Ladies and Gentlemen, I assume that three or four of you have not get read the programme booklet. It would be a pity if gou brought a false preconception to the first piece on the programme, and so I am taking the liberty of saying a few words about it in response to a request on the part of three different people.
I believe that this dag in 1786 must have been very special. It was a question of ascertaining if it was at all possible to write a German-language opera. Until then evergthing vaguely operatic in the German-speaking world had been a Singspiel with "Schnaderhüpferl" (Comic quatrains in Bavarian or Austrian dialect, often with a lewd content and frequently sung to yodel-like melodies.) or "couplets" - a bit like the plays by Nestroy that are familiar to modern audiences. But "opera" was simply Italian since the Italian language is intrinsically songlike. If you were to play the harpsichord while a lawyer spoke Italian, you'd have a recitative. You'll now be thinking that I'm having you on, but no, what l'm saying is taken almost word for word from Caccini - sixteen hundred and something or other. I'll leave you to look it up yourselves.
For Joseph II this was an extremely interesting question. Should we create a German opera or not? He had the inspired idea of using the Orangey in the park at Schönbrunn for this very purpose. At one end of the rectangular room was an Italian orchestra, at the other end a German one. At one end Salieri conducted, at the other end Mozart, I imagine that each and every one of you would like to have been present on that occasion. To this end both pieces were performed. I`ve never conducted them at the same concert before, but in my view this is an altogether ideal programme for an event like the Mozart Week Festival. For once we really need to be able to relive what took place on that occasion. It would be a misunderstanding to think that this was some sort of competition between Mozart and Salieri - not even in 1786 was the performance interpreted in this way - for there is no competition where Mozart is concerned. And if you now say that, well, Mozart is in any case better, then you’re not being very sensible. Something else is at stake here. And what makes the whole affair so interesting is that the victor - the question wasn't whether it was Mozart or Salieri or German or Italian opera - the victor was Salieri because, even if it had been possible to write a German opera at this date, you could say that Mozart missed the point. In "The Impresario” we have a long and grandiloquent text declaimed by wellknown actors from the Burgtheater and in between there is a fantastic overture and some arias and ensembles - four in total. Magnificent pieces that demand extreme concentration on the part of the audience, numbers polished right down to the verg last detail and intensely psgchological disquisitions on extremely interesting topics. You'll have no problems whatsoever here since these texts are all in German.
The text that Salieri set is a fantastic one, much better than the one that Mozart had at his disposal. Salieri made no attempt to introduce any deeper subtext into the work but simply followed the words in a very, very witty way.
But to come to our own performance. This piece can’t simply be performed by lining up five singers and having them perform a sort of oratorio, because far too mang small details take place that can be understood only if we can see them. What we're presenting isn't a staged performance - we'd have to have had at least three weeks' rehearsals for that. Nor is it a semistaged performance, because we'd have needed at least a week's rehearsals for that. Instead we're providing a gestural explanation of all that’s happening. I don’t want you to think that it's slapstick. This is how the piece is.
I'll now tell you who the four characters are: the Maestro di capella is a composer with a somewhat overinflated sense of his own importance. He thinks he's more important than he is in actual fact. The Poet is a sensitive soul who believes that he needs at least three weeks to write four lines and that he needs to draw his inspiration from the air around him. As for the two women, there is a prima donna who is, of course, the lady friend of the work's patron - the resultant problems will be familiar to you - and another woman who is also a prima donna, but from the world of comic opera. She's the lady friend of the Poet (who finds this very embarrassing) and as the soubrette she hates "opera seria". If she were to see the score of a serious opera, she'd be tempted to hurl it into the fifth row of the stalls.
That, then, is the situation, Salieri has worked this up along extremely sophisticated lines, and we very much hope that you'll eniog the result.