Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Notable: He used the Latinized name Amadeus rarely and only in jest, preferring the Italian or French forms Amadè or Amadé.

Born: January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria
Died: December 5, 1791, in Vienna, Austria

Overture to Lucio Silla, K. 135

• Composed:  late 1772
  
• Premiere: December 26, 1772, at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan, Italy
  
• CSO Notable Performances:
  • First and Most Recent CSO: February 1960, Max Rudolf conducting. May Festival: 2016, James Conlon conducting.
• Instrumentation: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings
• Duration: approx. 9 minutes

The three works on this program represent early, middle and late Mozart. Until he was 24, he would have listed his “permanent address” as Salzburg, but in fact he spent great swaths of those years touring around Europe accompanied by family members. He undertook three trips to Italy, and for each of them he wrote operas, which in every case were triumphantly received. By the time he composed Lucio Silla, for his final Italian visit (October 1772–March 1773), he was an experienced hand; he had written his first stage work, a sacred drama, when he was turning 11, and Lucio Silla was the ninth of his operas and oratorios. He began writing the recitatives in October 1772, but then the text was heavily revised, leaving him to compose essentially the whole three-act work in November and December. Following its premiere on the day after Christmas, Mozart’s father, Leopold, wrote to the family back in Salzburg, reporting on various mishaps, including tensions among the cast and a curtain-time delayed by three hours. But after this rocky start the piece found considerable favor; on January 23, Leopold wrote to his wife that the opera had by then received 26 performances and that “the theater is astonishingly full every day.”

Lucio Silla is a full-scale opera seria involving conflicts in love and politics between a Roman emperor (the title character) and a senator who tries to assassinate him but is eventually forgiven. Some of its characterization is remarkably dark, but that does not tinge the Overture, which at the time served not so much to prefigure the mood of the opera as to get things rolling as the audience settled in. The Overture to Lucio Silla is typical in its three-movement layout: the first is in a condensed sonata form, the second a more lyrical interlude, and the third a vigorous, triple-time romp. 

A fine line, if any, separated opera overtures from symphonies at this time. In fact, Mozart recycled this overture into what he called a Symphony in D Major, expanding it with (as the third of four movements) a minuet he plucked from a set of Six Minuets (K. 61h) he had composed, probably in Salzburg, sometime in the period 1770–72.

—James M. Keller