Abduction, The. See Entführung aus dem Serail, Die

Abel, Carl Friedrich (b. Cöthen 22 Dec. 1723; d. London 20 June 1787). German composer and viola da gamba player, resident mainly in London. Abel's father was a court musician at Cöthen alongside J. S. Bach, and Carl Friedrich may subsequently have studied with Bach in Leipzig. He left a post at the Dresden court as a result of the Seven Years War, travelling to London, where he gave his first concert on 5 April 1759. Arriving at the very start of a vogue for the latest German symphonies, Abel quickly became a major figure in London's concert life, both as instrumentalist and composer. Though the viola da gamba was regarded as outdated, even an eccentricity, his playing was so deeply expressive that his solos were constantly in demand for over twenty years (his Adagio became a byword for heartfelt performance and a model for string players). He was also successful in nurturing the patronage of aristocrats such as the Earl of Thanet (at whose house in 1764 Leopold Mozart became seriously ill); and probably in 1763 he was appointed chamber musician to the Queen. So too was J. C. Bach (whom he may have known from Germany), and on 29 February 1764 they gave their first concert together. In 1765 they joined forces in what became known as the Bach–Abel concerts, a series that ran until Bach's death in 1782.

Karl Theodor, Elector Palatine and Elector of Bavaria (b. Dorgenbos Castle, near Brussels, 11 Dec. 1724; d. Munich, 16 Feb. 1799). Karl Theodor became Elector Palatine in 1742 and Elector of Bavaria on 30 December 1777, succeeding his cousin Maximilian III Joseph. A flautist and cellist, Karl Theodor lavished attention on the Mannheim court music; under his leadership it was one of the outstanding centres for music in the eighteenth century. The court was particularly renowned for its orchestra, which Leopold Mozart described as ‘unquestionably the best in Germany’ (letter of 19 July 1763). The Mozart children first played for Karl Theodor at his country home, Schwetzingen, in July 1763, and Mozart visited Mannheim twice in 1777 and 1778, first on the way to Paris and then on the way home to Salzburg. Although he hoped to gain an appointment at court, he was not successful; he was also unsuccessful in Munich in December 1778 after the Mannheim court's move there. Nevertheless, Karl Theodor must have been well disposed towards Mozart, whose Idomeneo was first given at Munich in January 1781; Mozart wrote to his father that after hearing a rehearsal of Act 2, Karl Theodor said to him, ‘Who would have believed that such great things could lodge in so small a head!’ (27 Dec. 1780).

Da Ponte, Lorenzo (b. Ceneda, 10 Mar. 1749; d. New York, 17 Aug. 1838) Italian librettist; Mozart's collaborator on Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790). His picaresque lifestyle took him from his birthplace, Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto), through Venice, Vienna and London to New York.

Da Ponte was born Emmanuele Conegliano, adopting the name of the Bishop of Ceneda on his family's conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Like his friend Casanova, he was a raffish figure plagued by scandal at every turn. After being exiled from Venice, he worked with the poet Caterino Mazzolà in Dresden before moving to Vienna in late 1781 (Mazzolà recommended him to Antonio Salieri), where he attracted the favour of Emperor Joseph II. When the Emperor abandoned his pursuit of German opera and revived the Italian company at the Burgtheater, in 1783, Da Ponte was appointed the main poet to the theatre. His subsequent involvement in the remarkable flowering of opera buffa in Vienna in 1783–90 and his collaborations with Martín y Soler(Il burbero di buon cuore, Una cosa rara), Salieri (Il ricco d'un giorno, Axur, re d'Ormus), Mozart and others made him the most significant librettist of his generation.

Jacquin family. (Emilian) Gottfried von Jacquin (b. 1767; d. Vienna, 24 Jan. 1792) worked at the court chancellery in Vienna; his friendship with Mozart probably dates from before 1783. It seems likely that Mozart helped Jacquin, an amateur composer and singer, with several compositions, or at least that he composed some works jointly with him; these include the six notturni K346 and K436–9. And in 1791 Gottfried published under his name six songs, two of which were composed by Mozart: Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte, K520, and Das Traumbild, K530. Mozart composed the aria Mentre ti lascio, o figlia, K513 for Gottfried; and according to Constanze Mozart's letter of 25 May 1799, Gottfried wrote the aria Io ti lascio, o cara, addio, K621a – only the violin parts are by Mozart. Gottfried's sister, Franziska (1769–1850) was a keyboard student of Mozart's; it was for her that he wrote the so-called ‘Kegelstatt’ trio for clarinet, viola and piano, K498, and the piano duet sonata K521.

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Jenamy, Victoire (b. 1749; d. 1812). French pianist, daughter of J. G. Noverre. A first-rate pianist, Jenamy, the daughter of Mozart's friend, the ballet master J. G. Noverre, commissioned from him the piano concerto K271 (January 1777).

Zaide, K344. By the end of the 1790s, Constanze Mozart had recovered from the emotional and financial shock of Wolfgang's death, and begun – with the help of a group of her late husband's associates – to bring order to his musical estate. Among the mass of unfinished works, sketches, and other unrealized projects she found a ‘German opera without a title, for the most part complete’. She and her helpers, unable to locate a libretto for it, even resorted to placing an advertisement in a widely read music journal (the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in Leipzig) asking any reader who recognized the characters in the drama to make contact with her. No one replied.

It took more than 150 years for Mozart scholarship to shed some light on the fragment, which includes sixteen musical numbers divided into two acts but lacks an overture and a finale. The piece was eventually given the name Zaide, after its main female figure. Like Die Entführung aus dem Serail, to which it bears more than a few similarities, Zaide is a singspiel in German; spoken texts are meant to advance the action between the musical numbers. In the score Constanze found (which is preserved today in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin) these spoken texts, except for cues, are missing. The challenge, then, is to find the source of the text Mozart and his librettist, the Mozart family friend Johann Andreas Schachtner, used to construct their version.

Gamerra, Giovanni de (b. Livorno, 1743; d. Vicenza, 20 Aug. 1803). Italian poet, dramatist and librettist. Gamerra, who as a young man studied law and subsequently served in the Austrian army, was poet at the Teatro Regio Ducale, Milan, from 1770 to 1774 and the librettist for Mozart's Lucio Silla (Milan, 26 Dec. 1772). In 1781 Mozart set an aria from Gamerra's text for Paisiello's Sismano nel Mogol (‘A questo seno deh vieni – Or che il cielo a me ti rende’, K374). Gamerra was court poet in Vienna 1774–6 and again 1793–1802; in 1794 his Italian translation of Die Zauberflöte was performed in Prague.

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Gasparini, Quirino (b. Gandino, near Bergamo, 1721; d. Turin, 30 Sept. 1778). Italian composer. A student of G. A. Fioroni, maestro di cappella of Milan Cathedral, and G. B. Martini, Gasparini was appointed maestro di cappella of Turin Cathedral in 1760. In 1767 he set Mitridate, a libretto set by Mozart for Milan three years later. According to Leopold Mozart's letter of 2 January 1771, the singers had wanted to substitute some of Gasparini's numbers for Mozart's; in the event, the tenor Guglielmo d’Ettore performed the older composer's ‘Vado incontro’ (Act 3), as a result of which the aria was later incorrectly attributed to Mozart. Nevertheless, relations between the Mozarts and Gasparini, whom they met later in January 1771, were good.

Raaff, Anton (b. Gelsdorf, near Bonn, 6 May 1714; d. Munich, 28 May 1797). A highly acclaimed German tenor, whose international career took him to such cities as Bonn, Vienna, Lisbon, Madrid, Naples, Florence, Mannheim, Paris and Munich, Raaff became a good friend of Mozart in Mannheim and Paris (1777–8). He is mentioned copiously (and affectionately) in the family correspondence, especially between 1777 and 1781, although Mozart and his mother offered mixed reports on his singing and acting. Both thought his voice was past its best in Mannheim in 1777 (14 Nov. 1777); Mozart was forced ‘to pull out a handkerchief and hide a smile’. Mozart also thought him a poor operatic actor: ‘he had to die [on stage], and while dying sing a very very very long aria in slow time; well, he died with a grin on his face, and towards the end of the aria his voice gave out so badly that one really couldn't stand it any longer’. But they both changed their tune somewhat in Paris a few months later. Mozart remembered writing unfavourably about Raaff's voice from Mannheim, but admitted liking it much more in Paris, in spite of the fact that Raaff was clearly past his prime (12 June 1778). Maria Anna Mozart particularly liked Raaff's voice (12 June 1778): ‘One day he came especially to sing to me and sang three arias, which gave me great pleasure.

Lange (née Weber), (Maria) Aloysia (b. Zell or Mannheim, c.1761; d. Salzburg, 8 June 1839). German soprano, Mozart's sister-in-law and daughter of Fridolin Weber (b.? Zell im Wiesental, 1733; d. Vienna, 23 Oct. 1779). Mozart first met Lange during his stay in Mannheim in 1777–8, when he gave her musical instruction and composed for her the concert arias K294, K316 and probably the early version of K538; he also fell in love with her, mooting to Leopold Mozart his plans to take her to Italy (an idea to which his father objected strenuously). In 1778 she moved to Munich where she made her debut in Schweitzer's Alceste; shortly afterwards she was engaged at the Nationaltheater in Vienna. From 1782, when German opera was removed to the Kärntnertortheater and Italian comic opera reinstated at the Burgtheater, she was a leading singer of the Italian troupe; Mozart composed the arias ‘Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!’, K418 and ‘No, che non sei capace’, K419 for her debut as Clorinda in Anfossi's Il curioso indiscreto. Apparently Lange fell out of favour and in 1785 was transferred to the less prestigious Kärntnertortheater, where among other roles she sang Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail; occasionally she was engaged for the Italian opera, most notably in 1788 when she sang the role of Donna Anna at the Viennese premiere of Don Giovanni.

Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel (b. Weimar, 8 Mar. 1714; d. Hamburg, 14 Dec. 1788). German composer; son of J. S. Bach. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach received his musical training from his father and from about the age of fifteen took part in performances at the Leipzig Thomaskirche and by the local collegium musicum. He studied law at the Leipzig University but in 1734 moved to Frankfurt an der Oder, where he continued his studies and was musically active, performing works by his father as well as his own. In 1738 he was appointed to the court of Frederick of Prussia: his duties chiefly included composing and teaching, which may have inspired his Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Berlin, 1753), the most important eighteenth-century German-language treatise on the subject. Bach was under-appreciated in Berlin (the court was also home to Hasse, Graun, Quantz and Agricola) and he sought appointments elsewhere although his applications for the post of cantor at the Leipzig Thomaskirche of 1750 and 1755 failed, as did a 1753 application for the post of organist at the Johanniskirche in Zittau. But he was successful in his application to succeed Telemann as music director of the principal churches in Hamburg in 1767, moving there the next year. His duties included teaching at the Lateinschule and organizing music at the city's five principal churches, which amounted to nearly two hundred musical performances a year.

Valesi, Giovanni (Johann Evangelist Walleshauer) (b. Unterhattenhofen, Bavaria, 28 Apr. 1735; d. Munich, 10 Jan. 1816). A German tenor who was employed for much of his professional life at the Munich court Kapelle and who performed regularly in Italy, Valesi sang Gran sacerdote di Nettuno at the premiere of Idomeneo in Munich on 29 January 1781 and probably Contino del Belfiore at the premiere of La finta giardiniera in the same city on 13 January 1775. He was also a well-known singing teacher, counting Johann Valentin Adamberger and Carl Maria von Weber among his students. When Mozart heard another of his students, Margarethe Kaiser, sing in Munich, he wrote to Leopold (2 Oct. 1777): ‘She has a beautiful voice, not powerful but by no means weak, very pure and her intonation is good. Valesi has taught her; and from her singing you can tell that he knows how to sing as well as how to teach.’

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H. Schmid, ‘Zur Biographie des bayerischen Hofsängers Giovanni Valesi (Walleshauser)’, Musik in Bayern 10 (1975), 28–30

Vanhal (Vanhall, Wanhal), Johann Baptist (Jon Křtitel) (b. Nové Nechanice, Bohemia, 12 May 1739; d. Vienna, 1813). A Czech composer well known for his orchestral, chamber, keyboard and vocal works, Vanhal worked in Vienna for most of his professional life, studying with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf in the early 1760s and subsequently teaching Ignaz Pleyel.

oca del Cairo, L’, K422 (The Goose of Cairo) (1783–4). Early in 1783, Mozart was on the lookout for a new opera libretto; Joseph II had just established an opera buffa troupe in Vienna and Mozart was eager to show himself equal to the challenge of Italian comic opera after the success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782). Searching for a suitable subject, he worked his way through more than a hundred texts sent to him from Italy. Finding nothing that inspired him, however, Mozart eventually resolved to request a brand-new libretto from Giovanni Varesco, the chaplain to the Archbishop of Salzburg; the result was the ill-fated project L'oca del Cairo, an unfinished opera buffa that survives only as a fragmentary first act.

Varesco had collaborated with Mozart before, on the opera seria Idomeneo, commissioned in 1780 by the Munich court. That Varesco had been resident in Salzburg had given Mozart ample opportunity to intervene in the design of the libretto during the early stages of its composition; with the constant help and mediation of his father, Mozart likewise became closely involved in the creation of the text of L'oca del Cairo. Indeed, Mozart's constant tinkering with the libretto for Idomeneo had caused considerable friction between the composer and the poet, and one can surmise that the composer's rather demanding attitude, coupled with Varesco's own shortcomings and relative inexperience as a librettist, were contributing factors in the premature demise of L'oca del Cairo.

Tenducci, Giusto Ferdinando (b. Siena, c.1735; d. Genoa, 1790). A castrato who spent most of his working life in England (including at London's King's Theatre), Scotland and Ireland, Tenducci is reputed to have had a beautiful, often-imitated voice, praised by Charles Burney among others. He had particular success as Arbaces in Thomas Arne's Artaxerxes (London, 1762). Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart met Tenducci in London (1764) during their three-and-a-half-year grand tour of northern Europe. Crossing paths again in 1778 in Paris, Mozart wrote Tenducci an aria with concertante piano and winds, KAnh.3/315b (now lost).

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Teyber (Deiber, Taiber, Tauber. Täuber, Tayber, Teiber, Teuber) family. Austrian family of musicians, with all or most of whom Mozart was personally acquainted from 1773. The principal members of the family were: Matthäus Teyber (b. c.1711; d. Vienna, 6 Sept. 1785), violinist and court musician in Vienna; his wife Therese, née Ried[e]l; and their talented musician children: the soprano Elisabeth (b. c.16 Sept. 1746; d. 9 May 1816) who after successful operatic appearances in Vienna in the 1760s made her career mainly in Italy; the organist and composer Anton (b. c.8 Sept. 1756; d. 18 Nov. 1822) who toured with Elisabeth before working in Vienna (from 1781) and at the Dresden Hofkapelle (1787–91 – in his letters of 12 Mar. 1783 and 16 Apr. 1789 Mozart mentions having made music with him); and the composer, organist, bass singer and conductor Franz (b. c.25 Aug. 1758; d. 21/2 Oct. 1810).

Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (New Mozart Edition). Shortly after the publication of the third edition of Ludwig Ritter von Köchel's Mozart catalogue (edited by Alfred Einstein and published in Leipzig in 1937), and more than fifty after the completion of the main part of the so-called Alte Mozart-Ausgabe – the first ‘complete’ edition of Mozart's works, issued between 1877 and 1883 (with additional stray volumes appearing until 1910) – calls arose for a new Mozart edition, initially planned in connection with the Mozart year 1941 and with a ‘directive’ from the highest ranks of the Nazi regime. For obvious reasons, the project was never launched, and it was only following the Second World War that there was renewed discussion of the project within the newly reinstituted Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Salzburg. As a result, a plan for a new, complete edition was announced in the Mozart-Jahrbuch for 1953.

Within a remarkably brief period, the Joseph Haydn and Mozart scholar Ernst Fritz Schmid established philological foundations for scholarly work on the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (NMA) and the inaugural volume, with works for two pianos (edited by Schmid himself), was published in 1955.

Ferlendis, Giuseppe (b. Bergamo, 1755; d. Lisbon, 1810). Italian oboist and composer. Ferlendis joined the Salzburg court music establishment on 1 April 1777; that summer Mozart composed the Oboe Concerto, K314, for him, according to Leopold Mozart. But he did not remain in Salzburg for long, resigning from the orchestra in June 1778. At the time, Leopold wrote to Wolfgang: ‘Now for a piece of news! Ferlendis . . . left the service at the end of June. This has been the more unexpected and upsetting as during the last two months whenever Ferlendis played a concerto, the Archbishop had been in the habit of giving him one or two ducats. Moreover he was the favourite in the orchestra and since Besozzi's [Carlo Besozzi, the Italian oboe virtuoso who played in Salzburg in May 1778] arrival in Salzburg had learnt a good deal from him’ (letter of 3 Aug. 1778). After his departure from Salzburg, Ferlendis was active in Turin, Venice, London (from 1795) and Lisbon. He was a specialist on the cor anglais and possibly responsible for improvements to the instrument.

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Ferrarese del Bene, Adriana [baptized Andriana Augusta] (b. 19 Sept. 1759; d. 1804 or after). Prima donna of the Viennese opera buffa troupe 1788–91; she sang Susanna in the 1789 revival of Le nozze di Figaro and created Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte.

Salieri, Antonio (b. Legnago, 18 Aug. 1750; d. Vienna, 7 May 1825). An Italian musician resident in Vienna, he played a crucial role in the evolution of Viennese opera during thirty-five years as composer and conductor. Florian Gassmann, music director of the Viennese court theatres, brought Salieri from Venice to Vienna in 1766. The sixteen-year-old orphan's charm and musicality won the patronage of Joseph II, under whose protection his education and career flourished. From 1770 to 1804 he wrote many operas for the court theatres and fulfilled commissions in Italy, Munich and Paris. In 1788 Joseph appointed him Hofkapellmeister, a position he occupied for the rest of his career.

Salieri probably came into contact with Mozart for the first time in 1768, when Leopold Mozart and Wolfgang stayed in Vienna for several months and Wolfgang composed La finta semplice in the vain hope of having it performed in the court theatres. On his next trip to Vienna, in 1773, Mozart must have heard Salieri's comic opera La locandiera, which was performed frequently during Mozart's residence in the capital. Another opera by Salieri Mozart knew was La fiera di Venezia, from which he borrowed, as a theme for keyboard variations, a minuet that accompanies the dancing and conversation (‘Mio caro Adone’) from the finale of Act 2. This ballroom scene probably served later as inspiration for the finale of Act 1 of Don Giovanni, an opera in which Mozart seems to have incorporated many aspects of Salieri's art.

Umlauf, Ignaz (b. Vienna, 1746; d. Meidling, near Vienna, 8 June 1796). A composer and conductor active in Vienna, Umlauf held positions as Kapellmeister of the German opera (1778–83) and deputy conductor of the Italian opera (from 1783). Several of his singspiels were staged during his tenure as Kapellmeister, most notably Die schöne Schusterin, oder Die pücefarbenen Schuhe (1779), setting a libretto by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie. On 6 March 1789 Umlauf directed the singers in a performance (under Mozart's general direction) of Mozart's reorchestrated version of Handel's Messiah, K572. Professional interaction, however, did not equate with professional respect, for Mozart was disparaging about Umlauf's compositional abilities. Reporting to Leopold Mozart that Umlauf had taken a year to write one opera, Mozart explained (6 Oct. 1781): ‘you must not believe that the opera is any good, just because it took him a whole year. I should have thought . . . that it was the work of fourteen or fifteen days.’ He goes further still in his condemnation of Umlauf's Welches ist die beste Nation? as an ‘execrable opera’ (5 Feb. 1783): ‘the music is so bad that I do not know whether the poet or the composer will carry off the prize for inanity’ (21 Dec. 1782).

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