Breitkopf. Examples include: ‘Auch sind daselbst neue Amsterdamer, Lyoner, Mannheimer und Wiener Musikalien von Bocherini, Kozeluch, Hayda [sic], Mozart etc zu haben’ (1782); ‘sind folgende neue Musikalien zu bekommen … Mozard Sonaten’ (1783); ‘Mozard Clavier-Auszug, aus der Opera: die Entführung aus dem Serail, 2 fl. 30 kr. oder 1 Thlr. 16 Gr.; Mozard 3 neue Clavier-Sonaten, mit Begleitung einer Violine, 2 fl. oder I Thlr. 8 Gr.’ (1784). Another publisher who actively advertised his stock in Leipzig was Bossler. On 19 November 1785, he informed the public that his entire music list (‘meinen ganzen Musicalien-Verlag’) would henceforth be available from the retailer Christian Gottfried Martini. In 1787, Bossler had on offer ‘das 3te und 4te Stück Variat. von Förster & Mozart, 10 Gr.; / das 5te, 6te 7te Stück Variat. von Vanhall & Mozart, 18 Gr.; / das 10te Stück Mozart Quartet, 20 Gr; / das 11te Stück Mozart Sonat. 14 Gr.; / das 12te Stück Mozart 12 Variat. mit 1 Rondo, 11 Gr.; / 1 großen Clavier-Concert von Mozart, 1 Thle, 12 Gr.’ On 19 September 1789, Martini drew attention to: ‘Mozart Quartetto Op.14 per il Flauto, Viol. e Basso’.