Aria as drama: A sketch from Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor

Abstract

There are few opportunities to compare differing readings by Mozart of the same text. Except in his sacred music, Mozart rarely had occasion to return to texts that he had already set, and relatively few sketches, drafts or heavily revised autographs offer extended alternative versions of other settings. Although most of the surviving sketches and drafts for operas and other vocal pieces do not diverge significantly from the final versions, some of these preliminary materials reveal Mozart reconsidering a text-setting, and thus offer important glimpses into his dramatic imagination. Such is the case with a draft for ‘Da schlägt die Abschiedsstunde’, the first aria of Der Schauspieldirektor. The draft and final autograph present related yet significantly different conceptions of the same number, enabling us to examine Mozart's revision of one particular aria, and his reconciliation of an individual solo number with the larger dramatic argument of the opera.