Theological Anthropology in Mozarts La clemenza di Tito: Sin, Grace, and Conversion 9781032149790, 9781032199160, 9781003261452

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1. Contexts
2. Political Theology
3. Tito: Grace Freely Given
4. Sesto: Concupiscence and Conversion
5. Vitellia: Lust for Power
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Index of scriptures

Citation preview

Theological Anthropology in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito

This book asks what theological messages theologically educated Catholics in lateeighteenth-century Prague might have perceived in Mozart’s late opera seria La clemenza di Tito. The book’s thesis is two-fold: first, that Catholics might have heard the opera’s advocacy of enlightened absolutism as a celebration of a distinctly Catholic understanding of political governance; and second, that they might have found in the opera a metaphor for the relationship between a gracious God and humanity caught up in sin, expressed as sexual concupiscence, pride, and lust for power. The book develops its interpretation of the opera through narrative character analyses of the main protagonists, an examination of their dramatic development, and by paying attention to the biblical and theological associations they may have evoked in a Catholic audience. The book is geared towards academic readers interested in opera, theologians, historians, and those who work at the intersection of theology and the arts. It contributes to a better understanding of the theological implications of Mozart’s operatic work. Steffen Lösel is Associate Professor in the Practice of Systematic Theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, USA.

Routledge Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts Series editors: Jeremy Begbie, Duke University, USA and University of Cambridge, UK Trevor Hart, University of St Andrews, UK What have imagination and the arts to do with theology? For much of the modern era, the answer has been ‘not much’. It is precisely this deficit that this series seeks to redress. For, whatever role they have or have not been granted in the theological disciplines, imagination and the arts are undeniably bound up with how we as human beings think, learn and communicate, engage with and respond to our physical and social environments and, in particular, our awareness and experience of that which transcends our own creatureliness. The arts are playing an increasingly significant role in the way people come to terms with the world; at the same time, artists of many disciplines are showing a willingness to engage with religious or theological themes. A spate of publications and courses in many educational institutions has already established this field as one of fast-growing concern. This series taps into a burgeoning intellectual concern on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. The peculiar inter-disciplinarity of theology, and the growing interest in imagination and the arts in many different fields of human concern, afford the opportunity for a series that has its roots sunk in varied and diverse intellectual soils, while focused around a coherent theological question: How are imagination and the arts involved in the shaping and reshaping of our humanity as part of the creative and redemptive purposes of God, and what roles do they perform in the theological enterprise? Many projects within the series have particular links to the work of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts in the University of St Andrews, and to the Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts at Duke University. Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts Edited by Sarah Covington and Kathryn Reklis Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts Theology, Aesthetics, and Practice Edited by Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele Theological Anthropology in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito Sin, Grace, and Conversion Steffen Lösel For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: https:// www.routledge.com/religion/series/ATHEOART

Theological Anthropology in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito Sin, Grace, and Conversion

Steffen Lösel

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Steffen Lösel The right of Steffen Lösel to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-032-14979-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-19916-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-26145-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452 Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

For Jürgen Moltmann, in honor of his ninety-fifth birthday—my teacher who also became my good friend—and in thankful memory of Graham Robert Hughes (1937–2015)—my good friend who also became my teacher.

Contents

Acknowledgments Preface Introduction

viii xii 1

1

Contexts

26

2

Political Theology

50

3

Tito: Grace Freely Given

84

4

Sesto: Concupiscence and Conversion

123

5

Vitellia: Lust for Power

160

Epilogue

185

Bibliography Index Index of scriptures

189 200 205

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been written without the support of many people and institutions. To begin with, I am deeply thankful for the generous financial support of the Henry Luce III Foundation. Becoming a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology during academic year 2013–2014 enabled me to take a full year of research leave from Emory University to delve into the world of Mozart. Under the warmhearted leadership of Stephen R. Graham, the Luce Foundation, together with the Association of Theological Schools, also provided a community of scholars and regular meetings in New York City and Pittsburgh over the course of three years, meetings and conversations I would not want to have missed. Additional thanks go to my colleagues on Emory’s University Research Committee for awarding me another financial grant, which bought me extra time off teaching after I returned from my Luce-funded leave in 2014. Thanks to Fairfield University’s Religious Studies Department and especially the then-Chair, Professor Paul Lakeland, for inviting me to give the 2015 Catholicism and the Arts Lecture, which allowed me to present my first set of ideas about La clemenza di Tito to an admittedly rather small public. That night, I realized that eighteenth-century opera seria is certainly not the most popular art form in the contemporary United States! Competing against the World Series with Mozart is a no-win situation, certainly not on a day when it is pouring rain. Nevertheless, having to write the lecture forced me to get on with my research (which is so important in projects like this), and the hospitality prepared for me in Fairfield— especially by Professor John E. Thiel—was wonderful. I thank my colleagues E. Brooks Holifield and Don E. Saliers from the Candler School of Theology, Walter S. Melion from Emory University’s Art History Department, James V. H. Melton from Emory University’s History Department, and David Cunningham from Hope College for their support, intellectual exchange, and meticulous comments in the early stages of my grant applications, research, and writing. Thanks to Serene Jones for giving me the courage, during a conversation at an Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, to follow the interests of my heart and write on what fascinates me. My gratitude goes to Jürgen Feulner from the University of Vienna, for his help translating some of the difficult linguistic details in eighteenth-century

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Catholic liturgies, and to Joachim Bürkle from the University of Würzburg, for his kind help with finding eighteenth-century Catholic catechisms. Many thanks to my colleague Judy Raggi Moore from the Italian Studies Department at Emory University for assisting me with some of the finer points of Italian grammar and for pointing me to further helpful resources on the Italian language. Thanks also to Judy for inviting me several years in a row to give an annual lecture to her wonderful undergraduate students in the Italian Studies Travel Seminar. In the hot but beautiful English Garden of the Royal Palace of Caserta, I gave a discourse on criminal punishment practices in eighteenth-century Naples, which allowed me to extend my interest in the legal aspects in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito to the political challenges of a contemporary Habsburg monarch. Many thanks to my friend Gordon S. Mikoski from Princeton Theological Seminary, who has been a great intellectual and emotional support to me during my many years of work on Mozart. I recall with gratitude our long walks through New York’s Central Park and through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, during which he listened to my woes and worries. I am likewise deeply grateful to my friend Christos Karakolis from the University of Athens in Greece for spending many a warm summer night with me on a Bavarian balcony mulling different ways of approaching theological questions in Mozart’s work. It was at his suggestion that I decided to abandon the question of authorial intent and instead ask how a member of Mozart’s eighteenth-century audience in Prague might have understood the composer’s work. I especially want to acknowledge my colleague Joy Ann McDougall at the Candler School of Theology. Joy has been tremendously supportive over our many years at Emory University and long before. Together, we have attended countless concerts of the Chicago and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras and the New York Philharmonic, and many a performance of opera at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, Vienna’s Staatsoper, Chicago’s Lyric Opera, New York City’s Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Opera. We have discussed the various productions’ merits and demerits, and Joy listened patiently to my every insight into the world of Mozart. Thank you, Joy, for all of that, and especially for your emotional sustenance in the inevitable moments of selfdoubt which attack most every scholar. Your unending support has been invaluable. Vital aid for this project also came from my good friend Armin H. Kutscher, theologian, liturgist, and accomplished professional French horn player. I could not have finished this book without his advice about eighteenth-century Catholic liturgy and his tireless help in getting me to understand music theory and many of the finer points of musicological scholarship. Armin provided many suggestions about relevant literature and carefully commented on previous versions of my manuscript. His suggestions, his critical comments, and his constructive suggestions were indispensable to me. Further gratitude goes to my erstwhile Doktorvater and now friend, Professor Dr. Jürgen Moltmann, who for the last eight years kept nudging me with his persistent question: “And how is Mozart doing?” Of course, not everyone is

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as prolific as Jürgen has been for more than sixty years now, and so I appreciate even more his patience and unwavering support throughout the years since I graduated from the Eberhard-Karls-Universität in Tübingen. Jürgen may be forgiven for being among the few Christian theological renegades (dare I say heretics?) who, I’m afraid, prefer Beethoven to Mozart. I dedicate this book in part to him. My posthumous gratitude goes to my late friend Graham R. Hughes (1937– 2015), New Testament scholar by origin and liturgical scholar first by institutional necessity and later by intellectual and pastoral passion. I met Graham at a wine-tasting session in the cellars of the episcopal palace in Würzburg during a meeting of the international Societas Liturgica. In the all too short time of our friendship, Graham offered advice, support, wisdom, and most of all, a friendship I often miss today. Sadly, Graham passed away too early in life. His death meant that I took a temporary break from Mozart, for I had promised Graham that I would help get published the completed parts of his book on Reformed sacramentality that he was working at the time of his death. With the cooperation of Graham’s friends William Emilsen and Gordon W. Lathrop, and with the support of Hans Christoffersen at The Liturgical Press, Graham’s book appeared in 2017. I also dedicate my own book to Graham’s memory. I thank my student Alexandra Daley, who offered me much research help over the course of the last three years and, more recently, greatly assisted me by creating the bibliographies for this book. Alex and I could sing a lengthy duet about the possible pitfalls in applying The Chicago Manual of Style correctly, for they are legion! Alex is a great sport and pure joy as a collaborator. My thanks also go to Lindsey Faust for stepping in at the last minute to help with proofreading the final manuscript, and to Deborah van der Lande from Candler’s Faculty Support Suite for everything she does and for who she is. Candler would not be the same place for me without her. Thanks also to my editor, Ulrike Guthrie, for her always swift and meticulous help fixing my English prose and countless other editorial corrections. Working with Ulrike is fun. Both her kindness and her professionalism are unrivaled. Many thanks to Professors Jeremy Begbie and Trevor Hart, the editors of the Routledge Studies in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts, for accepting my book into their series, and to Katherine Ong and Yuga Harini from Routledge for their help in getting this book published. My thanks go to Modern Theology for permitting me to republish my essay “Clemency and Conversion: Theological Reflections on Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito,” which originally appeared in Modern Theology 34, no. 4 (October 2018): 637–656 (https://doi.org/10.1111/moth.12438), and to Theology Today for permitting me to republish a section of my essay, “In Need of God: Mozart, Faith, and Così fan tutte,” which originally appeared in Theology Today 74, no. 2 (July 2017): 112–137 © 2017 by Theology Today (https://doi.org/10. 1177%2F0040573617716616). Finally, my heartfelt gratitude goes to David Walker for encouraging me ever so gently not to get stuck. His great humor, extraordinary intelligence,

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emotional care, gourmet cooking, and loving kindness helped me to finish this book during a monastic summer in Canaan, New York. Whenever the long days of work on my manuscript seemed to come to no end, David took my mind off my work by introducing me to the splendors of New England, from the magnificent Berkshires to the mysterious Hudson Valley and Frederic Church’s Olana all the way up to the rugged beauty of the Maine coast. I cannot thank him enough.

Preface

It was in Munich’s small State Theater at the Gärtnerplatz—the folksier people’s theater of the three opera houses in the Bavarian capital—that in 1985 at the age of nineteen I attended my first opera performance. On the program was Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. I had not grown up in a home where listening to opera—or any classical music, for that matter—was a habit. My interest in Mozart had originated in hearing his orchestral masses performed during mass at Munich’s Jesuit St. Michaelskirche. Then, during my theological studies at the University of Munich, I started attending performances at the larger and more famous Bavarian State Opera. There, operas were performed in their original language rather than in German translation. On the night of a performance, tickets were available for students at a discounted rate, which made them cheaper than a ticket to the movies. I could not resist. In Europe, opera is still a widely appreciated art form that people from all walks of life attend, if not regularly, then at least on occasion. At the Staatsoper, I could see members of the former Bavarian royal family (the Wittelsbachs still have rights to their own proscenium loge on the upper left whenever they wish to attend), my eleventh-grade math teacher, and the saleslady from behind the cake counter at Café Schneller, a favorite student hangout in Munich’s Maxvorstadt, once affectionally known as the Oma-Café. For decades, every time I attended a performance in the Staatsoper, I spotted a slightly disheveled gentleman in the gallery. Nowadays, if I do not see him, I worry about his health. In Europe, opera productions are mostly contemporary and often provocative. Through what is sometimes dismissed in the United States as Regietheater, European directors aim to bring to the fore relevant social and political messages for our day. Such attempts can be contrived, to be sure, but at least they mean that opera still has a socially critical voice in contemporary society— perhaps more so than the church. When I moved to Chicago years later, visits to the Bavarian State Opera were replaced by visits to the Lyric Opera House. The quality of the performances was also great, although to me the house seemed too large for many of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century works given there, including those of Mozart. Yet what struck me even more was how different the social function of

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opera in American society appeared to be. At the Lyric, there was none of the social diversity in the audience that I always saw at the Bavarian State Opera. Absent too was the socially critical role of opera as an art form—or so it appeared to me. In the United States, only a few people enjoy opera, and the realities of fundraising from mostly affluent donors mean that the politically critical function of art is somewhat curtailed. The step from enjoying opera to writing about opera was not a natural one for me, as I am neither a musician nor a musicologist by training. Curiously enough, a scene in Amadeus, Miloš Forman’s 1984 movie adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s stage play, was the original impetus for my interest in approaching Mozart academically with theological questions. In the scene in the film (beginning at 1:47:57), Mozart’s rival in Vienna, Italian composer Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), recounts at the end of his life his amazement at hearing the reconciliation scene in Figaro for the first time. “I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater,” Salieri tells his interlocutor, “conferring on all who sat there, perfect absolution. God was singing through this little man—to all the world—unstoppable, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar.” Whatever the historical worth of Shaffer’s play and Forman’s film (or rather lack thereof), for me the film awakened theological questions about Mozart’s work. When the Society of Anglican and Lutheran Theologians dedicated its 2003 annual meeting to the topic of “Arts and Religion,” I had the opportunity to pursue those questions in a paper I gave on The Marriage of Figaro (1785).1 As I soon discovered, theologians have a long history of writing about Mozart. The first was Søren Kierkegaard. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard declares that he is “infatuated, like a young girl, with Mozart,” so much so that he desires to “have him rank in first place, whatever it costs.”2 Unless the church embraces Mozart, says Kierkegaard, he himself will “form a sect that not only places Mozart first but has no one but Mozart.”3 In Either/Or, Kierkegaard offers a theological interpretation of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787)—which, in Kierkegaard’s mind, is the “only one of his works” that renders Mozart “a classic composer and absolutely immortal.”4 Kierkegaard interprets the Don as the incarnation of what he calls “the immediate-erotic” or “the musical-erotic.”5 Kierkegaard is not alone in his love for Mozart. Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth once confessed that “if I ever get to heaven, I would first of all seek out Mozart and only then inquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher.”6 Barth adds that it may be that when the angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille, they play Mozart and that then too our dear Lord listens with special pleasure.7 Just like Kierkegaard, Barth offered a theological reading of Mozart’s work, even though Barth famously contends that Mozart “does not reveal in his music

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any doctrine and certainly not himself.”8 Still, despite Barth’s insistence that Mozart “just sings and sounds,” he perceives Mozart’s music as a parable of the kingdom of heaven and as an affirmation that God is ever revealed behind God’s hiddenness in creation.9 Naturally, love of Mozart is not restricted to Protestants. In the 1950s, Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was seen in Basel taking his Mozart recordings to Barth’s house for their common enjoyment.10 Even though von Balthasar was not given to emotional outbursts comparable to Kierkegaard’s and Barth’s, we can discern his love for Mozart when he uses the perfection of Mozart’s compositions as an analogy for the perfection of God’s creation and Mozart’s creative freedom as composer as an analogy for God’s freedom over against creation.11 While still a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) reported in a long interview that having grown up in the Inn and Salzach region in Bavaria, not far from Salzburg, meant for him and his brother that “Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me very deeply, because it is so luminous and yet at the same time so deep.”12 Countering anyone who might deem Mozart to be merely frivolous, Ratzinger clarifies that “[h]is music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence.”13 After his brother’s election as pope, Georg Ratzinger, long-time director of the cathedral boys’ choir in Regensburg (the Regensburger Domspatzen), reported that “Mozart, I think, is my brother’s favorite composer even today.”14 Others, like Hans Küng, could be added to this list of theological admirers. Reading their musings about Mozart gave me the courage to believe that my desire to engage theological questions in Mozart’s operas is not an altogether misguided endeavor. Even though many of these thinkers’ interpretations tell us more about their own theologies than about Mozart’s, they are testimonies to the theological reception that Mozart has received among audiences over the course of time. To these I now add my voice. A few years after my first foray into the world of Mozart, I followed up my reading of Figaro with an interpretation of Don Giovanni.15 Becoming a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology in 2013–2014 finally allowed me to extend my work on Mozart further and consider a book-length project. What had started out as a theological hobby turned into a passion. This book is its first fruit.

Notes 1 I published an extended version of the paper in Steffen Lösel, “Theologia Cantans: Mozart on Love, Forgiveness, and the Kenosis of Patriarchy,” Soundings 89, nos. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 2006): 73–99. 2 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 48. 3 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, 48. 4 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, 51. For Kierkegaard, Don Giovanni represents the incarnation of what he called “the immediate-erotic” or “the musical-erotic” (Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 62). For his interpretation of Don Giovanni, see Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 47–135.

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5 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, 51 and 62. 6 Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, trans. Clarence K. Pott, with a foreword by John Updike (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), 16. 7 Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 23. 8 Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 37. 9 Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 37. 10 See Elio Guerriero, Hans Urs von Balthasar: Eine Monographie, trans. Carl F. Müller (Freiburg im Breisgau: Johannes Verlag Einsiedeln, 1993), 106–107. 11 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. II, The Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 269 n. 40. 12 Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium—An Interview with Peter Seewald, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 47. 13 Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 47. 14 Georg Ratzinger, My Brother, the Pope, as told to Michael Hesemann, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 110. On Ratzinger’s relationship to Mozart, see ibid., 109–111. 15 See Steffen Lösel, “‘May Such Great Effort Not Be in Vain’: Mozart on Divine Love, Judgment, and Retribution,” The Journal of Religion 89, no. 3 (July 2009): 361–400.

Bibliography Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory. Vol. II, The Dramatis Personae: Man in God. Translated by Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990. Barth, Karl. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Translated by Clarence K. Pott. Foreword by John Updike. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986. Guerriero, Elio. Hans Urs von Balthasar: Eine Monographie. Translated by Carl F. MüllerFreiburg im Breisgau: Johannes Verlag Einsiedeln, 1993. Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or, Part I. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Lösel, Steffen. “‘May Such Great Effort Not Be in Vain’: Mozart on Divine Love, Judgment, and Retribution.” In The Journal of Religion 89, no. 3 (July 2009): 361–400. Lösel, Steffen. “Theologia Cantans: Mozart on Love, Forgiveness, and the Kenosis of Patriarchy.” In Soundings 89, nos. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 2006): 73–99. Ratzinger, Georg. My Brother, the Pope. As told to Michael Hesemann. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011. Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI). Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium—An Interview with Peter Seewald. Translated by Adrian Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997.

Introduction

In 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), together with Dresden-court librettist Caterino Mazzolà (1745–1806), wrote his last opera seria, entitled La clemenza di Tito. The work was commissioned by the Bohemian Estates for the coronation festivities of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792) as King of Bohemia. It was based on a 1734 libretto by celebrated Viennese court librettist Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782). After a decade of composing only opere buffe and German Singspiels, Mozart’s composition of La clemenza di Tito signaled both a return to the old genre of opera seria (serious opera) and, at the same time, a new take on it. Both the genre itself and La clemenza di Tito, as an example of it, were quite popular with late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century audiences.1 The composer himself held his last opera seria in the highest regard. Mozart’s last foray into the theologically pregnant genre of opera seria offers the opportunity to re-evaluate religious dimensions in his work. While most authors today agree that Mozart was influenced by late-Enlightenment ideas, they are less than unanimous on the nature and extent of his religious commitments.2 Some claim that Mozart was at best an estranged, lukewarm, or lapsed Catholic, perhaps even an atheist.3 Others contend that Mozart remained a lifelong Catholic.4 If, as most scholars concur, Mozart cared about philosophical and social issues and aimed to express his ideas through his works, then the question of Mozart’s own faith is naturally important for interpreting his operas. German theologian Hans Küng (1928–2021) puts the issue in the form of a question: Could not some reflection on Mozart’s whole Catholic background, which so far has hardly been discussed as a specific theme, make a very small contribution towards understanding him? I am convinced that this background may be at least of some importance.5 At the same time, the continuing uncertainty about Mozart’s personal religiosity makes it difficult to know which theology—if any—Mozart wanted to express through his operas. Drawing conclusions about his own personal beliefs from Mozart’s operas is notoriously difficult, not only because the composer did not DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452-1

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pen his own libretti, but also because he did not leave posterity with any instructions for how he wanted his audiences to understand his works. The case to be made for Mozart’s theology, then, is not as simple as one would hope. But do we even need to ask which theology Mozart wanted to communicate through his opera? Here I suggest a different approach. Rather than inquiring about which theology—if any—Mozart may have wanted to convey in La clemenza di Tito, I ask what theological messages a member in the audience might have perceived in that opera. In other words, I shift the focus away from the composer and towards the audience. Instead of asking about Mozart’s own personal theological and/or philosophical outlook, I query the perception of his work among its audiences. Although I do engage arguments about Mozart and his librettist’s intentions in composing the opera, methodologically my interpretative focus in this book is on the work’s reception. If Mozart was a devout Catholic, we may wonder whether his audiences perceived his theological convictions and ideas in his works. But even if the composer and his librettist were not pious believers and did not intend to convey religiously colored messages in their work, it is still possible that Catholics in the audience overheard religious allusions in the two men’s creation. Let me give you an example. Towards the end of the opera, the Roman Emperor Titus comments on the political intrigue of his courtiers with the theologically pregnant words, “Let us see whether the treachery of others or my clemency is the more constant” (Vediamo, se più costante sia l’altrui perfidia, o la clemenza mia; II, 17, No. 25). As many people in the first 1791 audiences in Prague would have expected, clemency eventually wins out over treachery, or— to put it in theological terms—grace prevails over sin. Some spectators, I suggest, may well have been reminded of the apostle Paul’s words that, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20)—regardless of whether or not Mozart and Mazzolà intended such an association (which is conceivable). Such connotations motivate the inquiry behind this book. I ask: How might Mozart’s eighteenth-century audiences have heard and seen this, his penultimate work and last return to the genre of opera seria? Might they have interpreted it through a religious lens? Would they have found in this opera any theological allusions? Yet more concretely: Might they possibly have interpreted it as a parable for a Catholic understanding of human existence? Which theological ideas might it have evoked? Clearly, there is no certainty to be had on this question either. To my knowledge, we have no written attestations regarding how Mozart’s audiences interpreted his works or whether they interpreted them through a theological lens. There generally is only sparse testimony as to how contemporaries understood the composer’s operas.6 Moreover, we can assume that different members of the audience understood the opera differently. Aristocrats in Prague reacted differently to the opera than bourgeois audiences. Atheist Illuminati most likely interpreted the work differently than the mystically inclined and politically more conservative Rosicrucians. Likewise, enlightened Catholics will have had a different take on the work than more traditional Catholics, and

Introduction 3 Catholics in general probably responded altogether differently than Lutherans or Greek Orthodox Christians. When I propose an audience-oriented reading of La clemenza di Tito, therefore, I do not suggest that everybody in the opera house would have interpreted the work in the way I submit. My aim is more modest. I offer what I regard as one possible interpretation of the opera by one exemplary member in the audience—a theologically educated Catholic cleric in late-eighteenth-century Prague. I ask: How might such a person have interpreted the work? My presumed Catholic prelate in the audience is not (and need not be) an actual historical person, but rather a plausible spectator in the theater, that is, the kind of person who might have attended a performance of the opera in 1791. Many others would also have been present. Seeing and hearing the work presumably would have provoked in them other philosophical and political associations. But there surely were Catholic clerics among Mozart’s 1791 audiences— some more traditional, others enlightened, yet all of them theologically educated.7 I ask what one of these prelates in the audience might have associated with the work. Using principles of rhetorical theology and narrative criticism common today in biblical scholarship, I develop my interpretation through a reading of both the libretto and the music. Regarding the libretto, I offer narrative character analyses of the main protagonists, examine their dramatic development, and pay attention to the biblical and theological associations they might have evoked for my assumed audience member. Regarding the music, I focus on aspects that might have contributed to theological interpretations. For example, I examine whether eighteenth-century audiences understood Mozart’s use of musical genres, such as the chorale, as importing religious meaning, and whether those audiences might have interpreted the various tonalities as carrying symbolic significance.

My thesis In 1791, the performance of La clemenza di Tito was a social highlight in the context of an important state function—the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia. The work thus served an eminently political purpose. Both the Bohemian Estates, who commissioned it, and Leopold himself, who was meant to be honored by it, undoubtedly wished for the opera to express a political message in line with their own understanding of monarchical power. Already in 1734 the original version of Pietro Metastasio’s libretto La clemenza di Tito, which was set to music by Antonio Caldara (1670–1736), had functioned as a musical and artistic vehicle of the House of Habsburg’s self-representation as a Catholic dynasty marked by clement rule. Over the course of the eighteenth century, it served similar purposes time and again, not only in the Habsburg crown lands but elsewhere in Europe. As recent scholarship has shown, Mozart’s new take on the old genre of opera seria continued to extoll an absolutist form of government, one that was consonant, albeit now in line, with the political principles of late-Enlightenment thought.

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In so doing, it was reminiscent of the self-presentation of Holy Roman Emperors Joseph II (1741–1790) and Leopold II. In this book, I suggest that it did more than just that. My thesis is twofold: First, I claim that the opera’s advocacy of enlightened absolutism could have been heard as a celebration of a distinctly Catholic understanding of political governance, as would have been expected for the coronation of a Habsburg ruler (Metastasio’s libretto had already expressed a Catholic conception of absolutist rule, albeit representative of the early, rather than late, Enlightenment). Second, I attempt to show that a Catholic audience could have found in this opera a theological anthropology that reached beyond the immediate political circumstances of the day, as all of Mozart’s operas were prone to do. I suggest that, to my assumed member in the audience, the three main protagonists—the Roman Emperor Titus (Tito), his confidante Sextus (Sesto), and Tito’s rival Vitellia—could have appeared as examples of the Catholic tradition’s highly complex understanding of the relationship between a gracious God and humanity caught up in sin, expressed either as sexual concupiscence (Sextus), or as pride (superbia) and lust for power (libido dominandi) (Vitellia). I begin my analysis with a review of the opera’s negative reception by what some call the Romantic tradition. Indeed, since the late nineteenth century many commentators have treated Mozart’s last opera seria as a stepchild among the composer’s stage-works. Most influentially, twentieth-century theater critic and director Ivan Nagel (1931–2012) suggested that there is an evolution among Mozart’s operas away from Baroque opera seria, with its absolutist notion of grace, toward a renewed concept of opera buffa centered around the notion of human autonomy.8 In hailing human freedom over divine sovereignty, Mozart purportedly rang the death knell for serious opera and replaced theological concepts with secular substitutes. In this view, La clemenza di Tito appears as an anachronistic return to a world that had already been left behind. In Chapter 1, I take up this critical reception history of Mozart and Mazzolà’s work. In response, I situate the work in two historical contexts: the coronation festivities in Prague and the contemporary renewal of opera seria. I contend that Mozart had no intention of leaving opera seria behind, that his contemporary audiences appreciated the genre, and that the work’s message resonated especially with the bourgeoisie in the dawning age of sensibility. Here, I also offer some historical background for the Roman Emperor Titus and discuss how, in the context of the Habsburg monarchy, a pagan and brutal Roman emperor could have become the symbolic representation of the Catholic conception of clemency. In Chapter 2, I turn to Pietro Metastasio’s 1734 libretto, with which late eighteenth-century audiences would have been familiar. In dialogue with current scholarly discussion on La clemenza di Tito, I discuss the original text’s significance and the changes that Mozart and Mazzolà introduced to it. Here, I first locate Metastasio’s text in the philosophical context of the early Enlightenment and, more specifically, the efforts of the Accademia degli Arcardi to offer a Catholic response to the ideology of power politics proposed by Niccolò

Introduction 5 Machiavelli’s 1513 book, Il Principe (The Prince). I suggest that Metastasio’s libretto advocates for a balance between clemency and rigor, which reflects the Habsburg conception of absolutist rule encapsulated in the term clementia Austriaca. Second, I discuss the formal and material alterations that Mozart and Mazzolà introduced to Metastasio’s libretto in the political and philosophical context of the late Enlightenment and the dawning age of sensibility. I show that, in their hands, the opera was meant to advocate for the rule of law, rather than the absolute ruler’s extraordinary use of pardons based in his liberum arbitrium, as was the case in Metastasio’s original version of the libretto. I maintain that the audience could have understood this altered understanding of political rule as reflective of the bourgeois conception of God as “the good Lord” (der liebe Gott). In the three remaining chapters, I offer a critical narrative analysis of the three main characters on stage. In Chapter 3, I argue that the audience could have interpreted the Emperor Tito as a messianic savior figure and a parable for Jesus—hailed in Catholic theology, spirituality, and liturgy as heavenly king, divine judge, and merciful savior. Furthermore, in Chapter 4, I contend that Sesto—Tito’s closest friend, whose intimate affection for the emperor stands in conflict with his erotic infatuation with Vitellia, the vengeful daughter of Tito’s ousted predecessor—could have emerged first as a parable for human concupiscence and sin and later as a model of Christian repentance. Finally, in Chapter 5, I assert that a Catholic prelate in the audience could have interpreted Vitellia’s anger and unconcealed desire for revenge with Augustine’s theological descriptions of sin in mind as incurvature upon oneself through inordinate self-love (amor sui), pride (superbia), and the desire for domination (libido dominandi). Before I begin my analysis of how a theologically educated Catholic prelate in the Prague audience might have interpreted La clemenza di Tito, I offer a sketch (not exactly a fictious portrait) of what my prelate from late-eighteenthcentury Bohemia might have looked like. As Peter Hersche has noted, the clergy played a significantly more important role in Catholic countries in eighteenthcentury Europe than their Protestant counterparts, both in terms of numbers and in terms of their influence. Although the clergy retained its quality as its own estate—more so than the Protestant and, especially, the Reformed clergy— internally it was more divided by social rank: the episcopate was largely, if not exclusively, made up of members of the nobility, while the lowest ranks of the clergy, consisting of so-called “mass-priests” and abati, presented what Owen Chadwick and Hersche refer to as a “clerical proletariat.”9 As we see below, a number of highly educated prelates belonging to the regular clergy came from a bourgeois background. I ask what such a prelate’s weltanschauliche horizon would have been, what theological and other education he might have enjoyed, and how he might possibly have navigated the changing waters between the baroque world in which he grew up and the increasingly enlightened context in which he lived in the second half of the eighteenth century. In a final section of this Introduction, I take a closer look at Mozart’s own religiosity. My interest here is not in Mozart as (co-)author of La clemenza di

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Tito, and thus not in inadvertently reverting to the question of authorial intent. Rather, I present Mozart’s dispersed comments about religious and theological questions as representative of the kind of thinking that might have been shared by the bourgeois lay Catholics who attended a performance of his next-to-last opera. Although presumably not as biblically well-versed or theologically educated as regular and secular prelates, both aristocrats and members of the growing bourgeois class in the eighteenth century would have had nonetheless an educated theological and/or philosophical outlook as the context for understanding Mozart’s opera.

Johann Pezzl and the religious landscape in Habsburg lands in the 1780s In the years 1786 to 1790, enlightened writer and librarian Johann Pezzl (1756– 1823) published a series of descriptions of the city of Vienna, entitled Skizze von Wien (Sketch of Vienna; 1786–1790).10 Pezzl’s multi-volume work includes detailed comments about the state of religion in the Habsburg crown lands and the makeup of its clergy—comments that can help us imagine what a Catholic prelate in Mozart and Mazzolà’s audience in 1791 Prague might have looked like. Pezzl identifies three classes of clergy in the 1780s Habsburg crown territories, both among the lower and the higher ranks. First, there is the still relatively small, albeit constantly growing, “court” party (Hofpartei), that is, clergy that (in Pezzl’s words) “encourages Enlightenment, discourages superstition and ignorance, seeks to free itself from papal ideas, and preaches morality and practical religion.”11 The clergy who belong to this group are Catholic Enlighteners, many of whom also will have had some sympathy for Febronianism— the ecclesiastical, anti-ultramontanist ideas of the Auxiliary Bishop of Trier, Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (1701–1790). Second, there is “the party of the old-style orthodox” (die Parthei der Orthodoxen nach altem Schnitt), that is, conservative opponents of the emperor’s reforms. This unenlightened, misguided group, Pezzl contends, is still the largest in terms of numbers, especially in rural areas and provinces far away from the urban centers.12 In Pezzl’s view, they can only be brought in line with government policy “through fear, punishment, and through threats” (durch Furcht, durch Strafen, und durch Drohungen).13 Still, they supposedly oppose the emperor’s reforms, denounce and vilify innovations, and decry the Enlightenment whenever they can, in so doing causing “confusion and discontent” (Verwirrung und Unzufriedenheit), be it in the confessional, during home visits, and in personal conversations.14 Finally, a third group of clergy consists of “waverers, time-servers, and hypocrites” (die Schwanker, die Achselträger, die Heuchler) who refuse to declare a clear allegiance to either side, whether because they cannot decide where they stand, worry about the constantly shifting tides in the church, or only pretend to support reforms while secretly favoring the old system.15 Under the rule of Joseph II, the government took decisive measures to bring the clergy increasingly in line with government policies, most importantly by

Introduction 7 taking control of theological education. Pezzl complains that previously, “within their monastic walls, and on their wooden theological thrones” (inner seiner Klostermauern, und auf seinen theologischen Bretterthronen), clergy could “concoct, forge, teach, preach, and conjure” (ausheken, schmieden, lehren, predigen, und beschwören) abstruse “doctrinal systems” (Lehrsysteme) just as they pleased. The state did not interfere either because it did not care or because sacred theology, canon law, and church history were regarded as so holy that laypeople would not dare to “join in saying something” (mitzusprechen) or even “prescribe” anything (verordnen).16 Pezzl suggests that the clergy took advantage of “this blind indolence, and mindless superstition” (diese blinde Indolenz, und diesen stupiden Aberglauben) by turning “dogmatics and casuistics into such a long, broad, and impenetrable net, that with its help they could entangle, control, and suffocate the intellect of the poor lay folks ad libitum.”17 At that time, Pezzl suggests, canon law and church history mostly served to justify the church’s interests and were used to turn the church into “a state within the state” (einen Staat im Staat), which engaged in permanent conflict with the “legitimate legislative power” (rechtmässig gesetzgebende Gewalt) and tried “to publicly and secretly diminish, undermine, and invalidate it” (diesselbe öffentlich und heimlich zu schmälern, zu untergraben und zu entkräften).18 Under Joseph II, however, Pezzl avers, decisive steps were taken to end this ecclesial independence of and rivalry to the state. The church’s doctrinal system was subordinated under “the general system of the state” (dem allgemeinen Staatssystem), especially by establishing in all larger provinces “general seminaries” (General-Seminarien), in which future priests had to live for five years following a moderate lifestyle and showing themselves worthy of their calling. Those future priests were taught there by men whose “clear way of thinking and refined principles” (lichte Denkungsart und geläuterte Grundsätze) the state can trust.19 Seminarians and the remaining monks studied their respective fields at public universities and other educational institutions. No longer, Pezzl notes, were they indoctrinated according to the various theological schools of old, be it according to Saint Thomas, Scotus, Augustine, Bonaventure, or according to the teaching of “laxists, probabilists, probabiliorists, tutiorists, rigorists, and whatever all these fools … were called” (Laxisten, Probabilisten, Probabilioristen, Tutioristen, Rigoristen, und wie alle die Narren … hießen).20 Rather, says Pezzl, “The textbooks are uniformly arranged according to the principles of reason, scripture, morality, and the wellbeing of bourgeois society and the state.”21 Not only theoretical studies but also public preaching were emphasized. Pezzl notes that this new system of theological education has already yielded rich fruit, but he also observes some seminarians’ temptation to become “vain” (eitel) from public or privately expressed applause. He encourages superiors in the seminaries to remind their students “to demonstrate a little more modesty and kindness towards their audience” (etwas mehr Bescheidenheit und Freundlichkeit gegen das Publikum zu bezeugen).22 By Pezzl’s count, the total number of monks and nuns in the Austrian monarchy between 1770 and 1786 had shrunk from 64,890 to about 27,000. Of the 1,572

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monasteries and 591 convents that existed in 1770, 139 Jesuit institutions were closed in 1773, and another 413 monasteries and 211 nunneries between 1780 and the middle of 1786. More monasteries of other orders were closed after that, including the entire Pauline Order in Hungary. At the time of Pezzl’s writing, the remaining ones were forbidden to accept novices, which leads him to assume that this may result in them closing their doors soon. (They did not.) Yet even the religious orders that for special reasons were temporarily exempted from the restriction of welcoming novices supposedly could not find any.23 For Pezzl, this is evidence of the people’s changed mindset. The only religious order that pleases Joseph’s government are the Hospitallers (Barmherzige Brüder) as their work with the sick benefits humanity. Other monasteries are allowed to persist only because the number of properties, buildings, and persons is too large to be dealt with if dissolved. Even for those monks who are still allowed to exist, Pezzl notes, their life has changed drastically. Some are being charged with assisting secular priests in their parishes. They no longer engage in the divine office (Chorgebet); are given dispensation from fasting rules; are allowed to wear shoes, socks, and underwear; can participate in society; and must no longer wear their habit when serving as chaplains in the countryside. Moreover, they are allowed to study in colleges and at the university, where they receive an enlightened, rather than a scholastic, education. Still, according to Pezzl, most of the remaining monks “ardently long for the complete abolition” of the monasteries.24 This is true, Pezzl qualifies, at least for “the young monks” (die jungen Mönche), who tend to welcome as a “messiah” (Messias) the government’s commissioner (den landesherrlichen Kommissär) charged with dissolving the monasteries.25 For these monks, the commissioner “bursts the chains of compulsion, tyranny, and dull idleness” (die Fesseln des Zwanges, der Tyrannei und der stumpfen Unthätigkeit), “gives them back the highest good of mortals, liberty” (welcher ihnen das höchste Gut der Sterblichen, die Freiheit … wieder schenkte), and, instead, turns them “back [over] to human society” (und sie selbst der Menschengesellschaft).26 Yet other monks, Pezzl admits, namely “the prelates, priors, guardians, and generally all superiors and the old ones” (die Prälaten, Prioren, Guardianen, überhaupt alle Superioren und die Alten), react to the government’s dissolution of monasteries with “anger and desperation” (Wuth und Verzweiflung)—mostly (says Pezzl) because the government’s decree “put an end to their large income, their rule, and their pious idleness” (ihren großen Einkünften, ihrer Herrschaft, und ihrem frommen Müßiggang ein Ende machte).27 Pezzl’s anti-clerical polemics leaves no room for differentiation when it comes to monasticism. Overall, however, Pezzl’s picture of the religious life in Vienna and particularly of its clergy is multifaceted. Even though the city is overwhelmingly Catholic, there are also Protestants, Greek Orthodox Christians, Jews, Deists, and even a few atheists, he reports. Catholic lay persons are slowly opening themselves up to the insights of the Josephinian Enlightenment. They are abandoning many of their former pious and at times superstitious practices, and their overall attitude towards religion is changing. Monastic life has been

Introduction 9 severely curtailed by the government, and consequently the city abounds with former monks and nuns. Churches have been purged of much popular kitsch, the custom of holding simultaneous celebrations of masses in the same church has been ended, and now preachers and even the archbishop are the target of public criticism. Still, attendance at Sunday masses is high, and people observe traditional religious customs. Vienna remains a largely Catholic city, and people take their religion seriously.

The Catholic Enlightenment in Bohemia What was the situation in Prague? Although, Prague had belonged to the Habsburg hereditary lands since 1627, there were differences between the provincial capital of Bohemia and the imperial capital. The efforts of Catholic Reform had played a larger role in Prague, and Baroque Catholicism was still more dominant here.28 Indicative of this is that in 1787, Mozart and his erstwhile librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (1749–1838) chose the Counter-Reformation tale of the libertine Don Juan for their second opera, Don Giovanni, which premiered in Prague. In Vienna the educated classes had already largely lost interest in the theme made popular by the commedia dell’arte. In Prague it turned out to be a great success, and predictably so.29 Despite the greater influence of baroque Catholicism in Bohemia, however, the regional Catholic clergy resembled Vienna’s in overall composition, diversity, and theological outlook. Bohemia certainly had its share of enlightened reformers among the clergy. For partisans of the Josephinian Enlightenment, such as Pezzl, there were only two either/or alternatives regarding the emperor’s ecclesial reforms. Pezzl dismisses the third group of clergymen as those who cannot make up their minds or those who are simply opportunists and hypocrites. Presumably, many Catholic prelates in the Habsburg crown lands had a rather different view. Martin Gaži has shown that an “Enlightenment from below” existed in Bohemia—a form of Catholic Enlightenment that differed from the state-enforced Josephinian Enlightenment “from above.”30 The lives of prelates, such as the abbots Joseph Bonaventura Pitr (1708–1764), Gottfried Bylansky (1724–1788), and (Josef Leopold) Wenzel Mayer (1734–1800) (to pick just three contemporaries or near-contemporaries of Mozart), suggest that at least for some Catholic clergy baroque religiosity and Enlightenment values did not have to be mutually exclusive alternatives. They were presented as such by the Enlightenment imposed by the Josephinian state bureaucracy and hailed by Pezzl. But before the Josephinian conception of a Catholic Enlightenment was imposed by state authority, Catholic prelates themselves had already engaged with Enlightenment ideas and had applied them, at least, to their own scholarly work.31 Remarkably, however, for these prelates, the new scholarly and scientific methods inspired by the Enlightenment did not constitute obstacles to their own baroque forms of religiosity. The Benedictine Abbot Joseph Bonaventura Pitr, for example, combined a commitment to the cult of the saints with efforts to reform scholarship in line

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with early Enlightenment methods.32 The Cistercian Abbot Gottfried Bylansky similarly sought to strengthen his monastery’s efforts in the areas of education and pastoral care while embracing Marian piety and advocating for monks to live an ascetic life of prayer. With this in mind, let us take a look at the Premonstratensian Abbot Wenzel Mayer, who after 1780 was a member of the Bohemian Diet and in that function might well have attended the first performance of La clemenza di Tito in Prague on the day of Leopold’s coronation as King of Bohemia. With apparent ease, Mayer merged baroque devotion with Enlightenment sensibilities and even involvement in Masonic circles. This can perhaps be best observed in the decoration of the façade of a large new library that he had built for his monastery after 1782, where symbolic representations of the Trinity and Providence appear side by side with stone allegories of mathematics and medicine and a portrait of Joseph II. Or let us look at a fourth example: Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch (1734– 1785), who from 1773 was abbot of the influential Bohemian abbey of BrˇevnovBroumov in the vicinity of Prague.33 Much like Pitr, Bylansky, and Mayer, young Rautenstrauch’s early years in his monastery in the second half of the eighteenth century testify to an originally peaceful co-existence of baroque religiosity with an Enlightenment-inspired climate of open scholarly pursuit. At the time of his entrance into the abbey in 1751, Rautenstrauch’s formation as a novice was quite traditional. He first studied philosophy, mathematics, physics, and astronomy, later theology in the scholastic tradition of Francisco Suárez SJ (1548–1617), and canon law.34 However, Benno Löbl (1738–1751), the abbot from 1738 to 1751, was keenly interested in the reform of monastic education and discipline, and he assembled at Brˇevnov-Broumov a host of enlightened historians who criticized scholastic theological speculation, embraced historical criticism, and heralded a retrieval of the church fathers. The abbey also subscribed to the weekly Jansenist publication, Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques (1728– 1803), which early on might have brought Rautenstrauch into contact with the French reform movement. When from 1756 to 1761 Rautenstrauch continued his studies in philosophy, theology, and later law at the University of Prague (he had been ordained as a priest in 1758), he finally also encountered reformers in the classroom itself—men such as the director of the faculty of law, Baron Franz Karl Kressel von Qualtenberg (1720–1801), and Protestant moral philosopher Karl Heinrich Seibt (1735–1806).35 Here, he also started to read the French Jansenists. Pitr, Bylansky, Mayer, and the young Rautenstrauch all testify to the existence of a monastic environment in the second half of the eighteenth century that was steeped in baroque piety yet also open to new Enlightenment-inspired ideas. As Gaži notes, The first Enlightenment generation of prelates represents a strong will to bring new ideas into harmony with baroque intellectual culture … merging the ideals of education and economic “prudence” with the experience of religion as revelation and miracle.36

Introduction

11

When I therefore imagine, in what follows, a Catholic prelate in Mozart’s audience, the question to be asked is not primarily whether such a prelate belonged to the court party or whether he was an old-style orthodox, as Pezzl put it. My prelate could easily have been both enlightened in his embrace of new methods of biblical, historical, and scientific scholarship and baroque in his religiosity. To be sure, Rautenstrauch’s embrace of Enlightenment values eventually went farther than Pitr, Bylansky, and Mayer’s. While Pitr defended the need for strict monastic discipline in continuity with its original medieval inspiration, and Bylansky upheld the ascetic ideal of self-denial, prayer, contemplation, and communal meditation, Rautenstrauch—after he was elected abbot of BrˇevnovBroumov Abbey in 1773—sought to reform baroque piety as well.37 He abolished traditional practices, such as communal flagellation, and sought to end others, such as midnight choir, the tonsure, and other penances and punishments.38 More importantly, Rautenstrauch eventually became a close theological and legal advisor to Empress Maria Theresia (1717–1780) and her son Joseph II, the key representative of the Josephinian Enlightenment mentioned above, and after 1774 the architect of many of its ecclesial and educational reforms.39 As Thomas Wallnig puts it, Rautenstrauch was “a prelate becoming a state official, thereby transforming a monastic concern into a Jansenist one, a Tridentine inspiration into a Josephinist effort, and, accordingly, an intellectual agenda into a bureaucratic one.”40 How did this happen? In 1768, he published his first book—a textbook in the area of canon law, which drew the ire of Prague’s Archbishop Anton Peter Count Prichovsky (1707–1793). His teacher at the University of Prague, Karl Heinrich Seibt, intervened on his behalf with Empress Maria Theresia, who in turn interceded with the Archbishop of Prague. From that point on, Rautenstrauch was on the empress’s radar, and his career soon took off. In 1773, he was appointed director of the theological department at the University of Prague and member of the Imperial Censorship Commission and, upon the empress’s recommendation, was unanimously elected abbot of his abbey. A year later, he was also appointed director of the theological faculty in Vienna. As Wallnig observes, Rautenstrauch, who strongly opposed the Curia’s influence in Austrian church affairs and developed the theoretical underpinnings for the subordination of the church under the state, now “changed from an erudite monk into a university ‘functionary’” and became “a state official who was supposed to achieve, within the relevant structures, acceptance of Maria Theresa’s and Joseph’s reform agenda.”41 Indeed, beginning in 1774, Rautenstrauch developed a new theological curriculum for the Habsburg crown lands, which was used until 1857. Theologically opposed to Jesuit scholasticism, Rautenstrauch discouraged scholastic speculation and the study of the theology of the various theological schools, instead he sought to strengthen the study of the Bible, the church fathers, and church history, and he created the entirely new subject of pastoral theology.42 After 1782, Joseph II asked him to reform the entire education of the clergy, secular and regular alike. Rautenstrauch

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ordered lectures in theology to be given in German, and when monasteries resisted, he suggested establishing general seminaries as an alternative, not just for secular clergy, but after 1785 also for those planning to become regular clergy. As Wallnig notes, in these general seminaries, which existed until 1790, “the main ‘progressive’ theological authors of the time, both Catholic and Protestant, were taught, and for the sake of successful pastoral activity, the respective vernaculars became an important part of the curriculum.”43

The theological training of the clergy For my purposes, our four abbots are also interesting for another reason. As I laid out above, I am asking in this book how a biblically literate and theologically educated Catholic prelate in late eighteenth-century Prague could have heard and interpreted Mozart’s last opera seria. To answer this question, I must not only show what philosophical and theological Weltanschauung my imagined prelate would have shared, but also what kind of training he would have received and what sort of knowledge of the theological tradition, the liturgy, and, especially, Scripture he would have had. We can expect that, in the eighteenth century, priests were trained in Latin, philosophy, theology, chanting, and calculation.44 We already saw that the young Rautenstrauch was educated in the classical theological curriculum, with its emphasis on scholastic theological speculation. By daily praying the Breviarium Romanum (the Breviary of the Council of Trent), all clergy, regular and secular alike, would have been familiar with the entire psalter.45 This would certainly have been the case for Pitr, Bylansky, Mayer, and Rautenstrauch. Moreover, the readings in the liturgy of the daily mass from the Missale Romanum would have given them knowledge of a whole host of other scripture passages, even if not necessarily knowledge of a historical and critical sort.46 We can also expect that more senior prelates, such as our four abbots, would have been familiar with the other liturgical books in use for various ecclesial occasions, such as the Graduale Romanum, the Pontificale Romanum, the Caeremoniale Episcoporum, and the Rituale Romanum. Finally, Catholic eighteenth-century prelates had at least some knowledge of the Bible, for even the laity in Northern Catholic Europe exhibited some biblical literacy. Due to geographical proximity and shared language, educated Catholic laypeople in the Habsburg territories were able to purchase Protestant translations of the Bible in the vernacular.47 After 1757, the Holy Office also allowed for Bible translations into the vernacular to be printed in Catholic countries if they were approved by Rome and had Catholic commentary.48 By the end of the eighteenth century, seventy-one such vernacular translations existed in print and attest to the interest on the part of some Catholic laity in reading the Bible.49 Priests in Habsburg lands would make use of such Bible translations during mass. On a trip from Italy to Tyrol, an Italian observer— historian and theologian Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750)—noticed in a local church on Sunday that the priest, after singing the epistle and gospel in

Introduction

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Latin from the altar, would then read both in the vernacular from the chancel steps.50 Some educated laymen, like Mozart, owned a Latin Bible.51 We can expect the same to be true of priests even if—as Chadwick notes—only a few seminarians owned a copy of the Vulgate.52 If priests did not necessarily read the Bible for devotional purposes, at least they were familiar with important parts of it from the daily scripture readings in the breviary and the liturgy of the mass. Still other priests and certainly many future prelates, such as Mayer and Rautenstrauch, would even have received a solid foundation in biblical studies. Some seminaries provided good courses in Hebrew and Greek.53 Mayer and Rautenstrauch studied at the University of Prague, which at the time had one professorship in Hebrew and one in sacred scripture.54 In 1757, Mayer offered a long laudatio in Hebrew dedicated to the previous abbot of Strahov, Gabriel Kasper, which suggests that he knew the Old Testament well.55 Rautenstrauch’s later emphasis on the importance of biblical studies in the theological curriculum seems to reflect his own biblical training in Prague. Still, as Chadwick notes, “the Catholic eighteenth century began to be conscious that its priests knew the Bible less intimately than was right.”56 Rautenstrauch’s reform curriculum is the best example of this perceived need to improve biblical studies.57 He recommended that novices study at universities and that “from every monastery at least two monks should be accomplished in the oriental languages to teach their fellow monks a proper understanding of Christian revelation.”58 To sum up, then, a prelate in Mozart and Mazzolà’s audience in 1791 Prague was certainly somewhat influenced by Enlightenment ideas and, perhaps, even by Jansenist ideas.59 While he still could have embraced baroque forms of religiosity, he might also have rejected some of those. His theological training would most likely have consisted of scholastic speculative theology, but he could also have had some familiarity with the church fathers. He would have had at least some biblical training and, perhaps, even a solid foundation in biblical languages and Bible studies. Even if not, he would have read the entire Psalter over the course of every week, and he would have known the biblical texts included in the breviary and the lectionary for the mass. Finally, he would have been familiar with the liturgical books of the Tridentine church. We can expect that these various texts formed his horizon for interpreting La clemenza di Tito.

Mozart’s religious upbringing and his comments on questions of faith Finally, let us look at Mozart’s own religiosity.60 Mozart is representative of parts of Pezzl’s picture of people’s religiosity in contemporary Vienna. His parents were devout Catholics. Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) was clearly concerned about his family’s life of faith. The parents raised the boy in Salzburg in an enlightened form of Catholicism that owed much to Italian priest, theologian, reformer, and historian, Lodovico Antonio Muratori, many of whose books Leopold Mozart read.61

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In Muratori’s highly influential work, Della regolata divozione dei cristiani, published in Venice in 1747 and in German translation in Innsbruck in 1761, he claims that Christian piety should be centered on Christ and his Word in holy scripture and, furthermore, on the celebration of the mass.62 To enable the people to understand the mass and participate actively in it—a participation that he says should culminate in the reception of the Eucharist—Muratori proposes that the ordinary of the mass be published in vernacular translations. Against this tripartite focus on Christ, the Bible, and the mass, other forms of religiosity (including the baroque veneration of the saints and even of Mary) must be considered secondary and ought to be significantly reduced. Muratori in this way joined the chorus of voices that demanded a radical reduction of ecclesial holidays, which constituted a major problem for the poor because they could not work and earn money on those days. Said Muratori: “the saints by no means need our devotion but the poor bread.”63 Muratori generally maintained a critical stance toward the institutional church, proposed rational devotion with an emphasis on the ethical implications of religion, and sought to limit the role of ritual, liturgy, and non-practical spirituality in Catholic worship.64 His reform program greatly influenced Salzburg’s archbishop and Mozart’s first employer, Hieronymus Count von Colloredo (1732–1812), although it did not diminish the latter’s self-understanding as absolute monarch and his selfrepresentation with Baroque pomp.65 As is well known, in 1781 Colloredo’s steward, Karl Count von Arco, dismissed Mozart from the archbishop’s service with his infamous kick in the behind.66 This less than ceremonial exit from the archbishop’s service only increased Mozart’s lifelong “hatred”67 for Colloredo—a hatred that stemmed from Mozart’s personal disdain for the archbishop, his frustrated expectation of a salary commensurate with his talents and fame, and—last but not least—a different understanding of the role and status of a court musician:68 Colloredo saw his musicians as mere servants at court, while Mozart had a bourgeois self-awareness, understood himself as an internationally renowned artist, and expected to be treated accordingly.69 Mozart’s letters to his father in Salzburg demonstrate how his religious upbringing informed his own faith. As Laurenz Lütteken notes, these letters were not necessarily meant to be read only by his father. Mozart could have assumed that Leopold Mozart would have freely shared them with Mozart’s sister, Nannerl [Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart] (1751–1829), and—if Leopold thought it appropriate—even with former financial supporters in Salzburg. Mozart therefore wrote some sections in a secret code, indicating that those sections were strictly private. The other parts of the letters were more than private communications, even though they were not necessarily meant for a large public.70 And indeed, these letters offer the reader a glimpse into Mozart’s religiosity. The fourteen-year old Mozart shows himself a canny observer of religious dissembling when he observed in Bologna the gluttonous appetite of “a certain Dominican, who is regarded a holy man.”71 Eight years later, one reads in a letter from his mother to her husband that her son does not want to socialize with people in Mannheim because they “have no religion and

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72

are out-and-out free-thinkers.” Mozart himself expresses abhorrence at colleagues’ lack of religion and their libertinism.73 In the letters that Mozart writes when his parents are dying, he alludes to what he concretely believes. On July 3, 1778, after his mother’s death during an extended trip with her son to Paris, Mozart wrote two letters: one to his father and another to his good friend, the former Jesuit, Abbé Franz Joseph Johann Nepomuk Bullinger (1744–1810).74 Both letters demonstrate a deep trust in divine providence and the comfort Mozart receives from praying to God and from receiving the sacraments.75 Mozart also shows a familiarity with biblical language when he adds: “He gave her to me, so He was able to take her away from me” (compare Job 1:21). When, a few days later, Mozart follows up with another letter to his father, he again speaks of the comfort gained from knowledge in God’s providence and from prayer.76 Once more, Mozart confesses his acceptance of God’s will, his belief that the dead rest with God, and his hope in the resurrection. And again, Mozart indicates familiarity with scriptural lingo when he writes that “all things have their appropriate time” (compare Ecclesiastes 3:1) and insists that God’s will be done (compare Matthew 6:10).77 In a section later in the letter, he asks his father “to have Holy Masses said at Maria-Plain and Loreto,” just as “I have made arrangements here.”78 The request reveals both his rootedness in Catholic piety and his Marian devotion, as masses are to be said at well-known Marian shrines. Perhaps it was not by accident that in Paris the requiem mass for the dead for his mother took place in another important Marian pilgrimage site, the church Notre Dame des Victoires. Finally, Mozart expresses his hope for a good appointment, “no matter where—provided it be in a Catholic country.”79 Catholic practices come up repeatedly in Mozart’s letters. Mozart reports that he prays the rosary and attends mass regularly.80 He makes vows. The unfinished Solemn Mass in C minor (K. 427), written 1782–1783, was the result of one he made when his then-fiancée Constanze (1762–1842) was sick, and Mozart hoped for her safe recovery so that they could get married.81 He fasts. On June 13, 1781, he reports to his father—who once again was concerned about “the welfare of my soul”—that, It is not true that I boasted of eating meat on all fast-days; but I did say that I did not scruple to do so or consider it a sin, for I take fasting to mean abstaining, that is, eating less than usual. I attend Mass every Sunday and every Holy day and, if I can manage it, on weekdays also, and that you know, my father.82 In short, Mozart practiced traditional forms of Catholic piety, even though he took an enlightened approach to such piety, trying to adhere to the spirit rather than the letter of the law. If Mozart trusted God’s providential will, he showed himself equally firm in his belief in an immortal soul and in his peace with death. On December 5, 1781, he once more attempts to calm his father’s fears by responding to the

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latter’s concern for his salvation: “You say that I must remember that I have an immortal soul. Not only do I think it, but I firmly believe it. If it were not so, wherein would consist the difference between men and beasts?”83 In a letter from April 4, 1787, written after Mozart learned of his father’s terminal illness, Mozart addresses death as “the true goal of our existence” and the “best and truest friend of mankind,” “no longer terrifying to me, but … very soothing and consoling,” indeed, “the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.”84 The passage shows the influence of Moses Mendelsohn’s (1729–1786) Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele of 1767, a then popular book that Mozart owned a copy of himself.85 After his father’s death in 1787, we have only a few casual comments that give us insight into Mozart’s religiosity.86 That his faith remained strong, however, is evident from his professional pursuits at the time. Most importantly, in the last four years of his life, Mozart showed a growing interest in again composing church music. In Salzburg, the composition of sacred music was part of Mozart’s professional duties. After his permanent move to Vienna, he no longer received such commissions (with the well-known exception of the anonymous commission for a Requiem in 1791). The Josephinian liturgical reforms greatly diminished demand for orchestral masses and other church music.87 Nonetheless, without a commission, in 1782 and 1783 Mozart labored on his large-scale solemn Mass in C minor, the music of which he repurposed in 1785 for his oratorio Davidde Penitente.88 In 1791, however, Mozart hoped to be able to return to composing church music full time. That year, he applied for the honorary position of assistant to the ailing Kapellmeister, Leopold Hofmann (1738–1793), at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The position was under the authority of the magistrate of the City of Vienna. Mozart hoped to succeed Hofmann in the event of his death.89 The position of Kapellmeister would have given Mozart much sought-after financial stability independent from both the court and the aristocracy.90 The relative financial security, which the new position promised, and the freedom from intrigue among the court musicians were probably not the only reasons for Mozart’s interest. According to the recollection of Mozart’s widow, Constanze, the organ was Mozart’s favorite instrument.91 His first biographer, Franz Xaver Niemetschek (1766–1849), notes that church music was “Mozart’s favorite mode of composition” (das Lieblingsfach Mozarts).92 That Mozart saw himself as being particularly gifted as a composer of church music is evident from his own April 25, 1791, letter to the Municipal Council of Vienna, in which he remarks on his “thorough knowledge of both the secular and ecclesiastical styles of music.”93 In the period after 1787, Mozart increasingly returned to composing such music. His admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) and George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) is well known, and it seems that Mozart considered writing oratorios in Handel’s style.94 When the appointment to the new position at St. Stephen’s Cathedral finally arrived, however, it was already too late. Mozart was on his deathbed. His widow Constanze later remembered him exclaiming: “Now that I am appointed to a situation where I could please myself in writings, and feel I could do something worthy, I must die.”95

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Mozart’s late compositions of church music demonstrate not only his compositional interests, but also show a new style in line with the Josephinian liturgical reforms. Mozart’s long Kyrie in D minor (K. 341), scored for large orchestra, and the unfinished Requiem (K. 626), again in D minor, which Mozart worked on up to the end of his life thanks to an anonymous commission, are two such examples.96 “Austere, even awesome”97 in style, as Robbins Landon suggests, they “preserve a positively Josephinian sense of simple directness.”98 Mozart himself was quite touched by his last work. British publisher and composer Vincent Novello (1781–1861) notes in diaries written during a trip to Salzburg in 1829 that, according to Constanze Mozart’s recollection, the composer was so fond of his Requiem that when he sang it on his deathbed, together with his wife and his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803), “some of the passages so excited him that he could not refrain from tears, and was unable to proceed.”99 Novello adds that “the Recordare (one of the most divine and enchanting movements ever written) was one of his own great favourites.”100 The little motet of 1791, Ave, verum corpus (K. 618), is of an entirely different, more popular mode, yet it is once again very much in line with Josephinian notions of liturgy. Mozart wrote it for his friend, choir master Anton Stoll (1747–1805), for performance in the parish church in Baden, near Vienna, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. Robbins Landon notes that the piece is marked by “its Volkstümlichkeit, its deliberate attempt to be unadorned, devotional, and easily understood” and its “touching directness and simplicity.”101 It is yet another example that, [e]ven in his church music, Mozart was an inspired product of the Enlightenment: vox populi = vox Dei, that is, a return to the voice of the people in its simplest and most basic form, implies a kind of truth which in turn was considered to have a touch of the divine.102 Mozart not only grew up an enlightened Catholic in Salzburg, but he also remained one in Vienna. Undoubtedly, his worldview developed over the course of his time in Vienna as he came into contact with Freemasonry and—through it—with representatives of many different philosophical persuasions, from the atheist Illuminati on one end of the spectrum to the mystically inclined Rosicrucians on the other.103 His deep rootedness in Catholicism, however, does not seem to have changed all that much. If anything, it seems to have become even more prominent in the last years of his life and is representative of the beliefs of many of his contemporaries.

Notes 1 For the number of performances in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see John A. Rice, W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 104–117.

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2 For Mozart’s relationship to the Enlightenment, see, more recently, Laurenz Lütteken, Mozart: Leben und Musik im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2017); and Mozart: Experiment Aufklärung im Wien des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts, Ausstellungskatalog, ed. Herbert Lachmayer (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006). 3 See, for example, Ivan Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Brigid Brophy, Mozart the Dramatist: The Value of His Operas to Him, to His Age, and to Us (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988); Nicholas Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992); and Helmut Perl, Der Fall “Zauberflöte”: Mozarts Oper im Brennpunkt der Geschichte (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000). 4 For those who regard Mozart as a Catholic, see, for example, Hans Küng, Mozart: Traces of Transcendence, Experiences with Mozart’s Music, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1992); Wie hast Du’s mit der Religion? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart und die Theologie, ed. Joachim Herten and Klaus Röhring (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 2009); Mozart und die Religion, ed. Peter Tschuggnall (Anif/Salzburg: Verlag Mueller-Speiser, 2010); and Christoph Wolff, Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788–1791 (New York and London: W.W: Norton and Co., 2012). 5 Küng, Mozart: Traces of Transcendence, 4. 6 The one notable exception is diarist Count Karl Johann von Zinzendorf (1739– 1813), who offers a hint of the first audience’s reaction to La clemenza di Tito. On September 6, 1791, he wrote in his diary that “we were regaled with the most tedious spectacle” (Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965], 404). Confirmation that Zinzendorf was not alone among the original audience in his negative evaluation of Tito comes from the Berlin musical weekly, Musikalisches Wochenblatt, which reported in December 1791 that the opera, “although the music was by Mozart, did not find favor” (Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, 432). Still, there are no extant reports about how members in the audience interpreted the philosophical and/or theological message of the opera. 7 For the theological landscape of eighteenth-century Austria, see, for example, Peter Hersche, Der Spätjansenismus in Österreich (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1977). 8 See Nagel, Autonomy and Grace. 9 Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 101. See also Peter Hersche, “Die alte katholische Kultur vor der Herausforderung der Aufklärung,” in Europa im Zeitalter Mozarts, ed. Moritz Csáky and Walter Pass, revised by Harald Haslmayer and Alexander Rausch (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1995), 126–132, at 128. 10 Johann Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, 4 vols. (Vienna and Leipzig: Kraußische Buchhandlung, 1786–1790). Parts of Pezzl’s book are available in English translation in H. C. Robbins Landon, Mozart and Vienna (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991), 53– 191. For Pezzl, see Ritchie Robertson, “Johann Pezzl (1756–1823): Enlightenment in the Satirical Mode,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, ed. Jeffrey D. Burson and Ulrich L. Lehner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 227–245. Pezzl was close to the circle around Ignaz von Born (1742–1791) and the Masonic lodge Zur wahren Eintracht (True Harmony). 11 “Johann Pezzl: ‘Sketch of Vienna’,” in Robbins Landon, Mozart and Vienna, 146. 12 Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 497. 13 Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 497.

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14 Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 497. 15 Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 496. In 1787, Pezzl counts 57 bishops and archbishops in Austria, as well as 898 canons or prebendaries, 15,136 parish priests in the German and Hungarian crown lands, 1,074 monasteries, and 376 nunneries. Moreover, he lists as Greek Orthodox seven archbishops and bishops, and 5,857 priests, and furthermore 568 Lutheran superintendents and pastors, 1,800 Calvinist superintendents and pastors, and, finally, 136 Unitarian superintendents and pastors. See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 495. 16 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 2, 129. 17 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 2, 130 (Er machte aus seiner Dogmatik und Kasuistik ein so langes, breites und undurchdringliches Nez, daß er damit den Verstand der armen Layen ganz nach seinem Belieben umschlingen, lenken und erstiken konnte). 18 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 2, 130. 19 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 2, 131. 20 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 2, 132. 21 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 2, 132 (Die Lehrbücher sind einförmig nach Vernunft, Schrift, Sittlichkeit und dem Wohl der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und des Staates eingerichtet). 22 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 2, 133. 23 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 755. 24 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 755 (Indessen sehnen sich alle noch hier in Klöstern lebende feurig nach einer gänzlichen Auflösung). 25 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 754. 26 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 754. 27 See Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, vol. 4, 754. 28 See David Sorkin, “Afterword: the Enlightenment—Bohemian Style,” in The Enlightenment in Bohemia, ed. Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011), 295–301, at 297. See also Zdeneˇ k V. David, Realism, Tolerance, and Liberalism in the Czech National Awakening: Legacies of the Bohemian Reformation (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 47–63. 29 See Steffen Lösel, “‘May Such Great Effort Not Be in Vain’: Mozart on Divine Love, Judgment, and Retribution,” The Journal of Religion 89, no. 3 (July 2009): 361–400, at 379. 30 Martin Gaži, “The Enlightenment from below: the Catholic regular clergy in Bohemia and Moravia,” in The Enlightenment in Bohemia, ed. Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011), 193–207. 31 See also Eduard Winter, Frühaufklärung: Der Kampf gegen den Konfessionalismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa und die deutsch-slawische Bewegung, zum 250. Todestag von G. W. Leibniz im November 1966, Beiträge zur Geschichte des religiösen und wissenschaftlichen Denkens, vol. 6 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966); and Ernst Tomek, Kirchengeschichte Österreichs, vol. 3, Das Zeitalter der Aufklärung und des Absolutismus (Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag, 1959). 32 Ulrich Lehner counts Pitr as “a committed disciple of Muratori” (Ulrich L. Lehner, Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines 1740–1803 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011], 159). Similarly, Thomas Wallnig suggests that Pitr “adopted a Muratorian approach of a devotion based on historical criticism” (Thomas Wallnig, “Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch [1734–1785]: Church Reform for the Sake of the State,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, ed. Jeffrey D. Burson and Ulrich L. Lehner [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014], 209–245, at 211). See also Beda Franz Menzel, Abt Franz

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36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43

44 45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Introduction Stephan Rautenstrauch von Brˇevnov-Braunau (Königstein: Königsteiner Institut für Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte der Sudetenländer e.V., 1969), 85. Gaži questions this verdict by pointing to Pitr’s defense of the cult of the saints rejected by Muratori. See Gaži, “The Enlightenment from below,” 197. For Rautenstrauch, see Wallnig, “Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch”; and the abovementioned Menzel, Abt Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch von Brˇevnov-Braunau. See Wallnig, “Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch,” 211. For Seibt, see Ivo Cerman, “Secular moral philosophy: Karl Heinrich Seibt,” in The Enlightenment in Bohemia, ed. Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011), 147–168. Gaži, “The Enlightenment from below,” 207. See Gaži, “The Enlightenment from below,” 196 and 203. See Lehner, Enlightened Monks, 159 and 160. Bonaventura Pitr also had close personal connections with Empress Maria Theresia, for whom he served as confessor during his stay in Vienna from 1756 to 1760. See Gaži, “The Enlightenment from below,” 195. In contrast to Rautenstrauch, however, who eventually became an agent of the Josephinian state, Pitr always represented his order’s interests over those of the Bishop of Prague and the state. Wallnig, “Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch,” 210. See Wallnig, “Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch,” 213. See Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 121. See also Pezzl’s dismissive comments about monastic and clerical education before the establishment of the general seminaries quoted above. See Wallnig, “Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch,” 213. Even though the general seminaries were abolished in 1790, Rautenstrauch’s curriculum continued to be taught until 1857, when the new concordat between Austria and the Holy See of 1855 diminished state influence over the theological curriculum. For the training of the clergy in the eighteenth century, see Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 112–133. See Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy: The Principles of Liturgical Reform and Their Relation to the Twentieth-Century Liturgical Movement Prior to the Second Vatican Council, with a foreword by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), Ch. 1. Less educated clergy who did not have extensive academic knowledge of the Bible would still have had some idea of it through publications, such as Johann Ignaz von Felbinger, Kern der biblischen Geschichte alten und neuen Testaments mit beygesetzten kurzen Sittenlehren (Würzburg: Franz Sebastian Sartorius, ca. 1800). See Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 75. See Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 76. Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 77. See Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 76. See Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Bibliography, 589. See Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 75. See Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 118. Ivo Cerman, “The Enlightenment universities,” in The Enlightenment in Bohemia, ed. Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011), 55–67, at 58. See Gaži, “The Enlightenment from below,” 205. Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 118. Lehner, Enlightened Monks, 160. Lehner, Enlightened Monks, 160. On the widespread influence of Jansenism in eighteenth-century Austria, see Hersche, Der Spätjansenismus in Österreich.

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60 A version of this section has previously been published in Steffen Lösel, “In Need of God: Mozart, Faith, and Così fan tutte,” Theology Today 74, no. 2 (July 2017): 112–137, and is reprinted here with permission. 61 See Volkmar Braunbehrens, Mozart in Vienna 1781–1791, trans. Timothy Bell (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 26. Already in the first half of the eighteenth century, there was a Muratorian circle in Salzburg. His influence there was strong, as in all of Austria. See Eleonore Zlabinger, Lodovico Antonio Muratori und Österreich, Studien zur Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturgeschichte, ed. Nikolaus Grass, vol. VI (Innsbruck: Kommissionsverlag der Österreichischen Kommissionsbuchhandlung, 1970), 25–39. Muratori’s influence on Leopold is apparent, for example, in the latter’s letter to his wife dated February 10, 1770, Leopold’s letter to his wife and son of December 4, 1777, and Wolfgang’s letter to his father of December 20, 1777. In the following, I quote all letters from Mozart and his family from The Letters of Mozart and His Family, chronologically arranged, translated, and edited with an Introduction, Notes and Indices by Emily Anderson, 3rd edition (London: Macmillan, 1985). 62 See Ludewig Anton Muratori [under the pseudonym Lamindo Pritanio], Die Wahre Andacht des Christen (Augsburg and Innsbruck: Joseph Wolff, 1761). The edition is a reprint of the translation published in 1759 in Vienna, Prague, and Triest by Johann Thomas Trattner. See for the following, Zlabinger, Lodovico Antonio Muratori und Österreich, 67–72. 63 Muratori, Die Wahre Andacht des Christen (Innsbruck, 1761), 278 (daß die Heiligen unsrer Verehrung keineswegs, die Armen hingegen des Brods nöthig haben). Muratori published a whole book in defense of his position relating to the reduction of ecclesial holidays: Roccolta di scritture concernenti delle feste di precetto (Lucca: Filippo Maria Benedini, 1748). See Zlabinger, Lodovico Antonio Muratori und Österreich, 70 and 124–126. 64 For Muratori, see Paolo Vismara, “Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750): Enlightenment in a Tridentine Mode,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, ed. Jeffrey D. Burton and Ulrich L. Lehner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 249–268. 65 For Colloredo and his political reforms, see Braunbehrens, Mozart in Vienna 1781– 1791, 22–29. Colloredo’s pastoral letter, in which he outlines his theological reform agenda, is reprinted in Der aufgeklärte Reformkatholizismus in Österreich: Hirtenbrief des Erzbischofs von Wien, Johann Joseph Graf Trautson 1752—Hirtenbrief des Bischofs von Laibach, Johann Karl Graf Herberstein 1782—Hirtenbrief des Erzbischofs von Salzburg, Hieronymus Graf Colloredo 1782, ed. Peter Hersche (Bern and Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Herbert Lang und CIE AG, 1976), 45–101. 66 For Mozart’s account of this event, see his letters to his father of June 9, 1781, and June 13, 1781. 67 Letter to his father of May 9, 1781. 68 On Mozart’s dislike of Colloredo’s authoritarian character, see Mozart’s letter to his mother of January 14, 1775. For the Mozarts’ frustration about salaries, see Leopold’s letters to Padre Martini in Bologna of December 22, 1777; to his son of January 29, 1778, and February 23, 1778; to his wife and son of April 6, 1778; as well as Wolfgang’s letters to his father of October 15, 1778, and November 12, 1778. 69 See, for example, Mozart’s letters to his father of September 11, 1778, and especially of March 24, 1781, in which Mozart complains about having to sit at table with the valets and cooks. 70 See Lütteken, Mozart: Leben und Musik, 119. 71 Letter to his mother and sister of August 21, 1770. 72 Letter from Anna Maria Mozart (1720–1778) to her husband of February 22, 1778. 73 See letter to his father of February 4, 1778.

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74 For Bullinger, see Peter Clive, Mozart and his Circle: A Biographical Dictionary (London: J. M. Dent, 1993), 31–32. 75 See letter to his father of July 3, 1778, and the letter to Abbé Bullinger of July 3, 1778. In the letter to his father, Mozart also reports scornfully that “that godless arch-rascal Voltaire” had died. 76 See letter to his father of July 9, 1778. 77 See also Matthew 26:42; Acts 18:21; and Colossians 4:12. 78 Letter to his father of July 9, 1778. 79 Letter to his father of July 9, 1778. 80 See his letters to his father of July 3, 1778, and to his wife in Baden of June 25, 1791. As Vincent Novello reports, in her later life in Salzburg, Mozart’s widow continued to attend morning mass frequently. See A Mozart Pilgrimage: Being the Travel Diaries of Vincent & Mary Novello in the Year 1829, transcribed and compiled by Nerina Medici di Marignano, ed. Rosemary Hughes (London: Eulenberg Books, 1975), 104. 81 See Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 96. 82 Letter to his father of June 13, 1781. 83 Letter to his father of December 5, 1781. 84 Letter to his father of April 4, 1787. 85 Originally published as Moses Mendelsohn, Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Berlin and Stettin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1767). See Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, 589. 86 See, for example, his letters to his wife of June 25, 1791, and October 8–9, 1791. 87 See H. C. Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year (Thames and Hudson, 1988), 50. For the Josephinian reforms of Catholic worship in Austria, see Hans Hollerweger, Die Reform des Gottesdienstes zur Zeit des Josephinismus in Österreich (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1976); Hollerweger, “Tendenzen der Liturgischen Reformen unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II.,” in Katholische Aufklärung und Josephinismus, ed. Elisabeth Kovács (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1979), 295–306. 88 See Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 96. 89 Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 48. 90 See Christoph Wolff, Mozart’s Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score, trans. Mary Whittall with revisions and additions by the author (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 36, and Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 48. For a comparison of salaries of musicians in Vienna at the time, see Andrew Steptoe, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 53–76. For Mozart’s efforts to establish himself as an independent bourgeois artist and the various sources of income he could ideally draw from, see Steptoe, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas, 13–97, and Norbert Elias, Mozart: Portrait of a Genius, ed. Michael Schröter, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). 91 See Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 95. 92 Franz Xaver Niemetschek, Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, nach Originalquellen beschrieben (Prague: Herrlische Buchhandlung, 1798), 77. We have similar testimonies from Mozart’s widow. See Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 48. See Wolff, Mozart’s Requiem, 36, and especially n. 96 for a list of compositions that fall in this category. 93 Letter to the Municipal Council of Vienna of April 25, 1791. Indeed, on April 28, 1791, Mozart secured the sought-after honorary post. See Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 48.

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94 On Mozart’s interest in Handel, see Vincent Novello’s comments in Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 113 and 164. 95 Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 126. 96 Robbins Landon suggests “that Mozart intended to compose a large Missa Solemnis in D minor to celebrate his new position at St. Stephen’s, and completed the Kyrie before Hofmann recovered” (1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 49). He points to Mozart’s letter to choir master Anton Stoll in Baden from the end of May 1791 as further evidence of Mozart’s preoccupation with church music at the time. 97 Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 54. 98 Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 54. 99 Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 128. 100 Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 128. Mary Novello (ca. 1789–1854) adds that “several of the movements oppressed him to tears” (Hughes, A Mozart Pilgrimage, 126). 101 Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 54. Robbins Landon especially singles out the motet’s “small orchestra (strings and organ) and its simple choral writing” as “part of its Josephinian garb” (ibid.). 102 Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year, 54. 103 For Mozart’s involvement with the Freemasons, see, for example, Braunbehrens, Mozart in Vienna 1781–1791, 226–266; Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment, 117–129 and 189–196; H. C. Robbins Landon, Mozart and the Masons: New Light on the Lodge “Crowned Hope” (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982); and Hans-Josef Irmen, Mozart—Mitglied geheimer Gesellschaften (Zülpich: Prisca, 1991).

Bibliography Anderson, Emily, ed. The Letters of Mozart and His Family. Translated and edited with an introduction by Emily Anderson. London: Macmillan, 1985. Braunbehrens, Volkmar. Mozart in Vienna 1781–1791. Translated by Timothy Bell. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989. Brophy, Brigid. Mozart the Dramatist: The Value of His Operas to Him, to His Age, and to Us. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988. Cerman, Ivo. “Secular moral philosophy: Karl Heinrich Seibt.” In The Enlightenment in Bohemia, edited by Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds, 147–168. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011. Cerman, Ivo. “The Enlightenment universities.” In The Enlightenment in Bohemia, edited Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds, 55–67. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011. Chadwick, Owen. The Popes and European Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Clive, Peter. Mozart and his Circle: A Biographical Dictionary. London: J. M. Dent, 1993. David, Zdeneˇ k V. Realism, Tolerance, and Liberalism in the Czech National Awakening: Legacies of the Bohemian Reformation. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Deutsch, Otto Erich. Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Translated by Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965. Elias, Norbert. Mozart: Portrait of a Genius. Edited by Michael Schröter. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. Felbinger, Johann Ignaz von. Kern der biblischen Geschichte alten und neuen Testaments mit beygesetzten kurzen Sittenlehren. Würzburg: Franz Sebastian Sartorius, ca. 1800.

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Gaži, Martin. “The Enlightenment from below: the Catholic regular clergy in Bohemia and Moravia.” In The Enlightenment in Bohemia, edited by Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds, 193–207. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011. Hersche, Peter, ed. Der aufgeklärte Reformkatholizismus in Österreich: Hirtenbrief des Erzbischofs von Wien, Johann Joseph Graf Trautson 1752—Hirtenbrief des Bischofs von Laibach, Johann Karl Graf Herberstein 1782—Hirtenbrief des Erzbischofs von Salzburg, Hieronymus Graf Colloredo 1782. Bern and Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Herbert Lang und CIE AG, 1976. Hersche, Peter, ed. Der Spätjansenismus in Österreich. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1977. Hersche, Peter. “Die alte katholische Kultur vor der Herausforderung der Aufklärung.” In Europa im Zeitalter Mozarts, edited by Moritz Csáky and Walter Pass and revised by Harald Haslmayer and Alexander Rausch, 126–132. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1995. Herten, Joachim, and Klaus Röhring, eds. Wie hast Du’s mit der Religion? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart und die Theologie. Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 2009. Hollerweger, Hans. Die Reform des Gottesdienstes zur Zeit des Josephinismus in Österreich. Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1976. Hollerweger, Hans. “Tendenzen der Liturgischen Reformen unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II.” In Katholische Aufklärung und Josephinismus, edited by Elisabeth Kovács, 295–306. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1979. Hughes, Rosemary, ed. A Mozart Pilgrimage: Being the Travel Diaries of Vincent & Mary Novello in the Year 1829. Transcribed and compiled by Nerina Medici di Marignano. London: Eulenberg Books, 1975. Irmen, Hans-Josef. Mozart—Mitglied geheimer Gesellschaften. Zülpich: Prisca, 1991. Küng, Hans. Mozart: Traces of Transcendence, Experiences with Mozart’s Music. Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1992. Lachmayer, Herbert, ed. Mozart: Experiment Aufklärung im Wien des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts, Ausstellungskatalog. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006. Lehner, Ulrich L. Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines 1740–1803. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Lösel, Steffen. “In Need of God: Mozart, Faith, and Così fan tutte.” Theology Today 74, no. 2 (July 2017): 112–137. Lösel, Steffen. “‘May Such Great Effort Not Be in Vain’: Mozart on Divine Love, Judgment, and Retribution.” In The Journal of Religion 89, no. 3 (July 2009): 361–400. Lütteken, Laurenz. Mozart: Leben und Musik im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2017. Mendelsohn, Moses. Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Berlin and Stettin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1767. Menzel, Beda Franz. Abt Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch von Brˇevnov-Braunau. Königstein: Königsteiner Institut für Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte der Sudetenländer e.V., 1969. Muratori, Ludewig Anton [under the pseudonym Lamindo Pritanio]. Die Wahre Andacht des Christen. Augsburg and Innsbruck: Joseph Wolff, 1761. Nagel, Ivan. Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas. Translated by Marion Fabel and Ivan Nagel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Niemetschek, Frans Xaver. Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, nach Originalquellen beschrieben. Prague: Herrlische Buchhandlung, 1798.

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Perl, Helmut. Der Fall “Zauberflöte”: Mozarts Oper im Brennpunkt der Geschichte. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000. Pezzl, Johann. Skizze von Wien. 4 vols. Vienna and Leipzig: Kraußische Buchhandlung, 1786–1790. Reid, Alcuin. The Organic Development of the Liturgy: The Principles of Liturgical Reform and Their Relation to the Twentieth-Century Liturgical Movement Prior to the Second Vatican Council. With a foreword by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005. Rice, John A. W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Robbins Landon, H. C. 1791: Mozart’s Last Year. London: Thames and Hudson, 1988. Robbins Landon, H. C. Mozart and Vienna. New York: Schirmer Books, 1991. Robbins Landon, H. C. Mozart and the Masons: New Light on the Lodge “Crowned Hope”. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982. Robertson, Richie. “Johann Pezzl (1756–1823): Enlightenment in the Satirical Mode.” In Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, edited by Jeffrey D. Burson and Ulrich L. Lehner, 227–245. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. Sorkin, David. “Afterword: the Enlightenment—Bohemian Style.” In The Enlightenment in Bohemia, edited by Ivo Cerman, Rita Krueger, and Susan Reynolds, 295–301. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation in association with Liverpool University Press, 2011. Steptoe, Andrew. The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Till, Nicholas. Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992. Tomek, Ernst. Kirchengeschichte Österreichs. Vol. 3, Das Zeitalter der Aufklärung und des Absolutismus. Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag, 1959. Tschuggnall, Peter, ed. Mozart und die Religion. Anif/Salzburg: Verlag Mueller-Speiser, 2010. Vismara, Paolo. “Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750): Enlightenment in a Tridentine Mode.” In Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, edited by Jeffrey D. Burton and Ulrich L. Lehner, 249–268. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. Wallnig, Thomas. “Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch (1734–1785): Church Reform for the Sake of the State.” In Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, edited by Jeffrey D. Burson and Ulrich L. Lehner, 209–245. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. Winter, Eduard. Frühaufklärung: Der Kampf gegen den Konfessionalismus in Mittelund Osteuropa und die deutsch-slawische Bewegung. Zum 250. Todestag von G. W. Leibniz im November 1966. Vol. 6 of Beiträge zur Geschichte des religiösen und wissenschaftlichen Denkens. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966. Wolff, Christoph. Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788– 1791. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Wolff, Christoph. Mozart’s Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score. With Revisions and Additions by the Author. Translated by Mary Whittall. Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. Zlabinger, Eleonore. Lodovico Antonio Muratori und Österreich. Vol. VI of Studien zur Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturgeschichte, edited by Nikolaus Grass. Innsbruck: Kommissionsverlag der Österreichischen Kommissionsbuchhandlung, 1970.

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The political context On September 6, 1791, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792) was crowned King of Bohemia in Prague—an honor that his brother and predecessor, Joseph II (1741–1790), had forgone for political reasons.1 The festive occasion offered the new sovereign a chance to improve relations with the Bohemian aristocracy, which had lost many of its privileges under his brother Joseph’s reign. For the weeklong festivities, the Bohemian Estates—the political representation of the nobility and the church—commissioned a new opera to be performed on the evening of the coronation. The contractual agreement for the commission was signed only three months earlier on July 8, 1791, by Heinrich Franz Count von Rottenhan (1738–1809), Oberstburggraf (Governor) of Bohemia and Leopold II’s representative in Prague, as well as four representatives of the so-called “Big Bohemian Diet” on the one hand, and Domenico Guardasoni (c. 1731–1806), impresario of the Italian opera in Prague, on the other.2 The agreement specified that Guardasoni produce “a grand opera seria to be presented in this National Theater on the occasion of the coronation of His Imperial Majesty.”3 The cast was to include both a primo musico (that is, a castrato) and a prima donna “of the first rank.”4 Furthermore, the contract specified that “the poetry of the libretto [be] composed on [one of] the two subjects given to [Guardasoni] by His Excellence the Burgrave [i.e., Governor Rottenhan] and to have it set to music by a distinguished composer.”5 Since the time between the signing of the agreement and the performance was so short, the contract stipulated that “in the case it should not be at all possible to accomplish this in the short time remaining, [Guardasoni] promises to procure an opera newly composed on the subject of Metastasio’s Tito.”6 Impresario Guardasoni first approached court composer Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), who was too busy to accept the offer.7 Mozart, whose operas Le nozze di Figaro K. 492 (1785) and Don Giovanni K. 527 (1787) Guardasoni had previously produced in Prague to great acclaim, was thus the impresario’s second choice.8 As Mozart’s collaborator, Guardasoni chose Caterino Tommaso Mazzolà (1745–1806), court librettist at the Saxonian court in Dresden and “on loan” in Vienna from May to July 1791 after the dismissal of Lorenzo DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452-2

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da Ponte (1749–1838). As the contract with the Bohemian Estates foresaw, time was indeed too short to produce an opera based on an entirely new libretto. Therefore, the second option was chosen—namely, producing an opera based on La clemenza di Tito, the popular libretto by the late Viennese court librettist Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782).10 La clemenza di Tito was the first collaboration between Mozart and Mazzolà. In this, his final opera seria, Mozart had the opportunity to present his political vision to the new emperor and the entire court assembled in Prague. To be sure, the opera was commissioned chiefly to be a panegyric on the new ruler on behalf of the Bohemian Estates. Mozart was therefore undoubtedly limited in how much of his own political and philosophical convictions he could present on stage—at least if his convictions were not to be controversial. Furthermore, Mozart had to be considerate of the festive occasion and, more importantly, the precarious historical context in 1791, a mere two years after the outbreak of the French Revolution. And yet the composer did use the commission to express his own political vision. Much recent scholarship has interpreted Mozart’s last opera seria as an expression of a distinctive political philosophy closely connected to the late Enlightenment. In what follows, I take up these political readings, which locate Mozart’s opera in the changing contexts between the early and the late Enlightenment. So it was that one year after Leopold’s coronation as emperor in Frankfurt, Guardasoni asked Mozart to compose an opera based on Metastasio’s 1734 libretto, La clemenza di Tito.11 Most likely, Leopold himself suggested that the opera for the coronation festivities in Prague be based on Metastasio’s libretto.12 Leopold was quite familiar with the libretto, for it had been written in 1734 for the name day of Leopold’s grandfather, Emperor Charles VI (1685– 1740), and it was commissioned by Charles’s wife, Elisabeth Christine (1691– 1750).13 That same year, Antonio Caldara (1670–1736) composed the music.14 Over the course of the eighteenth century, the work continued to serve the purpose of glorifying countless monarchs far beyond Austria, giving Leopold more opportunities to become familiar with its particulars.15 Like many other eighteenth-century operas, La clemenza di Tito was widely understood to carry a political message.16 In 1790, librettist Giovanni DeGamerra (1742–1803) noted in his Osservazioni sullo spettacolo that [t]heatrical spectacle, established on the basis of wise laws and of careful reform, can be regarded as always available to the sovereign power to inculcate in his subjects the most useful and important beliefs … Has our century not seen an emperor at a performance of La clemenza di Tito listening to the voices of humanity and forgiveness?17 Prior to Mozart’s composition, La clemenza di Tito had already been set to music at least forty times by various composers, including Mozart’s immediate predecessor as court composer in Vienna, Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714– 1787; work composed in 1752), and one-time friend of the Mozarts, Bohemian

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composer Josef Myslivecˇ ek (1737–1781; work composed in 1773). The libretto was not only the go-to work for various state functions, such as the coronation in Prague, which required a panegyric on the current sovereign; in the spirit of the early Enlightenment, it also established the Roman Emperor Titus Vespasianus (39–81 CE; Italian: Tito) as the quintessential image of the ideal, gracious, loving ruler.18 In fact, the opera soon came to function as a Fürstenspiegel, a reminder or mirroring to rulers of the rules of good government.19 This was true especially in the hereditary Habsburg lands, where Titus became the incarnation of the clementia Austriaca (the clemency of Austria), a well cultivated trademark of the ruling dynasty, which combined both Roman and Christian virtues: clementia and pietas.20 In the case of Charles VI, the principle of clementia became the “foundation of an early form of economic and social policy, which was marked by humanistic values, peaceful, and oriented towards reforms.”21 In the case of Leopold, this connection between Titus and the new ruler was particularly strong. Especially after his early death in 1792, he became widely known as the “German Titus.”22 But even before that, various publications identified Leopold with Titus.23 The parallels between the two seemed obvious: they both lived only into their forty-fifth year and ruled for less than two years. Some of Leopold’s benevolent actions (in Florence, for example, he declined to have a monument erected in his honor, suggesting instead that the money already collected be used to build a new water pipeline for the city) were reminiscent of Titus.24 Thus, when La clemenza di Tito was performed at the coronation festivities in Prague, those attending easily understood the “political allegory” of the opera.25 When Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor, the political situation in the hereditary Habsburg lands was quite volatile, or so it might have seemed to Leopold.26 Joseph’s costly war against the Turks in alliance with Catherine the Great of Russia (1729–1796) led to rising prices and difficult economic conditions at home. His wide-ranging social reforms aimed at curbing the feudal rights of the aristocracies in Bohemia, Hungary, and the Austrian Netherlands caused widespread resistance and even revolt among the local elites. Joseph’s autocratic style and the increased reversal of many civil liberties after 1785 made him more and more unpopular even among his erstwhile supporters. Thus, when Leopold arrived in Vienna, he had many fires to put out. This was made even more difficult since the various constituencies in his dominions had very different expectations, from the aristocracy on one end of the political spectrum, who hoped that their old feudal rights would be reinstated, to the peasants on the other, who raised insurrections all over the Austrian monarchy in search of further relief from servitude. Leopold took a mediating approach, which historian Adam Wandruszka has aptly described as “one step back, two steps forward,” and quickly made progress on many fronts.27 Leopold avoided an impending war with Prussia and the threat of a rebellion in Hungary, won back the rebellious provinces in the Austrian Netherlands through an armed yet bloodless intervention, ended the war with Turkey, and re-established Habsburg’s leadership role in the Empire. Some of his political decisions were restorative, others forward-looking. In

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Belgium, Leopold showed his ability to use rigore (severity) to consolidate the threatened Austrian rule.28 In Bohemia, he reinstated some of the privileges that the aristocracy had lost under Joseph.29 At the same time, he planned constitutional reforms to profit the underprivileged classes, including in Bohemia.30 All in all, Wandruszka observes, Leopold’s 1,200 laws and decrees demonstrate “the spirit of a progressive, deliberate, and warmhearted care for the welfare of the subjects, less in theoretical declamations than in countless concrete aspects.”31 The fact that Leopold agreed to be crowned as King of Bohemia (his brother Joseph had not) was itself part of Leopold’s strategy of appeasing the local aristocracy. Yet, as Mark Berry points out, it would hardly be correct to consider Leopold a supplicant; he had already rejected some of the Estates’ constitutional claims, not least those to represent the “nation” and to determine Bohemian citizenship. It behoved the Estates to win Leopold’s favour, for no one suspected that he would die the following year, ruling for no longer than the historical Titus.32 The opera signaled an end to the monarchy’s conflict with the Bohemian Estates and re-established the emperor’s authority in Bohemia. Musicologist Pia Janke notes that, “the coronation festivities offered plenty [of] opportunity to demonstrate both the loyalty of the estates and the claims of the ruler.”33 Still, the reform-oriented forces in society—to which the fellow Freemasons Mozart and Mazzolà surely belonged—could also expect a receptive audience for their demands in the new emperor.34 As Grand Duke of Tuscany (1765– 1790), Leopold had distinguished himself through demonstrations of beneficence, modest forms of representation, and restraint in severity. He implemented comprehensive reforms, especially the most far-reaching criminal punishment reform in all of Europe in 1786. Following the suggestions of Cesare Beccaria (Cesare Beccaria Bonesana, marchese di Gualdrasco e di Villareggio; 1738–1794), his minister, legal philosopher, criminologist, jurist, politician, and reformer, Leopold had turned Tuscany into an enlightened model state for criminal punishment. Not only did he abolish both torture and the death penalty—the gallows and torture instruments were burned in public—he also followed Beccaria’s suggestion that all future punishments be administered with “lenience.”35 “One of the most effective brakes on crime,” Beccaria wrote in On Crimes and Punishments (Dei delitti e delle pene, 1764), is not the harshness of its punishment, but the unerringness of punishment. This calls for vigilance in the magistrates, and that kind of unswerving judicial severity which, to be useful to the cause of virtue, must be accompanied by a lenient code of laws.36 Austria had already abolished both torture and the death penalty in 1776, even though the abolition of the death penalty had not been publicly announced and was known only to the courts. Still, Joseph was no humanist reformer when it

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came to criminal punishment. His government simply replaced the death penalty with other no less cruel punishments, such as lifelong hard labor or pulling boats along canals—punishment that almost no convict survived for longer than one year. Joseph believed that such punishments deterred criminals more than the death penalty because they bore a message of utter hopelessness.37 Yet the emperor’s utilitarian argument for harsh punishments failed to sway most Viennese intellectuals, including the judges in Joseph’s courts, who often did not implement the full force of the law and imposed only the minimum sentences, which were often further reduced by the appeals courts. Joseph was obviously perturbed by the actions of his courts, and in the notorious 1786 case of murderer Franz Zaglauer von Zahlheim (c. 1753–1786), an Austrian government official of noble heritage but indulgent lifestyle and considerable debt, he decided to set an example. Upon the explicit demand of the emperor, Zahlheim was executed according to the regulations of the Theresian law codes.38 The case attracted public attention in Vienna primarily because the mode of execution recalled the cruelty of the ancien régime. Leopold’s policies in this regard stood in marked contrast to those of his brother Joseph in Vienna. After becoming emperor, Leopold abolished Joseph’s draconian punishments and code of laws.39 Still, even though Leopold had demonstrated his enlightened convictions as Grand Duke of Tuscany, it was unclear whether he would continue those same reform policies as emperor in Vienna. Ruling a homogeneous grand duchy, such as Tuscany, presented far fewer political challenges than ruling a vastly heterogeneous, multi-ethnic empire like the hereditary Habsburg lands.40 After 1785 Joseph II had already curbed many of his initial reforms of the early 1780s. The political situation changed even more after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Initially, Leopold welcomed the Revolution, and he still viewed it positively even in October 1790. During the celebrations for his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor, the representative of the Prussian king, Marchese Girolamo Lucchesini (1751–1825), presented Leopold with plans for a war against France in the common interest of all European monarchs to maintain peace, order, and authority. As Wandruszka reports, Leopold responded that, “the events in France are a powerful lesson for all sovereigns, who in the future are obligated to apply great restraint vis-à-vis their subjects.”41 Still, despite his lukewarm relationship to his sister Marie-Antoinette (1755–1793) and her husband Louis XVI (1754–1793), Leopold was increasingly concerned about what was happening to the French royal couple.42 Thus, the coronation festivities in Prague were surely not an appropriate occasion for Mozart and Mazzolà to present emperor and court with a revolutionary manifesto, even if they had wanted to.

The renewal of opera seria Before we look more deeply at the political message of the opera, we need to discuss Mozart’s return in La clemenza di Tito to the genre of opera seria.43 This will allow us to evaluate the validity of the overwhelmingly negative

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responses that this opera long occasioned among its interpreters. An influential tradition of interpretation, which goes back all the way to the nineteenth century, suggests that Mozart’s late return to opera seria was unintended. Financial distress, scholars have argued, forced him to accept the commission against his better judgment. Moreover, his acceptance of the commission was supposedly unsuccessful because of the haste of its execution and Mozart’s final illness. John A. Rice refers to this negative appraisal of the opera as the “Romantic critical tradition.”44 An early exponent of this tradition writing at the end of the eighteenth century was Mozart’s first biographer, Franz Xaver Niemetschek, who wrote: “La clemenza di Tito is considered, from an aesthetic point of view, and as a beautiful work of art, Mozart’s most perfect work.”45 This praise full of reservations (“from an aesthetic point of view, and as a beautiful work of art”), upon which Niemetschek expounds at some length, is typical of the Romantic critical tradition. Niemetschek was also the first to suggest that the opera was written in eighteen days. He distinguished between the opera’s major strengths, such as Vitellia’s rondo, Non più di fiori, and the Act I finale, and its weaknesses, such as supposedly “modest” orchestral parts and the need to allow the Italian singers to “display their virtuosity.”46 A long tradition of authors followed Niemetschek in this interpretation, as we see in the influential biography of Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (1761–1826), Constanze Mozart’s second husband, which draws heavily on Niemetschek’s earlier work. Nissen’s judgment is especially interesting, for it was Constanze Mozart above all who, after her first husband’s death, championed the work through concert performances.47 Nissen repeats many of Niemetschek’s claims. He notes that this was the last opera that Mozart wrote and immediately adds the reservation that “his energies were waning, while his spirit was already taking leave of his earthly shell.”48 Not only was it the work of a dying man, it was moreover a work that seems to say that its creator “exhausted himself with the Magic Flute.”49 The well-meaning excuses for the work continue: its “musical and dramatic character … is more poetic than romantic” ([d]er musikalische und dramatische Charakter … ist mehr poetisch als romantisch); its physiognomy, which gives the work its impact, cannot be portrayed by Germans but only by Italians; the original impersonator of Titus had “no voice” (keine Stimme), which is why it was all too understandable that productions often substituted his arias for those of other composers.50 While in other cases Mozart poured the wealth of his musical ideas into whatever he worked on, here “he suddenly became morose and sparse,” and the recitatives were written by one of his pupils, even though—Nissen claims—Mozart corrected them.51 For Nissen, the weaknesses in the work include its comparative dearth of ensembles and a preponderance of arias and choruses; the fact that “[t]he instruments are less concertante, [and] are much more isolated … than in other works”; furthermore, “the increasingly empty measures of the wind instruments,” which “[foreshadow] the auspices under which Mozart’s spirit worked here”; and also the relative rarity of “canon-like movements.”52 Overall, Nissen

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diagnoses in the work a “meditative, dolorous, calm spirit,” and adds that “all affectionate feelings take on a color of melancholy.”53 But again, just as Niemetschek argued, Nissen also points to those numbers in which Mozart transcends his supposedly gloomy mood, and he therefore praises the work despite its seeming weaknesses: Mozart showered even the secondary roles “with wealth squandered from his never ebbing treasure” and transformed Metastasio’s three acts into two in a “masterly” (meisterhaft) way.54 The work in its entirety is of “noble innocence” (edler Einfalt); Tito’s character in its “simplicity, calm, and quiet sublimity, shaded with sorrow” (die Einfachheit, die Ruhe … und die stille Erhabenheit des Titus, mit Kummer schattirt), is painted with “an anxious carefulness” (mit einer ängstlichen Sorgfalt); Vitellia, although “a moral monster” (moralisches Ungeheuer), appears “human enough” (menschlich genug); Mozart renders Servilia beautifully; the duet between Annio and Sesto is lovely; and “[a]ll other pieces bespeak the great spirit of its creator.”55 A few pieces in the opera stand out above all else, particularly the two finales: The finale of the first act is one of the most perfect works of Mozart; here, expression, character, and feeling compete with one another to produce the greatest effect. In every performance, the singing, the accompaniment, the instrumentation, the modulation, and the reverberation of the distant choruses result in an illusion, which is rare in opera.56 Similarly, the final chorus in the second act “is surely of all choruses the most flowing, sublime, and most full of expression.”57 Mozart’s last opera seria, then, is not without worth. And yet Nissen feels the need to defend it. “The enjoyment of this work of art,” he cautions, “requires a pure soul and a completely calm mind.”58 It unfolds its gifts “only with time” and reveals “its sublime mysteries” only after “repeated and attentive listening.”59 Niemetschek and Nissen’s judgment attracted many followers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Richard Wagner (1813–1883) contended that La clemenza di Tito is “stiff and dry (steif und trocken).”60 And he famously praised Mozart for his inability to match the quality of his music for Tito to that of Don Giovanni: Oh, how truly dear and most praiseworthy is Mozart for me, that it was not possible for him to invent music for Tito like that of Don Giovanni, for Così fan tutte like that of Figaro! How disgracefully it would have desecrated music!61 Many others followed suit, including the famous Mozart scholars Otto Jahn (1813–1869), Edward J. Dent (1876–1957), and Anna Amalia Abert (1906–1996).62 A final example of this trend is theater critic and director Ivan Nagel (1931– 2021). His little book, Autonomy and Mercy, exerted considerable influence on the European theater stage in the latter part of the twentieth century.63 Nagel’s

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devastating criticism of Tito is especially relevant in the context of my discussion, because it challenges any reading of Mozart’s work that highlights theological aspects, such as grace. Nagel contends that such theological concepts are precisely what Mozart strove to overcome in favor of purely world-immanent substitutes. In this reading, La clemenza di Tito appears as an anachronistic return to a world that Mozart had already long left behind. Nagel suggests that there is an evolution among Mozart’s seven adult-age operas away from baroque opera seria, with its absolutist notion of grace, and toward a renewed concept of opera buffa centered around the notion of human autonomy.64 Nagel asks: “Is there a guiding idea in Mozart’s operas that pierces the typology of seria, singspiel, buffa and illuminates each work in turn as a canonic creation—as an unrepeatable moment in the awakening of man as subject?”65 Nagel is quick to answer his own question: Such an idea would have to circumscribe that place at which the sovereignty of the One is supplanted by the freedom of the individual. Mercy and autonomy separate, contend, suffuse each other there: two eras, two political doctrines, two ontologies.66 Mozart, Nagel avers, increasingly substitutes the baroque Catholic notion of divine or quasi-divine grace from above with the enlightened idea of human autonomy. In so doing, the composer rings the death knell for opera seria. It simply becomes an obsolete impossibility. To understand Nagel’s claim better, we need to look in more detail at the concept of opera seria. The term comes from the end of the eighteenth century and refers to what was otherwise known as a dramma per musica, typically “a full-length opera with a serious, usually historical or pseudo-historical plot, with a cast consisting of six or seven characters of royal or noble birth.”67 Opere serie were usually performed on festive occasions, especially for the purpose of courtly representation; they were quite expensive to put on, but nonetheless belonged to the staple repertoire of the great opera houses of Italy and were often also performed elsewhere. Most importantly, opere serie distinguished themselves from their counterpart, opere buffe, that is, comic operas, part of the eighteenth-century world of comedy. Serious and comic operas differed from one another in various ways. For example, opere serie portrayed real characters. Stock characters, by contrast, usually populated opere buffe. While opere serie had aristocratic, noble, and royal protagonists, opere buffe involved both bourgeois and aristocratic characters, but no royalty. The seria took place between different estates: deity and humankind, or ruler and subjects. By contrast, the buffa took place within one estate. While opere serie dealt with historical events, comic operas focused on everyday life. Finally, while opere serie usually concluded in some sort of reconciliation scene, caused by an act of grace granted either by a monarch or by divine intervention, opere buffe often ended with a wedding. As Nagel puts it,

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Nagel argues that Mozart significantly developed both operatic genres, that of the seria and that of the buffa. For Nagel, this becomes paradigmatically apparent in Le nozze di Figaro, on the one hand, and La clemenza di Tito, on the other. In the first of these two, Nagel argues, the composer introduced both status inequality and a final reconciliation scene where neither originally had a place. This, for Nagel, created a paradox, but “it is precisely that thorn of genre-contrariness which spurs the genre to its purest triumph.”69 Even more significantly, this triumph has important theological implications, for Mozart purportedly substituted the divine or quasi-divine act of grace from the seria with the intra-human act of forgiveness in his buffa. To put it differently: The composer is said to have replaced a theological worldview with an a-theological, if not altogether atheistic, one. Indeed, Nagel’s thesis has an anti-theological underpinning. He argues that “everything nonhuman was alien to [Mozart],” so that, for example, the final chorus of Don Giovanni “rises from the furthest edge of immanence; but it reaches no beyond, nothing radically other.”70 Indeed, for Nagel, it is noteworthy that “Mozart’s strongest character is the blasphemer.”71 While Mozart succeeded in renewing opera buffa by integrating elements from the seria, he failed to do the same for the seria—or so Nagel believes. To be sure, in the seria Mozart also introduced genre-foreign elements, most significantly the traditional aria-recitative sequencing with several action-propelling ensembles. The emperor himself participates in three of these, thus joining his subjects on an equal musical footing. Surely this fact constitutes an equalizing paradox. Indeed, in Mozart’s hands, Nagel insists, La clemenza di Tito was no longer about status difference (between Tito and his subjects), but rather about “the concept of mankind.”72 Mozart’s anti-theological impetus is thus visible even here in the seria itself, contrary to the genre’s original ideological and class presuppositions. What worked well in the renewed buffa, however, fell flat in the seria. When, in his first recitative, Mozart and Mazzolà have Tito immediately renounce his divini onori (divine honors), in Nagel’s view they dismantle the very possibility of the seria. As Nagel formulates, The space of the seria, its range of expression between the one who menaces and the one who entreats, is thus destroyed. How could fear or hope cry and struggle for mercy, when Tito, a tenorially stiff, pale plaster cast of Sarastro, keeps on declaring that he is no “monster and tyrant,” but “a man”?73 In the end, La clemenza di Tito must count as a dramaturgical failure.

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Nagel’s thesis clearly reflects the long-standing tradition of criticism leveled against Mozart’s last opera seria. Yet, John A. Rice has shown that this tradition is based on three highly problematic assumptions, many of which we have already discovered in Nissen’s comments, but which were perhaps most clearly expressed by the important nineteenth-century Mozart scholar Otto Jahn. As Rice summarizes Jahn’s arguments, the opera is a “product of illness, haste, and reluctance.”74 According to this tradition, Mozart was already deathly sick, and his creative energies were waning. He had only eighteen days to write the opera and was forced to rush. Mozart accepted the commission, says Jahn, only due to his well-known financial distress, which forced him to compose an opera he would have refused under different circumstances. Moreover, he had to write it in such a way that the Italian virtuosi could show off their vocal acrobatics. Although the opera in its entirety does not compare to Mozart’s other operatic works, there are nonetheless individual masterpieces in it, as Niemetschek and Nissen had already claimed in their respective biographies. As Rice points out, a whole set of highly problematic Romantic presuppositions lie behind these observations, which have led to the negative evaluation of Tito: first, “that a great work of art must come from within; it must result from inspiration”; second, “that great operas can be written only when the composer has singers who are willing to submit to his genius”; and third, that a great work of art inevitably has “to be the product not only of inspiration but of long and painstaking labor.”75 Against these claims, Rice points out that many great works of music in the eighteenth century and before were the result of commissions and had to be produced quickly. That Mozart was already deathly ill when he composed Tito is a myth, and the idea that his creative energies were waning even in his last weeks and days is proven untrue by the sections of the Requiem he finished in his actual last days and hours.76 Finally, it was common practice in the eighteenth century and particularly also “Mozart’s practice, of which there is ample evidence in his letters, of constantly seeking to show his singers at their best; singers had no need to demand such treatment from him.”77 Rice concludes that “[r]epudiation of the Romantic critical tradition was a necessary part of the process of re-evaluation of Tito and its reinstatement in the repertory.”78 To evaluate Nagel’s thesis, we need to look more closely at the role of opera seria towards the end of the eighteenth century as well as Mozart’s relationship to it. Prior to the commission to compose La clemenza di Tito, Mozart had written his last opera seria, Idomeneo, in 1781 for Munich. During the 1780s, he did not write any other serious operas. This fact, however, does not reflect the state of opera seria in the 1780s and 1790s. Opera seria was still quite popular in Italy, London, and Berlin in 1791; it continued to thrive afterwards; and it evolved into the direction that serious opera took in works by Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, for example.79 That opera seria played no role in Vienna in the 1780s was due to the interests of Emperor Joseph II, who much preferred opera buffa.80 As Rice points out, “Since the Habsburg court reserved for itself the privilege of staging operas within the walls of Vienna during the eighteenth

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century, the Emperor’s tastes greatly influenced the city’s operatic life.”81 Joseph kept tight control over the Burgtheater. There simply was no demand for the serious genre; hence, it is not surprising that Mozart wrote no opere serie, and no significant works in this genre came out of Vienna during that period. Things changed in this regard when Leopold, who preferred the seria to the buffa, became the new emperor and eventually set out to transform things in Vienna. In Florence and Italy, opera seria was widely performed during the 1780s. During his first year as emperor, Leopold gave little attention to the theater, as he had to put out too many fires elsewhere. This situation changed dramatically in 1791, when Leopold began to reorganize the world of Viennese opera.82 Leopold dismissed court librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and others, hired new personnel from Italy, and created an opera seria company for Vienna. By late 1791, the operatic repertory in Vienna had changed to conform to Leopold’s explicit instructions. By his renewed patronage of opera seria, Leopold might also have wanted to distinguish his rule from that of his older brother. As Mark Berry points out, Leopold wished to define himself in opposition to the predecessor who had apparently brought the Habsburg lands so close to the precipice, not least so that some of Joseph’s reforms, particularly those relating to education and religion, might quietly be salvaged. Opera seria, far from being a throwback, might present a contrast of benevolent tradition.83 In 1791, then, opera seria was not a dying genre. And Mozart was not averse to it. Indeed, he always professed his own proclivity for the genre. He had written a whole range of serious operas before 1781, when he composed Idomeneo for Munich, and obviously liked to compose in the serious genre. On February 4, 1778, he wrote to his father: “Do not forget how much I desire to write operas. I envy anyone who is composing one. I could really weep for vexation when I hear or see an aria. But Italian, not German; seriosa, not buffa.”84 We have no evidence that Mozart’s predilection changed during the 1780s, for he continued to write concert arias of the serious kind on texts by Metastasio.85 As Rice points out, “There is no reason to believe that Mozart’s interest in opera seria had lessened by 1791; on the contrary, it is likely that the genre of La clemenza di Tito was one of the aspects of the commission that convinced Mozart to accept it.”86 That Mozart was proud of his last opera seria is apparent from the way he entered it in the personal listing of his works—noting famously that it had been “ridotta á vera opera dal Sig:re Mazzolá” (reduced to true opera by Signore Mazzolà) and even mentioning his librettist’s position as, “Poeta di sua A: S: l’Elettore di Saßonia” (Poet of His Highness the Elector of Saxony). In a letter to his wife from October 7–8, 1791, Mozart furthermore proudly reports the dual success that Die Zauberflöte and Tito enjoyed on the very same evening— the first at its premier performance in Vienna and the second at its final performance in Prague.87 Mozart’s comment indicates both his own pride in the

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opera and the positive reception it (eventually) received in Prague. In fact, the opera went on to become one of the composer’s most popular far into the midnineteenth century, second only to Don Giovanni, which had also premiered in Prague. When the opera was premiered in the presence of the court, members of the European high nobility, and the Bohemian aristocracy on September 6, 1791, the audience’s reaction was quite different. That night, the opera met with seeming failure.88 Empress Maria Louisa (Ludovica) (1745–1792) is said to have remarked that it was a “porcheria tedesca” (German mess), although the authenticity of the comment is disputed.89 Count Karl Johann Christian von Zinzendorf (1739–1813) noted in his diary on September 6, 1791, that “we were regaled with the most tedious spectacle,” and he was not alone among the original audience in his negative evaluation of Tito.90 Confirmation comes from Musikalisches Wochenblatt, the musical weekly from Berlin, which reported in December 1791 that the opera, “although the music was by Mozart, did not find favor.”91 After the court had left Prague, though, Mozart’s opera turned out to be a success with the city’s bourgeois audience, as is clear from Mozart’s letter to his wife. The curious reception-history of this opera seria—belonging to a genre whose original social location was among the nobility and should therefore have guaranteed a warm welcome at court rather than among the bourgeoisie— may well indicate the work’s political implications. It seems that the nobility recognized the opera’s political message and disliked it.92 Count Rottenhan later expressed his conviction that “at court there was a preconceived aversion to Mozart’s composition.”93 It is possible that this aversion originated in the critical attitude Mozart had already developed vis-à-vis the aristocracy during his time in Salzburg, which had found its first operatic expression—most likely with Emperor Joseph II’s support—in Le nozze di Figaro. Already before Mozart came to Vienna, he had developed a keen self-awareness as a bourgeois artist who believed that personal ability and achievement, rather than noble heritage, account for a person’s worth. In a June 20, 1781, letter to his father he writes: It is the heart that ennobles the man; and though I am no count, yet I have probably more honour in me than many a count. Whether a man be count or valet, the moment he insults me, he is a scoundrel.94 In any case, there is no reason to assume that Mozart’s composition of Tito was lackluster, or that he—or his audience in Prague—believed the genre of opera seria was anachronistic. This observation puts a serious question mark behind Ivan Nagel’s thesis that Mozart sought to abolish the baroque genre of opera seria with its purportedly outdated notion of absolutist grace. If we consider further that the thesis of Mozart’s supposed irreligiosity and atheism is a myth, then we must re-evaluate the question of how the seria’s notion of

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grace from above and the buffa’s notion of forgiveness among humankind below relate to one another in the succession of his operas.95

The historical Titus Before I discuss Metastasio’s libretto in its original philosophical context and look at how Mozart and Mazzolà reworked it, it seems appropriate to reflect on the question of how the historical Roman Emperor Titus could qualify as a panegyric model for ideal governance in Catholic Austria.96 After all, thanks to the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. 69–after 122 CE), whose De vita Caesarum is the main historical source for Titus, we know that before his ascension to the throne, Titus was anything but a virtuous man.97 As Suetonius reports, concerns and discontentment in Rome were enormous when Titus followed his father Vespasian on the throne. Titus had a well-known history as a tyrannical and brutal prefect of the Praetorian Guard. Moreover, during his father’s emperorship, he had purged the Senate of his father’s enemies, even to the extent of committing murder. It did not help Titus’s reputation that he lived in rather ostentatious luxury and engaged in sexual licentiousness with both catamites and women, much like the hated Emperor Nero, whose memory was still quite alive in Rome in Titus’s time.98 Contributing to Titus’s fame as a ruthless and brutal man was his role in the Jewish War. Titus had originally embarked with his father Vespasian on a military campaign to crush the Jewish insurrection of 66 CE. After his father had become emperor in 69 CE, Titus became responsible for the successful conclusion of the operation, which resulted in the fateful destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Here, Titus once again demonstrated the utmost brutality, even by ancient standards: he tortured and killed even those already fleeing from the besieged city, ordered up to five hundred Jews to be executed daily, and starved about 600,000 Jews. When his soldiers finally entered the city, they killed whomever they found alive. By the end of the war, approximately 1,100,000 people were dead, the city had been destroyed and left in ruins, 97,000 Jews had been sold into slavery, and the remainder of the Jewish people had been dispersed across the ancient world.99 The fact that such an unflinchingly gruesome ruler eventually became a model of governance in the eyes of later generations had much to do with Titus’s two short years as emperor. During this time, he helped shape the positive image that entered the annals of history soon after his death.100 He had large parts of the Domus Aurea (Golden House)—Nero’s enormous private villa in the center of Rome—destroyed and replaced by public buildings, such as the Baths of Titus.101 When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE and destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the entire adjacent region, he swiftly organized relief efforts, visited the disaster area twice, and donated great sums of his own money to help the suffering population. Similarly, when Rome was partly destroyed through a great fire in the year 80 and a plague broke out at the same time, he again offered up large parts of his private possessions to

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rebuild the city. Such acts quickly won him the praise of Roman historians, such as Suetonius, who numbered him among the good emperors of Rome.103 Yet, ironically, Titus’s brutal past played a crucial part in the fact that he was later remembered positively, for it provided the necessary propagandistic backdrop to the image of the mild and gracious emperor, which Titus tried to foster soon after his accession to the throne. Only against the memory of his erstwhile brutality could he appear as especially mild. Suetonius writes: “But this reputation turned out to his advantage and gave place to the highest praise, when no fault was discovered in him, but on the contrary the highest virtues.”104 His far-from-mild past led the Romans to understand Titus’s change of character as the product of a great moral conversion. As Hans-Joachim Fritz remarks, “Only as the product of moral catharsis does the ‘clementia’ become an admired paradigm of virtuousness and a general object of fascination.”105 Yet there is another aspect to Titus’s later career as a moral exemplar, especially for Austrian rulers within their strongly Catholic context, and it originates in the aberrations of Christian theology in the past. It may have been precisely the horrendous destruction of Jerusalem that helped pave the way for Titus to become an example of virtue in Catholic Austria. This has much to do with the long history of Christian anti-Judaism. From early on, Christians understood the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans as divine retribution for what they perceived as the responsibilities of the Jewish people for killing Jesus of Nazareth. In the anti-Judaist and supersessionist climate, which persisted in the early church and in Christendom ever after, the “anti-Jewish” Titus could easily become a heroic exemplar of governance.

Notes 1 Parts of this chapter were previously published in Steffen Lösel, “Clemency and Conversion: Theological Reflections on Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito,” Modern Theology 34, no. 4 (October 2018): 637–656, and are reprinted here with permission. 2 See John A. Rice, W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 4–5. For a translation of the agreement, see ibid., 5–6. 3 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 5. See also Hans-Joachim Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito: Die Geschichte einer Oper (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2013), 55. 4 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 5. 5 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 5. 6 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 5. 7 This is at least what Salieri claimed in a letter to Prince Anton I Esterházy (1738– 1794) from the end of August 1791. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 43, and Rice, W. A. Mozart, 45. 8 As Fritz notes, both Salieri and Mozart had fallen out of the new emperor’s favor. In Mozart’s case, this may have had to do with rumors about his lifestyle, his precarious financial situation, and his continued membership in a Masonic lodge at a time when many among Vienna’s intellectual elite had turned their backs on Freemasonry. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 44–45.

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9 The reasons for the choice of Mazzolà are unclear, but it seems most likely that it was dictated by expediency. Mazzolà, a friend of da Ponte’s and a fellow Freemason, was the obvious choice as interim court librettist in Vienna in the time of transition between da Ponte and Giovanni Bertati (1735–1815), who eventually succeeded him. See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 32. It is not known who chose Mazzolà for this collaboration. It may well have been Guardasoni. Just like Mozart, Mazzolà seems to have been similarly unpopular at the Viennese court and was soon replaced by Bertati. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 46. Mazzolà’s libretto is available in W[olfgang] A[madeus] Mozart, La Clemenza di Tito KV 621, ed. Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition (Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997). 10 Wolfgang Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation in Metastasios und Mozarts La clemenza di Tito,” in Mozart und die europäische Spätaufklärung, ed. Lothar Kreimendahl (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog Verlag, 2011), 276–325, at 276, suggests that the plan for the opera goes back to April 1789. He is referring to a letter by Mozart to his wife written from Prague on April 10, 1789, which mentions a meeting with Guardasoni in which they discussed the project for a new opera. For a critical discussion of the chronology of opera’s composition, see Rice, W. A. Mozart, 47–51. 11 Pietro Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nella cesarea corte per il nome gloriosissimo della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Carlo VI, imperadore de’ Romani sempre augusto, per comando della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Elisabetta Cristina, imperadrice regnante, l’anno MDCCXXXIV, a poesia è del signor abbate Pietro Metastasio, poeta di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica. La musica è del signor Antonio Caldara, vicemaestro di capella di sua maestà cesarea e Cattolica (Vienna: Giovanni Pietro van Ghelen, stampatore di corte di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica, 1734), available at: http:// www.progettometastasio.it/public/testo/testo/codice/CLEMENZA|P|002. From the fifteenth century until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Holy Roman Emperor was almost always elected from the House of Habsburg or, after the election of Maria Theresia’s (1717–1780) husband Francis I (1708–1765), from the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. 12 It is unlikely that the opera’s topic was suggested by the Bohemian Estates, as argued by Nicholas Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992), 264–267, esp. 266–267. Till contends that the Bohemian Estates, by choosing Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito “were making a bid for a renewal of the old alliance between the monarchy and the aristocracy” (ibid., 267). While such a renewal was undoubtedly in their interest, the topic nonetheless seems to have been determined by the emperor, as Count Rottenhan functioned as his “principal agent in Prague” (Rice, W. A. Mozart, 5). Most likely, the Bohemian Estates were responsible for the music and the emperor for the opera’s subject. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 49. 13 See Adam Wandruszka, “Die ‘Clementia Austriaca’ und der aufgeklärte Absolutismus: Zum politischen und ideellen Hintergrund von ‘La Clemenza di Tito,’” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 31, no. 4–5 (1976): 186–193, at 188. 14 See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 10. 15 As in 1791, for many of these versions, Metastasio’s libretto was typically adjusted and reworked. In the eighteenth century, such adjustments—especially in light of available singers—were customary. See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 31 and 32–33; and Daniel Heartz, “Mozart and his Italian Contemporaries,” in Mozart’s Operas, ed. with contributing essays by T. Bauman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 298–317, at 301. 16 See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 11–12.

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17 Quoted in Rice, W. A. Mozart, 11. 18 See Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 186; and Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 284. 19 See Dieter Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte versus Staatsraison: Politik und Empfindsamkeit in Mozarts La clemenza di Tito,” in Bürgersinn und Kritik: Festschrift für Udo Bermbach zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Th. Greven, Herfried Münkler, and Rainer Schmalz-Bruhns (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998), 345– 366, at 349. 20 See Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” esp. 187; and Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 75–76. 21 Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 76 (Grundlage einer geradezu humanistisch orientierten, friedfertigen und um Reformen bemühten Frühform der Wirtschaftsund Sozialpolitik). 22 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 14. See also Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 256–257; and Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 191. 23 See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 13–14, which refers to Joseph von Sartori’s two-volume work, Leopoldinische Annalen: Ein Beitrag zur Regierungsgeschichte Kaiser Leopolds II, vol. 1 (Augsburg: Nikolaus Doll, 1792) and vol. 2 (Augsburg: Nikolaus Doll, 1793). In the second volume, Sartori laid out in detail the parallels between Leopold and Titus. 24 Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 253. Wandruszka suggests that Leopold’s role as a reformer in Tuscany motivated the choice of the libretto (Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 188). In Tuscany, Leopold abolished crimes of lèse-majesté, as Tito does in Metastasio’s libretto. See ibid., 190. 25 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 10. 26 See Mark Berry, “Power and Patronage in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte,” in Cultures of Power in Europe During the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Brendan Simms and H. M. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 325–347, at esp. 333, which has further literature on this question. 27 Adam Wandruszka, Leopold II: Erzherzog von Österreich, Grossherzog von Toskana, König von Ungarn und Böhmen, Römischer Kaiser, vol. 2, 1780–92 (Vienna and Munich: Verlag Herold, 1965), 249 (Einen Schritt zurück, zwei Schritte vorwärts). For more on Leopold’s policies, see Wandruszka’s biography and Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 258–272. 28 See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 259. 29 See Pia Janke, “La clemenza di Tito—Mozarts politisches Bekenntnis,” in Wege zu Mozart, ed. Herbert Zeman, ed. Herbert Zeman, in cooperation with Claudia Kreutel vol. 2, W. A. Mozart in Wien und Prag: Die großen Opern, (Wien: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1993), 159–175, at 159–160. 30 See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 263 and 272. 31 Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 191 (de[n] Geist einer fortschrittlichen, wohlüberlegten und warmherzigen Fürsorge für das Wohl der Untertanen, weniger in theoretischen Deklamationen als in unzähligen konkreten Einzelzügen). 32 Berry, “Power and patronage,” 331. 33 Janke, “La clemenza di Tito—Mozarts politisches Bekenntnis,” 160 (boten die Krönungsfeierlichkeiten zur Demonstration sowohl der ständischen Loyalität als auch des herrschaftlichen Anspruchs ausreichend Gelegenheit). 34 Mozart showed an interest in enlightened rulers. He owned Johann Pezzl’s novel, Faustin oder das philosophische Jahrhundert (1783), a work praising the rule of Joseph II in comparison with other European rulers, as well as Skizzen aus dem Charakter und Handlungen Joseph II (two parts, Halle 1783), and the four volumes of Friedrich II. Königs in Preußen hinterlassene Werke (1788). See Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), 588.

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36 37 38

39 40

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Contexts No radical literature was listed in his belongings at the time of his death, either because he never owned any or because it was later destroyed. [Cesare] Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, ed. Richard Bellamy, trans. Richard Davies with Virginia Cox and Richard Bellamy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), § 27, “Lenience in Punishing.” See also Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 190; and Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 270. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 63. See Volkmar Braunbehrens, Mozart in Vienna 1781–1791, trans. Timothy Bell (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 272. On the morning of March 10, 1786, Zahlheim was executed on the Hoher Markt in Vienna, Austria. According to the law, “after the public reading of his sentence, glowing hot pincers shall be applied to the left and right sides of his chest. He shall then be led to the usual place of execution, where his body shall be broken on the wheel from the feet upward and then displayed on a gibbet” (Braunbehrens, Mozart in Vienna 1781–1791, 273). Zahlheim was convicted of murdering an older woman, whom he had promised to marry, and stealing 1,000 florins in cash from her. For Zahlheim’s case, see ibid., 271–274. See Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 190. Leopold had put Beccaria on the commission that revised Joseph’s code of laws. See Wandruszka, Leopold II, vol. 2, 142. As Proß suggests with reference to § 26 Dello spirito di famiglia (Family feeling) of Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments, Beccaria’s notions of criminal punishment could easily have threatened the absolutist state in a heterogeneous empire like the Habsburg territories. Proß diagnoses this issue as a crucial problem of enlightened absolutism on the eve of restoration. See Wolfgang Pross, “Neulateinische Tradition und Aufklärung in Mazzolà/Mozarts ‘La Clemenza di Tito,’” in Die Österreichische Literatur: Ihr Profil an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert (1750–1830), vol. 2/1 of Die Österreichische Literatur: Eine Dokumentation ihrer literarhistorischen Entwicklung, ed. Herbert Zeman (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1979), 379–401, at 396–397. Wandruszka, Leopold II, vol. 2, 354 (die Vorgänge in Frankreich seien eine starke Lehre für alle Souveräne, die künftig verpflichtet seien würden, sich großer Mäßigung gegenüber ihren Untertanen zu befleißigen). Borchmeyer suggests that after the arrest of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in Varennes, when the lives of the royal couple were under acute threat, Leopold’s self-understanding as an enlightened “principe filosofo” (prince philosopher) ended abruptly: from that point, clemenza could no longer be the ideal for his understanding of government (Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 350). For Leopold’s selfunderstanding as a “principe filosofo,” see Adam Wandruszka, “Il ‘Principe Filosofo’ e il ‘Re Lazzarone,’” Rivista Storica Italiana 72, no. 3 (1960): 501–510, and Wandruszka, Leopold II, vol. 2. For opera seria at Mozart’s time, see Michele Calella, “Die Opera seria im späten 18. Jahrhundert,” in Handbuch der musikalischen Gattungen, ed. Siegfried Mauser, vol. 12, Die Oper im 18. Jahrhundert ed. Herbert Schneider und Reinhard Wiesend (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2001), 45–62; Friedrich Lippmann, “Tendenzen der italienischen Opera seria an Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts – Mozart,” Studi musicali 21 (1992): 307–358; Marita Petzoldt McClymonds, “Opera seria? Opera buffa? Genre and Style as Sign,” in Opera buffa in Mozart’s Vienna, ed. Mary Hunter and James Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 197–231; Il teatro musicale tra Sette e Ottocento, vol. 1 of I vicini di Mozart, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro and David Bryant, Fondazione Georgio Cini, Studi di Musica Veneta, 15 (Firenze: Olschki, 1989); Tomislav Volek, “Die Bedeutung der Prager Operntradition für das Entstehen des Don Giovanni und des Titus,” in Mozarts Opern in Prag, ed. Divadelní Ústav (Prague: Divadelní Ústav [Theater Institute Prague], 1991), 21–100;

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47 48

49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62

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Tomislav Volek, “Über den Ursprung von Mozarts Oper La clemenza di Tito,” in Mozart-Jahrbuch 1959 (Salzburg: Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, 1960), 274– 286. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 116 and 118. For a critical discussion of this tradition, see Rice, W. A. Mozart, Ch. 7, 118–133. Franz Xaver Niemetschek, Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, nach Originalquellen beschrieben (Prague: Herrlische Buchhandlung, 1798), 73, quoted in Rice, W. A. Mozart, 118. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 116. As Rice observes, “The defensiveness, the praise mixed with blame, the claim that the opera was completed in eighteen days, the objection to the pernicious influence of Italian singers, the suspicion of bravura arias, the elevation of particular numbers to the status of masterpieces above the level of the rest of the opera, the special praise for ‘Non più di fiori’ and the first-act finale: all these features of Niemetschek’s evaluation appeared again and again in later discussions of Tito” (ibid., 118–119). See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 105–107. Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, ed., with annotations by Rudolph Angermüller (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2010), 605 (bey hinschwindenden Kräften, wo schon sein Geist im Begriffe war, von seiner irdischen Hülle zu scheiden). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 604 (hat sich bey der Zauberflöte erschöpft). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 604. Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 604 (wurde er hier mit einem Male verdriesslich und karg). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 605–606 (Die Instrumente concertieren weniger, sind weit einzelner … als in seinen anderen Werken; die immer leerer werdenden Tactcolumnen der Blas-Instrumente; die Auspicien, unter welchen Mozart’s Geist hier arbeitete; canonischen Sätze). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 604 (das Gefühl eines sinnenden, trauernden, stillen Geistes; alle zärtlichen Empfindungen färben sich mit einer Farbe von Schwermuth an). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 605 (aus seinem nie versiegenden Schatze mit verschwenderischer Fülle). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 606 (Alle übrigen Stücke verrathen den grossen Geist ihres Schöpfers). In fact, for Nissen, the sorrow inherent in Mozart’s portrayal of Tito seemed to express Mozart’s own emotions at the time. Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 606 (Das Finale des ersten Actes ist eine der vollkommensten Arbeiten Mozart’s; es wetteifern Ausdruck, Charakter und Empfindung, um den grössten Effect hervorzubringen. Gesang, Begleitung, Instrumentation, Modulation und der Wiederhall der fernen Chöre bewirken bey jeder Aufführung eine bey Opern … seltene Täuschung). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 606 (unter allen Chören der fliessendste, erhabenste und ausdrucksvollste). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 606 (Der Genuss dieses Kunstwerkes erfordert eine reingestimmte Seele und ein vollkommen ruhiges Gemüth). Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts, 606 (nur nach und nach; seine erhabenen Mysterien; wiederholtes und aufmerksames Hören). Richard Wagner, “Über die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama” (1879), in Richard Wagner: Dichtungen und Schriften, 10 vols., ed. Dieter Borchmeyer, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983), 327, quoted in Rice, W. A. Mozart, 119. Richard Wagner, Oper und Drama, in Richard Wagner: Dichtungen und Schriften, 10 vols., ed. Dieter Borchmeyer, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983), 38, quoted in Rice, W. A. Mozart, 119. See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 120.

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63 Ivan Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas, trans. Marion Fabel and Ivan Nagel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 64 See Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 4–7, 10–11, 31–37, and 46. 65 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 5–6. 66 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 6. 67 See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 7; and Reinhard Strohm, Dramma per Musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). 68 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 6. 69 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 6. 70 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 103. 71 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 103–104. 72 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 103–104. 73 Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 7. For a critical reading of Nagel’s interpretation of La clemenza di Tito, see Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 351. 74 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 120; and 118–133. 75 All quotations are from Rice, W. A. Mozart, 121. For the notion of genius, see Johann Schmidt, Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik 1750–1945, vol. 1, Von der Aufklärung bis zum Idealismus; vol. 2, Von der Romantik bis zum Ende des Dritten Reichs (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte [Dritte Folge], vol. 210) (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2004); and Peter Kivy, The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1994). For a critique of the term when applied to artistic achievements, see Norbert Elias, Mozart: Portrait of a Genius, ed. Michael Schröter, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 19, 57–58, 61–63. For the question of Mozart’s working situation, see Andrew Steptoe, “Mozart: Resilience Under Stress,” in Genius and The Mind: Studies of Creativity and Temperament, ed. Andrew Steptoe (Oxford, New York, Tokyo: Oxford University Press, 1998), 141–164. 76 For a comprehensive medical analysis of Mozart’s last health crisis, see William Stafford, The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassessment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 56–81. 77 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 121. 78 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 120. This process began in the 1950s with a production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle at the Cologne Opera in 1969. See ibid., 138–140. 79 See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 8 for more literature. See also Marita Petzoldt McClymonds and Daniel Heartz, “Opera seria (It: ‘serious opera’),” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, executive ed. John Tyrrell, vol. 18 (New York: Grove, 2001), available at Grove Music Online: https://doi.org/ 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.20385. 80 As Rice points out, Joseph claimed to find opera seria boring, but he may also have had financial reasons for rejecting it, for it was quite expensive. See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 8; and Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 65. 81 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 8. 82 For the following, see Rice, W. A. Mozart, 8–9. 83 Berry, “Power and patronage,” 330. 84 The Letters of Mozart and His Family, chronologically arranged, translated, and edited with an Introduction, Notes, and Indices by Emily Anderson, 3rd edition (London: Macmillan, 1985), 462. 85 See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 65–66. Fritz suggests that the serious themes better fit Mozart’s mental state after 1785. 86 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 46. 87 The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 966–968.

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88 The recitatives were most likely composed by Mozart’s student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803), because Mozart did not have the time to do so. This fact, however, does not speak against Mozart’s interest in the opera, because, as musicologist Helga Lühning has demonstrated by comparing multiple settings of Metastasio’s opening lines, eighteenth-century conventions of opera seria left little room for originality in the composition of recitatives. See Helga Lühning, TitusVertonungen im 18. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zur Tradition der opera seria von Hasse bis Mozart, Analecta musicologica, vol. 20 (Volkach: A. Volk-Laaber, 1983), 322–326. See also Rice, W. A. Mozart, 60, 71–72. This observation relativizes much of the scorn that opera critics have heaped on the supposedly uninspired recitatives. 89 The earliest reference to this comment is by Alfred Meißner, Rococo-Bilder: Nach Aufzeichnungen meines Grossvaters (Gumbinnen: Verlag von Wilhelm Krauseneck, 1871), 141. See Daniel E. Freeman, Mozart in Prague (Minneapolis; MN: Bearclaw Publishers, 2013), 172–175. 90 Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, 404. 91 Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, 432. See also Rice, W. A. Mozart, 62–64. 92 As for the bourgeois audiences, Proß suggests that they recognized in the opera “the example of a new classicism” (das Exempel eines neuen Klassizismus) in “continuation of the intentions of musical classicism according to the principles of Gluck and Winckelmann” (eine Fortsetzung musikalischer klassizistischer Intentionen nach den Prinzipien Glucks und Winckelmanns). Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 383 and 380. 93 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 64. 94 The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 746–747. On the instrumental function that Le nozze di Figaro served for Joseph II’s political reform program, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 29, and Braunbehrens, Mozart in Vienna 1781–1791, 277–283. 95 For Mozart’s relationship to religion, see Wie hast Du’s mit der Religion? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart und die Theologie, ed. Joachim Herten and Klaus Röhring (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 2009); and Mozart und die Religion, ed. Peter Tschuggnall (Anif/Salzburg: Verlag Mueller-Speiser, 2010). 96 For the historical Titus and the development of the image of Titus as a mild emperor, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 68–78, whose account I largely follow here. See also Brian W. Jones, The Emperor Titus (New York: St. Martin’s Press, and London: Croom Helm, 1984); and Jones, “The Reckless Titus,” in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VI, ed. Carl Deroux (Brussels: Latomus Revues d’Études Latines, 1992), 408–420. 97 For Roman sources on Titus, see Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Volume II: Claudius. Nero. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Vespasian. Titus, Domitian. Lives of Illustrious Men: Grammarians and Rhetoricians. Poets (Terence. Virgil. Horace. Tibullus. Persius. Lucan). Lives of Pliny the Elder and Passienus Crispus, trans. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 38 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 306–323; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Volume VIII: Books 61–70, trans. Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 176 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 296–315; Tacitus, The Histories, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, revised and ed. D. S. Levene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), esp. Book II, 1 and 2 on Titus’s character and Book V, 11 on the Jewish War. See also Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 382. 98 See Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Book VIII, Ch. 7, 312–315. 99 For Titus’s role in the Jewish War, see Piergiorgio Parroni, “Introduction,” in Sulpicius Severus, Chronica, ed. Piergiorgio Parroni (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2017), I –XXXIX, esp. XXXIX.

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100 For example, according to Suetonius, he was the first emperor to ratify in a single edict all privileges granted by previous emperors. See Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Book VIII, Ch. 8, 314–317. 101 Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book 66. 102 See Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Book VIII, Ch. 8, 316–319. 103 On Titus’s mildness as emperor, see Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Book VIII, Ch. 9, 318–321. 104 See Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Book VIII, Ch. 7, 314–315 (At illi ea fama pro bono cessit conversaque est in maximas laudes neque vitio ullo reperto et contra virtutibus summis). 105 Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 74 (Erst als Produkt der moralischen Läuterung wird die ‘clementia’ zum bewunderten Vorbild der Tugendhaftigkeit und zum allgemeinen Faszinosum).

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Janke, Pia. “La clemenza di Tito—Mozarts politisches Bekenntnis.” In W. A. Mozart in Wien und Prag: Die großen Opern, edited by Herbert Zeman, in cooperation with Claudia Kreutel 159–175. Vol. 2 of Wege zu Mozart, ed. Herbert Zeman. Wien: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1993. Jones, Brian W. The Emperor Titus. New York: St. Martin’s Press and London: Croom Helm, 1984. Jones, Brian W. “The Reckless Titus.” In Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VI, edited by Carl Deroux, 408–420. Brussels: Latomus Revues d’Études Latines, 1992. Kivy, Peter. The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Lippmann, Friedrich. “Tendenzen der italienischen Opera seria an Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts – Mozart.” In Studi musicali 21 (1992): 307–335. Lösel, Steffen. “Clemency and Conversion: Theological Reflections on Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito.” In Modern Theology 34, no. 4 (October 2018): 637–656. Lühning, Helga. Titus-Vertonungen im 18. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zur Tradition der opera seria von Hasse bis Mozart. Vol. 20 of Analecta musicologica. Volkach: A. Volk-Laaber, 1983. McClymonds, Marita Petzoldt. “Opera seria? Opera buffa? Genre and Style as Sign.” In Opera buffa in Mozart’s Vienna, edited by Mary Hunter and James Webster, 197–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. McClymonds, Marita Petzoldt, and Daniel Heartz. “Opera seria (It: ‘serious opera’).” In vol. 18 of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. New York: Grove, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/ 9781561592630.article.20385. Meißner, Alfred. Rococo-Bilder: Nach Aufzeichnungen meines Grossvaters. Gumbinnen: Verlag von Wilhelm Krauseneck, 1871. Metastasio, Pietro. La clemenza di Tito: Dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nella cesarea corte per il nome gloriosissimo della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Carlo VI, imperadore de’ Romani sempre augusto, per comando della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Elisabetta Cristina, imperadrice regnante, l’anno MDCCXXXIV, a poesia è del signor abbate Pietro Metastasio, poeta di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica. La musica è del signor Antonio Caldara, vicemaestro di capella di sua maestà cesarea e Cattolica. Vienna: Giovanni Pietro van Ghelen, Stampatore di Corte di Sua Maestà Cesarea e Cattolica, 1734. http://www.progettometastasio.it/p ublic/testo/testo/codice/CLEMENZA|P|002. Mozart, W[olfgang] A[madeus]. La Clemenza di Tito KV 621. Edited by Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition. Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997. Muraro, Maria Teresa, and David Bryant, eds. Il teatro musicale tra Sette e Ottocento. Vol. 1 of I vicini di Mozart. Fondazione Georgio Cini, Studi di Musica Veneta, 15. Firenze: Olschki, 1989. Nagel, Ivan. Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas. Translated by Marion Fabel and Ivan Nagel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Niemetschek, Franz Xaver. Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, nach Originalquellen beschrieben. Prague: Herrlische Buchhandlung, 1798. Nissen, Georg Nikolaus von. Biographie W. A. Mozarts. Edited with annotations by Rudolph Angermüller. Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2010.

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Parroni, Piergiorgio. “Introduction.” In Sulpicius Severus, Chronica, edited by Piergiorgio Paroni, I–XXXIX. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2017. Proß, Wolfgang. “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation in Metastasios und Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito.” In Mozart und die Europäische Spätaufklärung, edited by Lothar Kreimendahl, 276–325. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog Verlag, 2011. Proß, Wolfgang. “Neulateinische Tradition und Aufklärung in Mazzolà/Mozarts ‘La Clemenza di Tito’.” In Die Österreichische Literatur: Ihr Profil an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert (1750–1830), 379–401. Vol. 2/1 of Die Österreichische Literatur: Eine Dokumentation ihrer literarhistorischen Entwicklung, edited by Herbert Zeman. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1979. Rice, John A. W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Schmidt, Johann. Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik 1750–1945. Vol. 1, Von der Aufklärung bis zum Idealismus. Vol. 2, Von der Romantik bis zum Ende des Dritten Reichs. Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte [Dritte Folge], vol. 210. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2004. Stafford, William. The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassessment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Steptoe, Andrew. “Mozart: Resilience Under Stress.” In Genius and The Mind: Studies of Creativity and Temperament, edited by Andrew Steptoe, 141–164. Oxford, New York, Tokyo: Oxford University Press, 1998. Strohm, Reinhard. Dramma per Musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars, Volume II: Claudius. Nero. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Vespasian. Titus, Domitian. Lives of Illustrious Men: Grammarians and Rhetoricians. Poets (Terence. Virgil. Horace. Tibullus. Persius. Lucan). Lives of Pliny the Elder and Passienus Crispus. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Vol. 38 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914. Tacitus. The Histories. Translated by W. Hamilton Fyfe, revised and edited by D. S. Levene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Till, Nicholas. Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue, and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992. Tschuggnall, Peter, ed. Mozart und die Religion. Anif/Salzburg: Verlag Mueller-Speiser, 2010. Volek, Tomislav. “Die Bedeutung der Prager Operntradition für das Entstehen des Don Giovanni und des Titus.” In Mozarts Opern in Prag, edited by Divadelní Ústav, 21–100. Prague: Divadelní Ústav (Theatre Institute Prague), 1991. Volek, Tomislav. “Über den Ursprung von Mozarts Oper La clemenza di Tito.” In Mozart-Jahrbuch 1959, 274–286. Salzburg: Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, 1960. Wagner, Richard. Oper und Drama. In Richard Wagner: Dichtungen und Schriften, 10 vols. Vol. 7, edited by Dieter Borchmeyer. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983. Wagner, Richard. “Über die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama.” In Richard Wagner: Dichtungen und Schriften, 10 vols. Vol. 9, edited by Dieter Borchmeyer. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983. Wandruszka, Adam. “Die ‘Clementia Austriaca’ und der aufgeklärte Absolutismus: Zum politischen und ideellen Hintergrund von ‘La Clemenza di Tito’.” In Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 31, no. 4–5 (1976): 186–193.

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Wandruszka, Adam. “Il ‘Principe Filosofo’ e il ‘Re Lazzarone’.” In Rivista Storica Italiana 72, no. 3 (1960): 501–510. Wandruszka, Adam. Leopold II: Erzherzog von Österreich, Grossherzog von Toskana, König von Ungarn und Böhmen, Römischer Kaiser. Vol. 2, 1780–92. Vienna and Munich: Verlag Herold, 1965.

2

Political Theology

As we saw in the last chapter, Pietro Metastasio’s 1734 libretto, La clemenza di Tito, helped shape a larger panegyric tradition, especially in eighteenth-century Austria. In this chapter, we look first at the original libretto’s theo-political message and then ask how Mozart and Mazzolà’s changes reshaped this message.1 Ever since Niccolò Machiavelli’s (1469–1527) presentation of a strong and (when necessary) ruthless ruler in his 1513 book, Il Principe (The Prince), and the subsequent condemnation of Machiavelli’s political theories by the Council of Trent, political theorists in Europe have debated whether a ruler can reconcile philosophy and the exercise of power.2 Can a person be both a monarch and a philosopher? The question harkens back to the Roman historian Tacitus, in relation to whose work political theorists in the years after the Council of Trent discussed it.3 The problem was a religious and a moral one: Christian thinkers recognized a conflict in natural law between the legitimate exercise of power following Christian and Stoic principles, on the one hand, and the ubiquitous reality of power politics, on the other. These conflicts unavoidably led to situations that required political decisions that contradicted the presupposed religious and ethical norms.4 The debate dealt especially with one vital question: How should a ruler deal with a political conspiracy that threatens not only the monarch’s life but also the stability of the state? According to Christian principles, it is better to suffer death than to kill.5 Yet, as natural law theorists, such as Hugo Grotius, realized, in the case of an attack on the life of a ruler, the political stability of the state and its citizens was likewise in danger.6

Metastasio’s libretto In his La clemenza di Tito, Metastasio offers an Arcadian response to the Tacitean conception of political power. The work draws on seventeenth-century French classicist tragedy. Particularly important in this context are French dramatist Pierre Corneille’s (1606–1684) tragedies, Cinna, ou la clémence d’Auguste (1643) and Tite et Bérénice (1670).7 Another source is Jean Racine’s (1639–1699) Andromaque (1667).8 These works in turn rely on Suetonius and on Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s (c. 1–65 CE) influential work De clementia.9 As DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452-3

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literary scholar Wolfgang Proß has demonstrated, Metastasio furthermore draws on Augustine’s De civitate Dei—both in La clemenza di Tito and in various other dramas on subjects of Roman history.10 Metastasio was an important representative of the early European Enlightenment. He was greatly appreciated by Italian priest, theologian, reformer, and historian, Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750); exercised considerable influence on Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu; 1689–1755) and Cesare Beccaria; and was much admired for La clemenza di Tito by French philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet; 1694–1778).11 The latter held Metastasio’s work to be comparable to the finest that Greece ever produced, if not superior … worthy of Corneille when he is not making speeches, and of Racine when he is not weak … based not on operatic love but on the noble sentiments of the human heart.12 All these enlightened thinkers perceived Metastasio as one of their own. Metastasio countered Machiavelli’s perceived “politics of amorality” by presenting a moral alternative in the tradition of the Accademia degli Arcardi in Rome (hence the description “Arcadian”), which his mentor and adopted father, legal theorist Gian Vincenzo Gravina (1664–1718), helped to found in memory of the famous convert from Lutheranism to the Catholic Church, Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–1689). Though Tacitus and the baroque dramatists, such as Corneille, denied the possibility that the ruler can at the same time be a philosopher, Metastasio attempts to mediate between philosophical idealism based on Christian and Stoic principles and Machiavellian Realpolitik, or—as we will see below—between baroque ideals of government and modern sensibility.13 Metastasio was an early enlightened thinker, yet he was also a partisan of baroque absolutism.14 The proffered Metastasian via media lies in a careful balance between severity and mildness, rigore and clemenza. The monarch achieves this balance both through the careful application of arguments about clemency from natural law theory, on the one hand, and through the exercise of his liberum arbitrium, that is, the absolute monarch’s free will in choosing one or the other course of action, on the other. By creating a space for clemency, even if carefully circumscribed, Metastasio’s notion of government is distinctly different from Machiavelli’s conception, which makes room for clemency only in the case that the ruler is too weak to exercise severity. For this eventuality, Machiavelli and Tacitus recommend opportunistic mildness, but only until the monarch has regained his strength and can finally exercise revenge. To hide his true motivation, such a ruler must engage in what Machiavelli and Tacitus called dissimulatio, that is, dissimulation or the constant hiding of one’s true motivations. It is an attitude that baroque court etiquette expected of all courtiers.15

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Metastasio presents his audience with an Arcadian alternative to this Machiavellian conception of government. In the opera, the Roman Emperor Titus (Tito) appears as the ideal ruler who carefully deliberates about the appropriate exercise of clemency. Metastasio’s emperor, as Proß formulates, is an “enlightened-absolutist monarch” who is rooted “in the hierarchicalpatriarchal structures of natural law.”16 In the opera, the occasion for clemency arises after Tito survives an assassination attempt planned by Vitellia—the daughter of his father’s ousted predecessor—and executed by his favorite, Sesto, who is infatuated with Vitellia’s beauty and a slave to his own erotic passions. In this precarious situation, in which not only his own life but also the stability of his empire is at stake, Metastasio’s Tito presents himself as the philosopher-emperor that neither Tacitus nor Machiavelli deemed possible or desirable. Tito engages in long discursive argumentation about clemency, but he is quite willing to administer the full severity of the law when he deems it necessary and appropriate. Metastasio’s emperor is in every way an absolute monarch who is not constrained to take one or the other course of action. He perfectly embodies the teachings of natural law theorist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), who in his seminal work, De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace, 1625), had established precise criteria for when to administer clemency.17 When Tito chooses mercy at the opera’s end, therefore, he does so primarily in the interest of political expediency. In Metastasio’s hands, clemency, as Proß points out, becomes “a function of absolute political rule.”18 Seneca had already counseled thus in his influential work, De clementia. For the Roman Stoic philosopher, clementia functions as a complementary corrective to the ruler’s severity.19 The exercise of clemency is an imperial virtue, which expresses the natural and, in fact, divine authority by which the emperor rules. He and only he can exercise the right to let grace triumph over justice. Metastasio has Tito identify the communal welfare of Rome as the reason why clemency is the right course of action—thereby picking up on Cicero’s emphasis on the common good (bonum commune) as the basis for the res publica.20 The emperor suggests that his reputation in the future and the inner peace of the empire are at stake. Most importantly, however, Metastasio’s Tito interprets Sesto’s crime as a crime directed against him as a private person rather than as a monarch. Metastasio here has Tito quote from Hugo Grotius, who in turn quotes Seneca’s De clementia. This distinction between ruler and private person allows Tito to evaluate the assassination attempt against him less severely, especially bearing in mind the possibility of moral improvement, something he also recognizes in Sesto. Metastasio’s solution to the problem of clemency offers a true via media, then. As Proß puts it, the libretto is a “fusion of baroque ideals of political authority with those of modern sensibility: as a private person, the ruler forgives a friend what, as ruler—according to the doctrine of natural law—he could not forgive anyone.”21 At the same time, the relationship between Tito and Sesto is never the same again: Tito joins Vitellia and Sesto in marriage. Furthermore, he announces that

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he himself will no longer look for a wife, taking Rome as his bride instead. This decision removes the now god-like ruler from the rest of society. He retreats to an unreachable distance, where Tacitus had seen him all along.22 With Tito’s announcement that he will forego marriage, his friendship with Sesto fundamentally changes to that of an aloof client-patron relationship free of emotional ties. Tito thus loses the last human relationship he had—a classic theme in eighteenth-century drama. From now on, Tito is bound only to Rome, that is, to the state and its people. The happy ending in this drama (and similarly in Metastasio’s other monarchical dramas) is thus an ideological defense of enlightened absolutism and of “the transcendent nature of reason.”23 This quasi-divine identity that Tito acquires at the opera’s end is expressed in the way that Tito orders Sesto and all conspirators to be released and dispenses his clemency upon them. He does so by announcing (Act III, Scene 13): “let it be known in Rome that I am the same, that I know everything, absolve everyone and forget all” (sia noto a Roma / ch’io son l’istesso e ch’io / tutto so, tutti assolvo, e tutto obblio).24 Ch’io son lo stesso: That I am the same. Tito’s statement contains an explicit allusion to Exodus 3:14 (Vulgate): Ego sum qui sum (Exod. 3:14; “I am who I am”).25 In the context of Metastasio’s baroque absolutism, the quotation serves the theo-political purpose of presenting the absolute ruler as an image of the Heavenly Ruler and Divine Judge. In Metastasio’s libretto, the quotation is anticipated by an earlier question (Act II, Scene 10), which Tito asks of Vitellia: “Does the unthankful one [that is, Rome] not know that I am a Roman myself, that I am Tito?”26 At the opera’s end, Tito then answers his question himself. Even more importantly, he does so in the context of an extended legal-philosophical debate with Publio, which develops over the course of the opera. This whole question starts out in Metastasio’s libretto with Tito’s refusal to press charges against several citizens who have denounced his predecessors on the throne, and Tito’s insistence that trials on the charge of lèse-majesté be abandoned altogether, even if Tito is the target of such infractions.27 The exchange between Tito and Publio then turns in a more general way to the question of how expedient it is to apply the laws and the severe punishments prescribed by them stringently in particular circumstances. Metastasio’s Tito suggests that the application of the law needs to take account of human weakness: “If justice used all of its rigor, the earth would quickly be a desert.”28 And a moment later, the emperor adds: “Believe me, the judge is rare who is innocent of the mistake he punishes.”29 Tito’s warning may well be taken as an allusion to Jesus’s famous answer to the scribes and Pharisees accusing a woman caught in adultery (John 8:7: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”), a text which served as a crucial reference text for Augustine’s advocacy for mildness in the application of legal punishments.30 Furthermore, Metastasio’s Tito warns that an all-too-frequent application of severe laws only makes publicly apparent how widespread crime is and how rare obedience to the law is:

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Political Theology [The punishments] if they are

Hanno [i castighi], se son frequenti

frequent, have less authority. They make

minore autorità. Si fan le pene familiari a’

the punishments familiar to the

malvagi. Il reo s’avvede d’aver molti

villains. The criminal becomes aware

compagni: Ed è periglio il pubblicar

that he has many companions. And it

quanto sian pochi i buoni.

is dangerous to make it known, if the good ones are [only] few.31

According to this Arcadian line of argument, then, as Proß says, “The ruler’s arbitrium—rather than the law, which must be applied without regard for the person—turns into the guarantor of the community’s stability.”32 It is the ruler’s will that gives society the indispensable foundation for peace and security. In this stabilizing function for social peace, the monarchical liberum arbitrium offers a mirror image of God’s absolute freedom to let either judgment or grace prevail. The absolutist rulers’ free will to judge or to dispense clemency is a divine prerogative just as much as they rule by divine right (Gottesgnadentum).33 Metastasio’s quotation of Exodus 3:14, then, perfectly expresses the baroque absolutism, which he embraces. In his libretto, Metastasio supports a rule of government, which goes back through Grotius to Seneca: “Clemency has free judgment; it decides not by rule, but by what is right and good.”34 Clemency is subject to the ruler’s liberum arbitrium. In this way, Metastasio’s Tito avoids what the poet’s own teacher and adopted father, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, greatly feared, namely for the exercise of clemency to undermine the authority of the law. For Metastasio, the execution of mercy instead upholds the authority of absolute rulers in their factual and moral claim to power. Remarkably, Metastasio’s position went against the growing mainstream of philosophical discussion in the eighteenth century. Already Gravina favored (as Proß puts it) a “‘routinization’ of charismatic rule,” which contradicted the grain of Metastasio’s notion of absolutist rule.35 Against Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Gravina argued in his work Origines juris civilis (1708) that while the innate threat that human beings constitute to one another requires that their freedom be curtailed by laws, rulers themselves are not free from the human temptation to prey on others. Indeed, because of the scope of their power, Gravina cautioned, rulers are even more at risk of abusing their power and, by the same token, not sufficiently enforcing the country’s laws. Their liberum arbitrium must therefore be limited as much as possible. Rulers must control their own passions and subject themselves both to the rule of law and to the judgment of others. As their authority depends on the immutable character of the law itself, which they themselves represent, they must not weaken it through lenience. Thus, their charismatic authority depends on their own validation of the law. Similar concerns reappear in the thought of Montesquieu and Beccaria.36 Both question the notion of charismatic authority, which exempts the ruler

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from the law. Yet Montesquieu still recognized a right of the ruler, albeit limited, to overrule the strict application of the laws through acts of clemency, arguing that the necessarily blind application of the laws by the judiciary makes it impossible to consider the individual circumstances of a case and therefore runs the risk of misjudgments. This risk must be mitigated by the exceptional right of the ruler to consider circumstances and grant clemency in one or another case. In so doing, Montesquieu held, the ruler does not undermine the validity of the rule of law, but rather secures it.37 Beccaria rejects even this option. For the Italian reformer, rulers themselves must be subject to the law, as must be all other citizens. Therefore, they cannot presume to decide when the law must be applied and when not. For Beccaria, the praiseworthy intention behind the notion of clemency must be transferred into the law itself. Lenience cannot mean to overrule the course of the law. Rather, lenience must be a mark of the law itself. I return to this point later.

Mazzolà’s libretto Mazzolà significantly altered Metastasio’s libretto, and Mozart was quite happy with the result. As we already saw, he entered Clemenza in the personal listing of his works with the note, “ridotta á vera opera dal Sig:re Mazzolá. Poeta di sua A: S: l’Elettore di Saßonia” (reduced to a true opera by Sig[no]re Mazzolà, poet of His Serene Highness the Elector of Saxony).38 With the help of his librettist, the composer renewed a distinctly baroque operatic genre in line with his aesthetic convictions—and in the process significantly altered the opera’s message. As Dieter Borchmeyer notes, for Metastasio the music served the poetry.39 By contrast, for Mozart the poetry must serve the music as its “obedient daughter,” as he noted in a letter to his father dated October 13, 1781: Besides, I should say that in an opera the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music. Why do Italian comic operas please everywhere—in spite of their miserable libretti—even in Paris, where I myself witnessed their success? Just because there the music reigns supreme and when one listens to it all else is forgotten. Why, an opera is sure of success when the plot is well worked out, the words written solely for the music and not shoved in here and there to suit some miserable rhyme (which, God knows, never enhances the value of any theatrical performance, be it what it may, but rather detracts from it)—I mean, words or even entire verses which ruin the composer’s whole idea.40 This re-conception of the mutual relationship between poetry and music led, if perhaps not to a dissolution of the genre of opera seria, as Borchmeyer suggests, then at least to a significant development.41 In the reworking of Metastasio’s libretto, Mozart and Mazzolà introduced the operatic forms that the composer had perfected in his three comic operas, Le nozze di Figaro K. 492 (1785), Don Giovanni K. 527 (1787), and Così fan tutte K. 588 (1790).

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To understand the nature of this development of opera seria, we need to take a closer look at some of these changes.42 Musicologist John Rice divides them into two categories: In the first category are the changes that were made on almost any occasion when one of Metastasio’s librettos was set to music in the 1780s and 1790s, changes that did not involve a departure from one of the fundamental principles of Metastasian music-drama: that the plot and the interaction between the characters be carried forward mainly by means of blank verse declaimed in simple recitative. In the other category is a more radical change, one that contradicted this basic tenet of Metastasian dramaturgy.43 Among the first category of changes belonged the substantial cuts, which Mozart and Mazzolà introduced to Metastasio’s libretto to shorten and condense it. They reconceived the opera from three acts to two, eliminated entire scenes, pruned many of the recitatives, and reduced the number of arias from twenty-five to eleven.44 Most of these eleven arias Mazzolà wrote anew, as was common at the time in the reworking of older libretti. As Rice points out, one of the reasons for the creation of replacement arias lay in changes of taste, which required a new kind of aria-text. Exit arias and the two-stanza da capo arias, which were common in Metastasio’s libretti (following the A-B-A pattern), had gone out of style by the 1770s. Other aria forms took their place, and these required new texts. A prime example is the two-tempo rondo, which most often appeared towards the end of an opera and which the audience eagerly anticipated. In Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, both Sesto (No. 19, Deh per questo istante solo) and Vitellia (No. 23, Non più di fiori) sing rondos towards the end of Act II, and both are undoubtedly the highpoints of their respective appearances on stage. Yet the elimination of both the traditional baroque da capo and exit arias in favor of other arias also partly signaled the second category of changes, which Mozart and Mazzolà introduced into Metastasio’s libretto and to which we turn next. In Metastasian opera seria, all the action takes place in the recitatives. The libretto might easily pass as a drama for the spoken theater. The music is concentrated in the arias, which have no real dramaturgical function, serving rather as the protagonists’ introspective reflection on the action. Mozart strove to overcome this recitative-aria sequencing and moved the action to the arias and ensembles. This shift from Metastasian arias, which serve the purpose of contemplation, to modern action arias affected da capo and exit arias in particular. In opera seria, it was the task of the da capo aria to offer aristocratic members of the court a model of how to sublimate their emotions in a social environment, where truthfulness had to be hidden by dissimulation. Da capo arias offered courtiers a model for how to deal with their emotions when they had to disguise their motivations and how to retain their demeanor, regardless of their true feelings. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, dissimulation contradicted the new humanist values of the age of sensibility, in particular the new emphasis placed on the individual vis-à-vis society and the

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rejection of the coercive codes of conduct in absolutist court societies. Consequently, da capo arias fell out of fashion. They failed to reflect the new enlightened idea of humanity, which invested the individual with a comparatively higher value and rejected the baroque culture of courtly dissimulation as inauthentic. What we see in Mozart’s opera seria, as in the operas of other contemporary composers, is a radical reduction of such arias. At the same time, Mozart introduced new musical forms. Particularly important here are Sesto’s aria, Parto, ma tu ben mio, and Vitellia’s rondo, Non più de fiori.45 Both pieces accentuate an extended inner dialogue between the voice and a solo instrument (a clarinet in Sesto’s aria; a basset-horn in Vitellia’s Rondo) and thus afford the audience a view of each protagonist’s inner emotional world. Through such arias as well as through the ensemble scenes, Mozart’s music was able to make up for the lack of psychological characterization, which marred Mazzolà’s shortened libretto, but which had already marked Metastasio’s version, in which, as we saw, the characters served mainly as conveyors of philosophical arguments and as role models for courtly behavior.46 Furthermore, Mozart and Mazzolà introduced ensembles that advanced the action: three duets, three trios, one quintet, one sextet, and two finales.47 Mazzolà also added a fifth chorus to Metastasio’s four. This preponderance of ensembles distinguished Mozart’s operas from those of his contemporaries. These newly introduced ensembles and finales function for Mozart to dramatize Metastasio’s libretto and to accentuate its musical features. In so doing, Mozart reconceived the function of the music in line with his opere buffe, where (action-) ensembles had their original home.48 Among other reasons, ensembles were not used in baroque opera because the simultaneous singing of characters across status boundaries violated court etiquette. The development of this new operatic form in Mozart’s works (and those of other contemporary composers) expresses an emancipatory impulse on the operatic stage, as the voices here sing together in a way that reduces the status differences among them.49 Musically, there is no difference between a countess and her maid (in Le nozze di Figaro) or between an emperor and his subjects (in La clemenza di Tito). The emperor appears more than ever “as a human among humans.”50 This was nothing short of a social revolution on the opera stage. Mozart and Mazzolà also introduced several cuts to Metastasio’s plot, which substantially altered the opera’s political message. To begin with, they scaled down the repeated expressions of deference, which the chorus and various protagonists offer Tito throughout the opera. For example, Metastasio’s version of the opera ends with a chorus offering homage to Tito (Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act III, Final Scene, Chorus), by pointing to the special closeness of the emperor to the gods. That of heaven, of the gods you are the thought, the love you are, great hero, in the close turnaround of this day has been clearly shown.

Che del ciel, che degli dei tu il pensier, l’amor tu sei, grand’ eroe, nel giro angusto si mostrò di questo dì.

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Ma cagion di meraviglia non è già, felice Augusto, che gli dei chi lor somiglia custodiscano così.

Here, the divine protection of the emperor is the reason why Tito is safe and, in fact, far removed from the human machinations of his enemies.52 The political troubles of the day appear as a momentary interruption that, due to divine protection, never really has the potential to threaten the emperor’s divinely established rule. Metastasio’s opera thus ends in a one-sided apotheosis of the emperor, which re-establishes the God-given absolutist order that was threatened, even if only momentarily.53 This panegyric chorus, with its implied apotheosis of the emperor, both Mozart and Mazzolà replaced with a sextet with chorus that functions in an almost contrary way.54 Other musical developments corroborate the emerging picture of a different political world. Mozart’s second-act chorus, Ah, grazie si rendano (II, 5, No. 15 Chorus) is a good example. In baroque opera seria, an acclamation-chorus would have been strictly separated from the soloist’s singing. In Mozart’s chorus, by contrast, both sing simultaneously. Yet other changes that Mozart and Mazzolà introduced to Metastasio’s libretto further altered the opera’s message. Perhaps most important, the character of Vitellia’s rebellion is different. On the one hand, Mozart and Mazzolà de-emphasized the fact that there are no legitimate political reasons to overthrow Tito. In Metastasio’s original version, Sesto makes it quite clear in the opening scene that Tito’s rule is human and exemplary and thus offers no reason for political revolt: “In ancient memory, find an equal, if you can. Imagine in your mind a more generous or milder hero.”55 Mazzolà’s significant cuts in Metastasio’s text obscure this point somewhat. On the other hand, Mozart and Mazzolà downplayed the spurious references to “revolutionary rhetoric” in Metastasio’s work, which in 1791 could have been understood in all too positive a way.56 Mozart and Mazzolà also heightened the danger of the conspiracy. Mazzolà eliminated all passages in Metastasio’s libretto that suggested that the conspirators were unsure of their actions or that their conspiracy was necessarily doomed to failure. Similarly, he made Sesto’s inner conflict between his love for Vitellia and his friendship with Tito appear much stronger. Sesto emerges as more torn and more emotionally unbalanced. Finally, Mozart and Mazzolà emphasized the potentially destructive aspects of the rebellion, both for the emperor’s life and the state’s stability. As Rice points out, they rendered the conspiracy itself and its disturbing outcomes for Rome “more realistically” and highlighted “the horror and violence, the senselessness and shame of revolution.”57 With these changes, Mozart and Mazzolà succeeded in painting a frightening picture of both the causes for and the destructive consequences of revolt and revolution. In Mozart and Mazzolà’s version, this dramaturgical strategy culminated in the vivid portrayal of the rebellion. By contrast, in Metastasio’s version of the

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libretto, the outbreak of a tumult was merely reported in retrospect at the beginning of the second act, in accordance with the baroque rules of decency, which forbade the offensive portrayal of a destructive rebellion on stage. Metastasio furthermore left the audience in the dark about the reason for the tumult and immediately cleared up its potential danger to the political order. In Mozart and Mazzolà’s version, all of this changes drastically. The outbreak of the rebellion acquires a completely different dramaturgical function, not least through its placement at the culmination of the first act, in the newly devised finale, rather than at the beginning of the second act, as Metastasio had done. Also, in Mazzolà’s version Sesto’s crimes are worse, more violent, more public, more shameful, and more painful. Mozart and Mazzolà’s first act ends with the Roman Capitol in flames, vividly portrayed on stage in both scenery and music. Publio makes clear that the reason for the tumult is in fact a political rebellion: “There is a conspiracy in Rome; / alas, I fear for Titus.”58 What was merely a courtly intrigue in Metastasio’s libretto here turns into something far more threatening—a rebellion out of control. Sesto himself announces “a great tumult of arms and of soldiers.”59 Mozart and Mazzolà leave the audience guessing much longer as to the success of the rebellion. As the audience leaves for the intermission, the fate of the emperor remains uncertain, and the aristocratic protagonists are shown in a state of utter disorientation. While in Metastasio’s libretto Tito’s death is a mere possibility—Sesto suggests that “perhaps” (forse) his remorse comes too late—in Mozart and Mazzolà’s version Tito’s death seems certain. Sesto no longer speaks of a possibility but rather of a certainty. The other protagonists, along with the audience, must assume that Tito is in fact dead. The finale ends with a requiem-like mourning of chorus and protagonists in an Adagio that hardly fit the festive occasion of the opera’s premiere: “Oh black betrayal, oh day of grief!”60 As Rice notes, “To end an act with a slow movement, an Andante, was very rare in eighteenth-century opera; the effect of this movement is that of a funeral march.”61 And he concludes that this first-act finale is “the emotional core of Tito as a whole.”62 Other cuts in Metastasio’s libretto changed the nature of Tito’s final act of clemency—a transformation that was sure to displease the nobility, given its political implications. As we have seen above, Metastasio’s Tito had a free choice between acting with rigor (rigore) and clemency (clemenza). Yet Mazzolà eliminated several episodes and textual passages that showed Tito’s severe side and his ability to administer the full cruel force of the law. For example, in Mazzolà’s Act I, Scene 8, the librettist discarded most of what appears in Metastasio’s libretto (also Act I, Scene 8) as an extended legal-philosophical dialogue between Tito and Publio, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, on the appropriateness and legitimacy of severity and clemency.63 Without this philosophical discussion about an alternative course of action, Tito’s act of clemency at the end becomes predictable and effectively the only option. Even more important for understanding the exact nature of Tito’s clemency is the cutting of another scene from Metastasio’s libretto.64 In that eliminated

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scene, which takes place right after the assassination attempt, Sesto exchanges an incriminating cloak with Annio.65 This transfer of cloaks mistakenly leads to Annio’s—rather than Sesto’s—arrest.66 This momentary confusion about the actual culprit allows Metastasio to display Tito’s severe side. When Tito believes Annio to be responsible for the conspiracy, he shows no inclination to pardon. Rather, he demonstrates his ability to let the rigor of the law run its full course. Only when the misunderstanding is cleared up and Tito’s favorite Sesto is revealed as the culprit does the emperor consider clemency.67 This change had an even greater impact because Mazzolà also shortened a crucial scene in Metastasio’s libretto, in which Vitellia distances herself from Sesto’s attempt on Tito’s life right after the fact.68 In the older version of the libretto, this scene reveals Vitellia’s Machiavellian attitude, her dissimulation, and, as Proß puts it, “her dangerousness for the ‘Arcadian politics’ of the prince,” without which “the strict subordination of the Machiavellian politics of amorality under the ‘Arcadian’ politics of law-setting is missing, which from this moment on determines the action in Metastasio’s drama.”69 Note here that Metastasio was not interested in painting psychological portrayals of his protagonists. Instead, for him they represented “types of courtly politics and courtly behavior,” and they were vehicles for the exchange of arguments on behalf of the various philosophical positions under debate.70 In Metastasio’s libretto, therefore, Tito’s character and his final act of clemency appear in a far more complex light, both politically and philosophically, than in Mazzolà’s version. Vice versa, from a Metastasian perspective, Mozart’s Tito appears to be a “weak monarch”71 and “a mere puppet representing magnanimity,”72 whose clemency threatens the state’s stability. The intricacies of Arcadian politics, however, no longer seem to have concerned Mozart and Mazzolà. As Proß puts it, Mozart’s Tito “belongs to a new era.”73 By eliminating both the philosophical debates about the appropriate application of clemency and the cloak-exchange scene, Mozart and his librettist effectively reconceived the opera’s message. In their version, severity is no longer an option for Tito. He is determined to be mild. As Proß notes, clemency thus “degenerates … basically into a compulsive act.”74 Surely this made for a less dramatic impact than the ruler’s absolute power to decide between life and death. And perhaps it made the ruler appear impotent—at least when perceived through a baroque lens.75

The opera’s reception To know how Mozart and Mazzolà’s royal and aristocratic audience might have perceived these alterations to Metastasio’s libretto, we need to consider the political self-understanding of the new emperor, the immediate political context of the day, and the wide-ranging political changes in society and philosophy between 1734 and 1791. Just like his brother Joseph II, Leopold II understood himself to be a philosopher on the throne (principe filosofo) who sympathized with the goals of the late Enlightenment.76 Both were highly critical of the state of the French

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monarchy and appreciated the goal of the French Revolution to create a constitutional monarchy. Leopold explicitly welcomed the news that Louis XVI had signed the French Constitution in September 1791. The new Austrian emperor himself sought to secure the monarchy through constitutional reforms, first as grand duke in Tuscany and later as emperor in Austria. He showed great interest in the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 and the American Declaration of Independence, a copy of which he had received directly from Benjamin Franklin.77 To be sure, Leopold, like other enlightened monarchs, was no less absolutist than his mother, Maria Theresia, and her baroque predecessors. Yet his self-understanding was different: he saw himself primarily as a servant of the people and as a guarantor of the bonum commune (common good). As Leopold wrote to his sister, the French Queen Marie-Antoinette, on January 25, 1790: The sovereign, even the hereditary one, is only the public servant of the people. It must be his undivided care to foster their welfare. In every land, a fundamental law must be negotiated between the people and the sovereign, which limits the power and the authority of the latter. By breaking this contract the ruler indeed relinquishes his position, and no one is any longer obliged to be obedient to him … Every new law, every change of system requires the consent of the representation of the people; only the consent of the estates imparts legal authority to the ruler’s orders.78 Considering Leopold’s self-understanding as ruler, it is unlikely that he expected an early-Enlightenment-style panegyric to an absolutist ruler. Such acclamations had fallen out of fashion as baroque absolutism had given way in many European nations, including Austria, to its late enlightened twin. Metastasio’s libretto no longer fit the taste of the new era.79 Still, it is not clear whether Leopold welcomed all the changes in Mazzolà’s libretto and, most of all, the radicalism of the opera’s ending. At the very least, the noble audience in Prague of 1791 must have perceived the whole first finale as highly disturbing. Images such as the Capitol in flames and the seeming possibility that the Emperor Tito is dead at the end of the first act must have appeared as a simile of the storming of the Bastille in 1789, only two years earlier.80 In 1791, Prague was full of rumors about an impending revolution rooted in a Masonic conspiracy. Already during Leopold’s time in Tuscany, Marie-Antoinette had warned her brother of the Freemasons and of what she perceived as their plans to overturn the world’s order—a warning that indeed led Leopold to strengthen the surveillance of the Freemasons in the Habsburg territories, something that had already begun in 1785 under Joseph. After all, to many European aristocrats, the French Revolution appeared to be nothing more than a political conspiracy. Audiences also would have known that, only a few weeks before the opera’s first performance, the escape of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette from their house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in Paris bound for Varennes (June 20–25, 1791) had failed. The French king and his Austrian-born queen had been

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captured and were imprisoned in Paris.81 To respond to this event, on August 27, 1791, Leopold met the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II (1744–1797) in Pillnitz, Saxony. As Leopold had written days earlier to Marie-Antoinette on August 8, “the time of illusions is over” (le temps des illusions est passé).82 At the meeting, the two monarchs agreed to threaten France with military action should the French king and his family be in danger. This turned out to be a fatal decision, since the French Republic understood the Pillnitz Declaration as a declaration of war, which ultimately led to the capital charge of high treason against Louis and Marie-Antoinette.83 In the opera’s first finale, it would have been hard not to overhear echoes of these recent political developments. The horrendous scenario on stage must have appeared as a dangerously real threat to the noble and royal audience in Prague. In this light, the idea that the emperor himself prays to the gods to cut short his life if he fails in his responsibility to serve his people as a ruler could well have struck not only the royal couple as scandalous.84 To be sure, both care and happiness are important notions for the political philosophy of the late Enlightenment, which had a strong impact on Leopold II. The idea that the people have a right to happiness already appears in his project of a constitution for the grand duchy of Tuscany.85 After his coronation in Prague, Leopold devoted himself to working on constitutional reforms in his new realm and strengthening the people’s sovereignty. In this he distinguished himself significantly from his sister Marie-Antoinette, who was said to have remarked the day before her husband Louis XVI was forced to sign the French Constitution on September 14, 1791, that, “These people do not want any more sovereigns. They demolish the monarchy stone by stone.”86 Similarly, her husband observed after signing the Constitution that, “All is lost!”87 Still, even Leopold was willing to entertain a loss of his power only in a limited way. He surely had no interest in appearing to be a weak ruler, and his self-understanding was presumably closer to Metastasio’s portrayal of Tito. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, even the enlightened rulers among Europe’s sovereigns became aware of the potential threat that developments in France constituted for their own rule. And even those who welcomed the notion of a constitutional monarchy were far from willing to entertain an end to monarchical government. As Proß puts it, after 1789 the antithesis between the “‘despotism’ of late feudal arbitrary rule and ‘enlightened absolutism’” became increasingly difficult to maintain.88 It is quite possible, therefore, that Empress Maria Ludovica’s purported remark about the opera representing una porcheria tedesca expressed a negative sentiment among the royal couple and the nobility at court. It seems unlikely, though, that Mozart and Mazzolà intended to undermine the monarchy in the Habsburg territories or to portray a weak monarch (in the Machiavellian sense) on stage, even if it was hardly their intention to present Leopold with a baroque encomium (though that may well have been the intention of the privileged Bohemian Estates who had commissioned the opera for the coronation festivities in Prague.) To present a weak monarch on stage surely would not have been the desired political message for the coronation festivities. Also, Mozart had been quite loyal to Joseph II, and there is no reason to assume that he felt differently about Leopold.

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The new political philosophy To understand the portrayal of the ever-mild Tito in Mozart’s version of the opera, one must read Mazzolà’s libretto in light of the philosophical developments in the second half of the eighteenth century, with its different idea of humanity and its changed understanding of constitutional law. By 1791, the early Enlightenment ideal of the absolutist ruler who has liberum arbitrium, with which he selflessly serves his subjects, had been critiqued by several particularly French thinkers, including Montesquieu, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–1799), and Denis Diderot (1713–1784).89 For these writers, the enlightened ruler no longer stands above the people, but rather partakes in the social contract and thus loses his or her liberum arbitrium.90 It is no longer the absolute will of the sovereign that guarantees the common good, but rather the Law and the Constitution. Charismatic rule here inevitably gives way to the day-to-day working of a state bureaucracy. The people claim to be the new sovereign, and the ruler’s prerogative and responsibility merely is to execute their will. In this context, clemency can no longer be a legitimate exception to the rule. It must either disappear altogether, as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) suggested, or become the rule itself: Beccaria’s “lenience in punishing” (dolcezza delle pene).91 If it does, it severely limits, if not altogether eliminates, the liberum arbitrium, which, according to the Stoic debate about natural law, makes acts of clemency possible in the first place.92 In Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, clemency and the renunciation of revenge characterize the humanistic, constitutional state, which the monarch represents.93 A similar thought already appears in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (K. 384) of 1782. Yet it is Tito’s twin brother in spirit—the High Priest Sarastro from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (K. 620), also written in 1791—who best formulates this new fundamental principle of enlightened rule in his famous hall-aria: In these sacred halls Vengeance is unknown. And should a man fall, Love will lead him to his duty.

In diesen heil’gen Hallen Kennt man die Rache nicht! Und ist ein Mensch gefallen, Führt Liebe ihn zur Pflicht.94

In Mozart’s vision of this new enlightened age, general constitutional mildness replaces the ruler’s exercise of severity, which heretofore was believed to be indispensable, and which was only mitigated in exceptional cases by clemency. As Tito puts it (II, 12, No. 20 Aria, text by Metastasio): If, friendly gods, to be able to rule, a severe heart is necessary, then either take the empire away from me, or give me another heart.

Se all’impero, amici Dei, necessario è un cor severo, o togliete a me l’impero, o a me date un’altro cor.

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In Mozart’s hands, this Metastasian aria with its jubilant opening ritornello, its impressively large woodwind accompaniment, and the “[r]epeated eighthnotes in the bass and a pattern of syncopated quarter-notes in the second violins,” which give it an “exhilarating rhythmic vitality,” becomes a triumphant celebration of a new approach to governing, ruled by lenience in punishment.95 The elimination of the cloak-exchange scene from Metastasio’s libretto has significance not just for understanding Tito’s mildness but the law as such. The law must no longer discriminate based on social differentiation. Clemency is no longer the exception to the rule, based on the application of sophisticated legal arguments, but becomes the rule itself. Many interpreters suggest that the new political message of the opera has its philosophical roots not just in social contract theory, but also in the discovery of what the French encyclopedists called humanité (humanitas).96 Jean-François de Saint-Lambert (1726–1803), to whom the entry for “Humanité [Morale]” is attributed, defined the term in the Encyclopédie as a feeling of goodwill for all human beings, which lights up itself only in a great and sensible soul. This noble and sublime enthusiasm cares about the pains of others and about the need to alleviate them; it wants to traverse the universe to abolish slavery, superstition, vice, and disaster.97 As is clear from Saint-Lambert’s definition, humanité involves what Christians understand as misericordia, that is, human compassion (Mitfühlen) and benevolence—characteristic virtues that for the Enlightenment (and for Freemasonry as an enlightened movement) now guide the educational process of human selfperfection (Selbstvervollkommnung).98 Humanité expresses itself through attempts to help those in need and suffering through mutual forgiveness and the exercise of mildness. This philosophical concept of humanité seems also to have left its imprint on Mazzolà’s libretto. Here, Tito’s mildness appears as a different attitude than the absolutist clementia, which the emperor exhibits in Metastasio’s libretto.99 While the latter functions as an expression of the absolutist ruler’s claim to present an image of God, mildness (and tolerance) stem from the enlightened realization of the natural equality of all human beings.100 Pia Janke argues, therefore, that enlightened humanité replaces absolutist clementia in Mozart’s opera. It emerges from a shared feeling of humanity and thereby offers a new humanistic reason for the exercise of misericordia. Janke contends that in contrast to the baroque clementia, which suggested God’s absolute sovereignty, Tito’s mildness is no longer a form of imitatio Dei, but a form of human compassion, of “pietà.”101 Tito’s mildness emerges from the enlightened ideal of compassion and the Masonic ideals of brotherly love and benevolence.102 It is rooted in the demands of the heart rather than in political rationality. The new conception of humanité, which now motivates the monarchical exercise of political rule, also reflects on how monarchs are perceived themselves. If the ruler in Mozart and Mazzolà’s La clemenza di Tito is politically

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part of the contrat social, his subjects perceive him in a new way as a human being. Tito is no longer set apart from his subjects, but rather is one with them in their humanity. A short exchange between the Speaker and the High Priest Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte (Mozart/Schikaneder, Die Zauberflöte, Act II, Scene 1, Dialogue) best captures this new view of the monarch, which—according to Janke, Borchmeyer, and others—also characterizes La clemenza di Tito. When told that the young hero, Prince Tamino, must undergo great trials to enter the Order of the Initiates, the Speaker is concerned. “He is a prince” (Er ist Prinz!), he objects. But Sarastro repudiates this implied objection by insisting that the prince is also a human being: “Even more … he is a human being!” (Noch mehr … er ist Mensch!). In the age of sensibility, the ruler is no longer elevated above his or her subjects; rather, the monarch shares the same humanity with them. He or she is entitled to be a human being among others, which includes the right to privacy.103 Note that this humanization of the ruler serves an eminently political purpose. It is a response to the search for a new “moral legitimization” of absolute rule in the late Enlightenment.104 For the age of sentimentality, a ruler’s moral claim to power increases the more he shows himself to be a human being. Mozart’s Tito is a prime example, and Sarastro’s statement about Tamino is another one. During the previous era of baroque absolutism, morality was a private affair and political decisions did not have to be legitimized morally. They were based on the fiat of the monarch. Now, politics becomes a moral affair, and morality itself becomes political.105 Politics and rulers are thus subjected to ethical scrutiny, while social ethics becomes increasingly political as it now reflects both on the citizens’ rights and their duties. But, ironically, it was precisely this search for a moral legitimization of politics that slowly eroded enlightened absolutism. In accordance with this new understanding of a common humanity, which unites the ruler with his or her subjects, sentimentality (rather than dissimulation) and absolute love for the truth shall now mark human relations even at court. In La clemenza di Tito, this love for truth over dissimulation is perfectly characterized by Sesto’s sister, Servilia. As Janke notes, In her openness, naturalness, and truthfulness, she among all protagonists of the work corresponds the most to the new ideal of a human being who does not act in correspondence with the courtly “bienséance,” but rather follows the calling of the heart.106 Thus, when the emperor chooses her as his future wife—after renouncing the Jewish princess, Berenice, due to popular sentiment against a foreigner as Roman empress—she has the courage to tell him that she already loves Annio (I, 7, Recitative). In baroque court society, it would have been highly inappropriate for a courtier like Servilia to counter the emperor’s wishes. Servilia, however, does so. Also, when her lover Annio meets her to share the news (I, 5), she violates the courtly code of conduct.107 In line with court etiquette, Annio addresses

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Servilia quite formally. After all, once she is chosen to be Tito’s wife, Annio already encounters Servilia as his new empress. Metastasio used the scene to show that the courtly code of conduct remained intact. In his libretto, Annio focuses predominantly on how to suppress his true feelings for Servilia. He apologizes profusely for his violation of court etiquette by addressing Servilia accidentally as his lover. Not so Mozart and Mazzolà. Where Metastasio separates Annio and Servilia in two different scenes, Mozart and Mazzolà join them together musically in a duet that transcends their new difference in status, allowing Annio to overcome the limitations imposed upon him by his lower courtly status. In line with the ideals of the age of sensibility, love here turns into an insurgency against the will of the sovereign.108 This political implication of Servilia’s love for Annio is even more marked because Mozart and Mazzolà eliminated all formulas of homage to Tito in the scene immediately following, in which Servilia shares with the emperor the news of her love for Annio. In presenting Servilia in this way, the very raison d’être of opera seria is called into question, namely, to offer the courtiers an etiquette-appropriate way to deal with their emotions. The uninhibited musical expression of her love for Annio thus represents a fundamental attack on the foundations of baroque absolutism. Politically, it is not Vitellia, then, but rather Servilia who manifests herself as the true counterpart to Tito and, in her desire to be an autonomous, self-determining subject, as a “threat of the absolutist system of rule.”109 Servilia transgresses the norms of socially acceptable behavior in a similar fashion in her Act II aria, S’altro che lacrime, in which she addresses Vitellia, who at that point had been chosen as the new empress, just as Servilia herself was when Annio brought similar news to her. For Servilia, now once more a lower courtier, to address the newly chosen empress with moral reproaches was just as inappropriate as for Annio to sing a love duet with Servilia after she herself was chosen as empress. Yet, as soon becomes clear, the emperor himself sympathizes with Servilia’s quest for veracity and self-determination. In response to her admission, Tito praises her in his aria, Ah, se fosse intorno al trono (I, 7, No. 8 Aria), which Mazzolà took over from Metastasio.110 As Borchmeyer points out, this humanization of the ruler must have appeared utopian to the Viennese court. Many among the nobility (as well as many historians in the nineteenth century) believed that Louis XVI caused the French Revolution because he was much milder and more humane than his two predecessors—a character trait that many European courtiers interpreted as a dangerous weakness.111 According to the philosophical tradition going back to Machiavelli and Tacitus, mildness was detrimental to successful government.112 Yet the political program of a constitutional, humanist monarchy bespeaks the political philosophy of the new era of enlightened absolutism. Tito continues to function as a “representation of ideal rule,” yet now there is a different conception of what such a rule should look like.113 Most importantly, Mozart and Mazzolà’s political program was grounded in a sentimental perception of human relations at the beginning of the bourgeois

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age—more radically so than in Metastasio’s libretto, which itself was already influenced by the emerging ideals of the age of sensibility.114 In fact, La clemenza di Tito thematizes human relations in a way that goes far beyond the political issues of the day and thereby transforms the character of the genre of opera seria itself. This focus on human relations is already present in Mozart’s previous operas, all of which deal with love, forgiveness, and repentance as the foundation of human community, while at the same time formulating pugnacious social critiques, especially of the aristocracy. What for Metastasio was primarily a political-legal tractate, Mazzolà turns into a character drama, through his “tendency to simplify” Metastasio’s libretto, the reduction of the philosophical dispute and the plot’s details, and by “limiting Titus’s character to a fundamental trait of humane simplicity and straightforwardness.”115 In fact, every character in Mazzolà’s libretto is dominated by one affect: “goodness in Tito, seductive refinement in Vitellia, and ecstasy of love and despair in Sesto.”116 Tito, for his part, “appears as a human representative of a classical ‘noble innocence.’”117 As Ludwig Finscher concludes, Mozart’s Clemenza represents “a highly modern contribution to the transformation of Metastasian opera seria into the classicistic-heroic opera of the turn of the century.”118 To some degree, this transformation depoliticized the opera, as Borchmeyer and Proß suggest—less by what Mazzolà added than by what he eliminated from Metastasio’s text and how he emphasized the emotional aspects of Tito’s clemency.119 This becomes clear in the crucial confrontation between Tito and Sesto, after Sesto’s guilt has been established (Act II, Scene 10).120 Tito here not only dismisses Publio, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and the guards, the libretto also specifies that he “abandons his majestic tone” (depone l’aria maestosa). Borchmeyer argues that Tito here changes “between public-representative and private-informal appearance,” a change that was “quite popular in eighteenth-century drama … because it contradicted the common image of the absolutist ruler who was literally never alone for a single moment.”121 This implies that Tito wants to forgive as a private person—a friend who loves— rather than as ruler. Thus, Tito in his monologue in the following scene questions whether he should “do violence to my feelings” by allowing Sesto to be condemned to death.122 In the end, he decides on behalf of the friend: “Let the friend live! Even if he is unfaithful.”123 Publio anticipates the private character of Tito’s later act of clemency when he comments to himself earlier, “A thousand different emotions are at war in Tito. If he feels such anxiety it means that he still loves him.”124 In Metastasio’s version (Act III, Scene 6, Recitative), Publio simply observed that, “A thousand different emotions challenge him.”125 The notion that Tito forgives Sesto as a friend is already present in Metastasio’s version. But without the long legal-philosophical discourse between Tito and Publio, in which the emperor rationally weighs the reasons for and against clemency, the emotional aspect of his final act of clemency emerges far more strongly. In Metastasio’s version Tito’s rational decision triumphs over his emotions, while in Mozart and Mazzolà’s version Tito’s sensibility, a notion akin to the new idea of humanité, and the idea of a constitutional monarchy win the day.126 This does

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not mean that for Mozart and Mazzolà Tito makes an irrational, merely passionate decision. Just as in Metastasio’s version, Tito makes the decision to pardon Sesto only after he steps back into the role of ruler.127 He dismisses Sesto with the explicit reminder (II, 10, Recitative) that “now your judge I am” (tuo giudice sono) His decision, then, is still a reasonable one. Mozart and Mazzolà’s take on the question of clemency does not necessarily mean that they were completely uninterested in the political aspects of the opera. Nor does their version imply that they sought to eliminate the political aspect of Tito’s clemency altogether. Rather, they re-conceptualized monarchical clemency in a late enlightened and specifically Masonic fashion, which does suggest the advocacy of a new political order. What the audience found in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, then, was not a totally apolitical work, but rather a new and different political message. At the same time, Mozart and Mazzolà turned the opera into a work that addresses not only the ruler. By focusing on human emotions, Mozart and Mazzolà’s La clemenza di Tito becomes an opera with an anthropological message for all in the audience. The increased emphasis in the revised libretto on the emotional aspects of Tito’s final act of clemency follows larger currents in society and literature at the end of the eighteenth century. Changes in the economic organization of society, the development of capitalist society, and the concomitant emergence of a strong bourgeoisie led to an increasing emphasis on the German theater stage on the emotional aspects of human relationships and the emergence of a new paternalism. This development also affected political drama. As Borchmeyer observes, “the touching bourgeois plays abound with benign fathers who are willing to forgive and to enact ‘la clemenza di Tito’ in their own house.”128 The erstwhile pater familias transformed himself into the “‘tender father’” (zärtlichen Vater). By the same token, in late eighteenth-century political dramas, the erstwhile absolutist title of the “Padre della patria”129 (Father of the fatherland) was reinterpreted in an emotional fashion. This changing picture of the paternal role in the nuclear family at the end of the eighteenth century went hand in hand with a changing perception of God’s role in the emerging bourgeois Christianity at the same period. The age of sensibility, Borchmeyer suggests, created the notion of God as the ever-loving Father, wellknown in German as der liebe Gott (the dear God): “The Father-God is modeled after the image of the affectionate, always forgiving father of the family, which itself points back to the forgiving God of the New [Testament] in contradistinction to the ‘vengeful’ God of the Old Testament.”130 Given these connections, we may well expect that at least some in the audience might have understood the opera’s political message as a distinctly theological vision expressive of the age of sensibility. We will consider this question in the following three chapters.

Findings In this chapter, I looked at Pietro Metastasio’s original 1734 libretto in the philosophical and historical context of the early Enlightenment and contrasted

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it with the version that Mozart and his librettist, Caterino Mazzolà, presented in Prague in 1791. Summing up newly burgeoning scholarship on the opera, I showed how Metastasio countered Machiavelli’s political philosophy with an alternative in the tradition of the baroque Roman Accademia degli Arcardi. Metastasio offers a via media between Stoic and Christian philosophical idealism, on the one hand, and Machiavellian Realpolitik, on the other hand—a via media that seeks a careful balance between severity and mildness achieved both through considerations from natural law theory and an insistence on the absolute ruler’s liberum arbitrium (free will). In Metastasio’s opera, the Roman Emperor Tito enjoys a perfect free will, which mirrors God’s absolute freedom to let either judgment or grace prevail. I showed how Mozart and Mazzolà revised Metastasio’s libretto and, in so doing, renewed the baroque operatic genre of opera seria in line with a new era’s aesthetic convictions. The changes dramatized Metastasio’s libretto, accentuated its musical features, and allowed the music to offer psychological characterizations of the protagonists on stage. In so doing, Mozart and Mazzolà reconceived the function of the music in line with Mozart’s previous opere buffe. The two collaborators also changed the opera’s political message. Cuts and other changes to Metastasio’s plot eliminated a one-sided apotheosis of the emperor, changed the character of Vitellia’s rebellion, heightened the danger of the conspiracy, emphasized the potentially destructive aspects of the rebellion, and painted an ominous picture of revolt and revolution. This picture culminated in the vivid portrayal of the rebellion in the Act One finale, with the Roman Capitol shown in flames and the outcome of the rebellion unknown, leaving the fate of the emperor uncertain and the aristocratic protagonists in a state of disorientation. Other cuts in Metastasio’s libretto changed the nature of Tito’s final act of clemency. Mozart and Mazzolà no longer show Tito’s severe side and his ability to administer the full cruelty of the law. Tito’s act of clemency at the end becomes entirely predictable since severity is no longer an option for him. Mozart and Mazzolà’s version of the opera reflects the philosophical developments in the second half of the eighteenth century, with its different idea of humanity and its changed understanding of constitutional law. Late eighteenthcentury political philosophy replaced the early Enlightenment ideal of the absolutist ruler with social contract theory. It substituted the monarch’s liberum arbitrium as the guarantor of peace and justice with the law and constitution. In the late-Enlightenment notion of the constitutional state, charismatic rule gave way to the quotidian working of a state bureaucracy. Here, the people were the new sovereign, and the ruler executed their will. As a consequence, monarchical clemency lost its erstwhile function. Its replacement, as Beccaria proposed, was a lenient code of laws. Alongside its philosophical roots in social contract theory, Mozart and Mazzolà’s advocacy of clemency also reflected the French eighteenth-century notion of humanité. The concept is rooted in the late-Enlightenment recognition

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of the natural equality of all human beings, a shared feeling of humanity, and the concomitant ideal of compassion. In Mozart and Mazzolà’s case, the notion of humanité may also have reflected the Masonic ideals of brotherly love and benevolence. The influence of the concept of humanité on the opera changed not only the significance of Tito’s final act of clemency, but also how the work’s authors present Tito’s role as monarch. Tito becomes part of the social contract and shows himself as a human being. Sentimentality (rather than dissimulation) and absolute love for the truth mark the ideal human relations at his court. I have attempted to show how Mozart and Mazzolà’s La clemenza di Tito reflects the bourgeois age of sensibility. It encapsulates not just a political philosophy, it thematizes human relations far more generally. Mozart and Mazzolà turned Metastasio’s political-legal oeuvre into a somewhat depoliticized character drama. In their hands, the opera focuses just as much on human emotions as it does on political questions. By emphasizing the emotional aspects of the characters on stage, the opera offers an anthropological message for aristocratic and bourgeois audiences alike. In so doing, it follows larger currents in bourgeois society, literature, and religion at the end of the eighteenth century. It is to these aspects that we turn in the following chapters. More specifically, I ask how theologically educated and biblically literate Catholics in Mozart and Mazzolà’s audience might have interpreted La clemenza di Tito theologically. My contention is that they might have found in the opera a Christian theological anthropology that went beyond the purely humanistic notion of humanité that some recent scholars have been willing to acknowledge in the work. Concretely, I suggest that such an audience could have read the opera’s main protagonists, Tito, Sesto, and Vitellia, as theological parables for God and sinful humanity.

Notes 1 Parts of this chapter were previously published in Steffen Lösel, “Clemency and Conversion: Theological Reflections on Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito,” Modern Theology 34, no. 4 (October 2018): 637–656. Reproduced here with permission. 2 Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). The Index of forbidden books published in 1559 under Pope Paul IV (1476–1559) lists “Nicolaus Macchiauellus” among the “authors of the first class” (Authores Primae Classis). See Index librorum prohibitorum: cum regulis confectis per patres a Tridentina synodo delectos, auctoritate sanctiss. D. N. Pii IIII, Pont. Max. comprobatus (Dillingen: Mayer, 1564), 34, available at: http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb11285888-3. As Vittorio Frajese explains, Machiavelli’s inclusion among the “authors of the first class” meant that he was listed “tra quegli autori condannati come eretici dei quali era proibita l’intera opera e dannata la memoria” (“among those authors condemned as heretics, of whom the entire work was forbidden and the memory was damned”). Vittorio Frajese, “Index librorum prohibitorum,” Enciclopedia machiavelliana, 3 vols., ed. Gennaro Sasso and Giorgio Inglese (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 2014), available at: https://www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/index-librorum-prohibitorum_%28Enciclopedia-machiavelliana %29. See also Wolfgang Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition und Aufklärung in Mazzolà/

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Mozarts ‘La Clemenza di Tito’,” in Die Österreichische Literatur: Ihr Profil an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert (1750–1830), vol. 2/1 of Die Österreichische Literatur: Eine Dokumentation ihrer literarhistorischen Entwicklung, ed. Herbert Zeman (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1979), 379–401, at 382. See Tacitus, The Histories, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, revised and ed. D. S. Levene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Tacitus, The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, trans. J. C. Yardley, with an introduction and notes by Anthony A. Barrett (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). The question already comes up in Plato, The Republic, trans. John Griffiths, ed. G. R. F. Ferrari (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 473c–d. For more on the philosophical debate in modernity, see Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition.” See Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 399. See, for example, Matthew 5:39 (par. Luke 6:29). A good example for how Christian theologians translated this principle into the political realm of punishment politics is Augustine’s uncompromising rejection of capital punishment. See Augustine, Political Writings, ed. E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). On this question, see Steffen Lösel, “Fighting for Human Dignity: A Christian Vision for Punishment Reform,” Political Theology 11, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 179–204. See Hugo Grotius, The most excellent Hugo Grotius, his three books treating of the rights of war & peace in the first is handled whether any war be just; in the second is shewed the causes of war, both just and unjust; in the third is declared what in war is lawful, that is, unpunishable: with the annotations digested into the body of every chapter, trans. William Evats (London: Thomas Basset and Ralph Smith, 1682), Book 2, Ch. 1, No. VIII: “Although (as we have said) it be lawful to kill him that is ready to kill me, yet is it more commendable to chuse rather to be killed than to kill, which some grant; yet so that it be with this limitation, that it excepts that person upon whom the safety of many doth much depend. But I cannot judge it safe to impose this so contrary a Law to patience upon all those whose lives are beneficial unto others; and therefore I think it more convenient to restrain the exceptions to such only, whose office and duty it is to defend others from violence.” See also Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 399. See Pierre Corneille, Oeuvres de P. Corneille, Nouvelle édition revue sur les plus anciennes impressions et les autographes et augmentée de morceaux inédits, des variantes, de notices, de notes, d’un lexique des mots et locutions remarquables, d’un portrait, dun fac-similé, etc., 12 vols., ed. M. Ch. Marty-Laveaux (Paris, L. Hachette et Cie, 1862–1868). Cinna is contained in vol. 3 and Tite et Bérénice in vol. 7. Cinna is available in English, for example in Pierre Corneille, Seven Plays, trans. into English verse with biographical appreciation and notes by Samuel Solomon (New York: Random House, 1969). Corneille’s drama legitimized the emerging absolutism in the seventeenth century under Cardinal Richelieu. Central to the drama is the notion that Augustus’s power depends on his ability to conquer his own passions and emotions. The drama appealed to the French aristocracy after the Fronde to make peace with the monarchy. It offered them a model for how to come to terms with the absolutist state, namely, by adopting the role of courtier. Racine’s Andromaque is available in English in Jean Racine, Best Plays of Racine, trans. into English rhyming verse with introductions and notes by Lacy Lockert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). The work was written at a time when the French aristocracy’s loss of political power finally had been achieved at the court of Louis XIV. At Versailles, courtiers had to hide their feelings behind a mask of dissimulation, as they strove for the new aristocratic ideal of bienséance (propriety, continence). Racine’s work offered the French nobility a model for courtly life marked by moderation, self-restraint, and the mastery of one’s own

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Political Theology passions. Metastasio was extremely critical of Racine and the school of Port-Royal to which he belonged. See Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 384. See, for example, Seneca, Moral and Political Essays, ed. John M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 117–164. For Seneca’s philosophical grounding of clemency in political expediency and its legitimizing role in the Roman emperor cult, see Hans-Joachim Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito: Die Geschichte einer Oper (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2013), 69–70. For the Roman philosophical sources of Metastasio’s libretto and Mozart and Mazzolà’s adaptation, see Werner Wunderlich, “Tradition and Reception of Roman Imperial Ethics in the Opera La clemenza di Tito,” The Comparatist 25 (May 2001): 5–21. For the sources of Metastasio’s libretto more generally, see John A. Rice, W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 20–26; Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 78–90; and Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 382. See Wolfgang Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation in Metastasios und Mozarts La clemenza di Tito,” in Mozart und die europäische Spätaufklärung, ed. Lothar Kreimendahl (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog Verlag, 2011), 276–325, at 297. In particular, Metastasio takes from Augustine the notion that the individual is part of the community. For Metastasio’s standing among enlightened philosophers, see Adam Wandruszka, “Die ‘Clementia Austriaca’ und der aufgeklärte Absolutismus: Zum politischen und ideellen Hintergrund von ‘La Clemenza di Tito,’” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 31, no. 4–5 (1976): 186–193, at 188. Voltaire, Preface to Sémiramis, quoted in Rice, W. A. Mozart, 90. See Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 277–278. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 382–383. For the following, see Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 288; and Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 392–393. See Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. 18. For Tacitus on this point, see Roberta Strocchio, Simulatio e Dissimulatio nelle opere di Tacito (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 2005). Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 388 (aufgeklärt-absolute[r] Herrscher; den hierarchisch-patriarchalischen Strukturen des Naturrechts). See Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 391–392. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 389 (Funktion politisch-absoluter Herrschaft). So Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 186. For Cicero’s De Re Publica, see Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, trans. Niall Rudd, with an introduction and notes by Jonathan Powell and Niall Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–94. For Augustine’s discussion whether Rome ever was a republic, according to Cicero’s definition, see Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Book XIX, Ch. 21. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 383 (Verschmelzung barocker Herrschaftsideale mit denen moderner Empfindsamkeit: der Herrscher verzeiht als Privatperson einem Freund, was er als Herrscher — im besten Einklang mit der Naturrechtslehre — sonst niemandem verzeihen dürfte). See also Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 161. See Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 393. Metastasio took over this motif from Corneille. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 393 (die überirdische Natur der Vernunft). While the lieto fine is typical for Metastasio’s monarchical dramas, his republican dramas sport a tragico fine. Pietro Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nella cesarea corte per il nome gloriosissimo della sacra cesarea e cattolica real

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maestà di Carlo VI, imperadore de’ Romani sempre augusto, per comando della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Elisabetta Cristina, imperadrice regnante, l’anno MDCCXXXIV, a poesia è del signor abbate Pietro Metastasio, poeta di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica. La musica è del signor Antonio Caldara, vicemaestro di capella di sua maestà cesarea e Cattolica (Vienna: Giovanni Pietro van Ghelen, stampatore di corte di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica, 1734), 1481–1483, available at: http:// www.progettometastasio.it/public/testo/testo/codice/CLEMENZA|P|002. The numbers indicate the lines within each act. In the following, all quotations from Metastasio’s libretto are quoted from this source. The translations are my own. Metastasio took the lines “tutto so, tutti assolvo, e tutto obblio” from the closing lines of Corneille’s Cinna, ou la clémence d’Auguste, Act V, Scene 3. There, Emperor Augustus announces that, “Et que vos conjurés entendent publier / Qu’Auguste a tout appris et veut tout oublier” (“And that you conspirators hear publicized / That Augustus learned everything and wants to forget everything.”) Rice considers the line “a maxim of enlightened absolutism” (Rice, W. A. Mozart, 101). Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, 904–905 (Non sa l’ingrata / che son romano anch’io, che Tito io sono?). Mazzolà scratched this question. In this section, I follow Proß’s analysis of Metastasio’s libretto in his “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 320–325. See Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act I, Scene 8, Recitative. Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, 364–366 (Se la giustizia usasse / di tutto il suo rigor, sarebbe presto / un deserto la terra). Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, 368–370 (Credimi, è raro / un giudice innocente / dell’error che punìsce). See, for example, Augustine, Political Writings, ed. E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 76–80 (Letter 153), 102–105 (Commentary on the gospel of John, 33), 169 (Sermon 302), 176–177 (Sermon 13). Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, 371–375. Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 320 (Das arbitrium des Herrschers wird damit zum Garanten des Bestandes der Gemeinschaft, und nicht das Gesetz, das ohne Ansehen der Person Geltung besitzen muß). Mazzolà eliminated most of this philosophical reasoning (see Mozart/Mazzolà, La clemenza di Tito, Act I, Scene 6, Recitative). All quotes from the opera’s libretto are quoted from W[olfgang] A[madeus] Mozart, La clemenza di Tito KV 621, ed. Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition (Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997). In my translations from Mozart’s operas, I often (though not exclusively) follow the translation of Nico Castel, The Libretti of Mozart’s Completed Operas, 2 vols., with International Phonetic Alphabet Transcriptions, Word for Word Translations, Including a Guide to the I.P.A. and Notes on the Italian and German Transcriptions, Foreword by Julius Rudel, Illustrations by Eugene Green (Mt. Morris, NY: Leyerle Publications, 1997). In Metastasio’s libretto, Tito’s quasi-divine role comes to the fore even more when he finally joins Vitellia and Sesto in marriage. Seneca, De Clementia, Book II, Ch. 7, No. 3 (Clementia liberum arbitrium habet; non sub formula, sed ex aequo et bono iudicat). See Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 392; and Dieter Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte versus Staatsraison: Politik und Empfindsamkeit in Mozarts La clemenza di Tito,” in Bürgersinn und Kritik: Festschrift für Udo Bermbach zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Th. Greven, Herfried Münkler, and Rainer Schmalz-Bruhns (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998), 345–366, at 356. Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 312 (“Veralltäglichung” charismatischer Herrschaft); see also ibid., 313–316, and Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,”

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Political Theology 391. The term “charismatic rule” comes from Max Weber’s studies on religious sociology. See Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, 5th, rev. ed., ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1972), Ch. 3, “Die Typen der Herrschaft,” §§ 10–12 a, “Charismatische Herrschaft und Veralltäglichung des Charisma,” 140–148. For Montesquieu’s and Beccaria’s various positions and disagreements with each other on this point, see Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 315–320. See Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. and ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Book 11, Ch. 27. Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, Gesamtausgabe, ed. Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, collected and with commentary by Wilhelm A. Bauer and Otto Erich Deutsch, based on their preparatory work with commentary by Joseph Heinz Eibl, expanded edition with an introduction and supplements ed. Ulrich Konrad, vol. 4, 1787–1857 (Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, and Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005), 154. See also Helga Lühning, “La clemenza di Tito (KV 621) – Mozarts Rückkehr zur Opera seria,” Das Mozart-Handbuch, ed. Gernot Gruber in cooperation with Dieter Borchmeyer, vol. 3/1, Mozarts Opern, ed. Dieter Borchmeyer and Gernot Gruber (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2007), 240–259, at 244–246. See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 354. The Letters of Mozart and His Family, chronologically arranged, translated, and edited with an Introduction, Notes and Indices by Emily Anderson, 3rd edition (London: Macmillan, 1985), 773. Mozart’s different view on the relationship of music and poetry in opera seria reflected a larger trend at the end of the eighteenth century. See Mark Berry, “Power and patronage in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte,” in Cultures of Power in Europe During the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Brendan Simms and H. M. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 325–347, at 331. For different perspectives on this question, see Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 353 and 355, on the one hand, and Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 63 and 185, on the other hand. Fritz contends that Mozart developed the genre of opera seria under the influence of the tragédie lyrique. In my textual and musical observations, I follow the comparison of the two libretti and its political implications in Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 178–297; and Rice, W. A. Mozart, 20–44. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 33. Recitatives were an integral part of Metastasian opera seria. Misunderstanding their crucial role for the overall conception of the genre led to its dismissal in the nineteenth century. See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 27. Mozart/Mazzolà, La clemenza di Tito, Act I, Scene 9, No. 9 Aria, and Act II, Scene 15, No. 23 Rondo. Henceforth, when quoting the libretto to Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, I will list only the numbers of the act and the scene in the text and indicate if the quotation comes from a recitative or from a musical number (for example, I, 9, No. 9 Aria). See Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 279. The dominance of ensembles in this, as in other Mozart libretti, must be attributed directly to the composer’s influence, rather than to the librettist. Andrew Steptoe has compared the libretti, which Mozart’s most famous librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, produced for Mozart, with those he produced for other composers of the day. The analysis demonstrates that the three libretti da Ponte wrote for Mozart have a significantly lower number of arias and a much higher number of

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ensembles. See Andrew Steptoe, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 108. It has long been recognized that in his reworking of opera seria, Mozart imported important features from opera buffa. See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 39. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 180 and 182–183, and Ivan Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas, trans. Marion Faber and Ivan Nagel (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1991), 7. Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 7. See below on the philosophical implications of this development. Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, 1510–1517. The idea that God protects his king is a biblical one often found in the psalms. See, for example, Psalm 2:1–6: “Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’” See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 241–242. That Metastasio’s final chorus is directed at Charles VI as much as to Tito is clear from the dedication (Licenza) with which Metastasio ended his libretto: “Non crederlo signor; te non pretesi / ritrarre in Tito. / … Veggo ben che ciascuno / ti riconobbe in lui; so che tu stesso / quegli affetti clementi / che in sen Tito sentiva in sen ti senti; / ma Cesare è mia colpa / la conoscenza altrui? / È colpa mia che tu somigli a lui? / Ah vieta invitto Augusto, / se le immagini tue mirar non vuoi, / vieta alle muse il rammentar gli eroi” [Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Atto Terzo, 1518–1531]: “Do not believe it, Sire. I did not try to portray you in Tito … I see well that everyone recognizes you in him; I know that you feel in your heart those generous emotions that Tito felt in his. But is it my fault, CAESAR, that others know this? Is it my fault that you resemble him? Ah, invincible AUGUSTUS, if you do not wish to admire images of yourself, forbid the muses to remember heroes” (Rice, W. A. Mozart, 12). Although Metastasio denies the claim that Tito offers a portrayal of Charles himself, his denial proves the opposite. Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act I, Scene 1, Recitative, 47–49 (Fra le memorie antiche / trova l’egual, se puoi. ‘Fingiti in mente, / eroe più generoso o più clemente). Rice, W. A. Mozart, 14 and again 80. Metastasio’s libretto contained several passages, which could have been interpreted as supportive of revolution. While these lines obviously caused no concern in the political context of 1734, they acquired a whole new meaning after 1789. For example, Mazzolà eliminated references to Brutus, which could have referred “either [to] Lucius Junius Brutus, who led a rebellion against the last King of Rome in 509 B.C., or [to] Marcus Junius Brutus, who took part in the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. in the hope of restoring the Roman republic” (Rice, W.A. Mozart, 40). In Metastasio’s time, there was little danger of revolution in Habsburg lands, so there was obviously no need to worry about such references to revolution. As we saw, Metastasio himself was an ardent supporter of baroque absolutism, even if he was also sympathetic to the early Enlightenment. In 1791, however, such revolutionary rhetoric had a very different ring to it. As Rice points out, “The elder Brutus was one of the heroes of the French Revolution. Voltaire’s tragedy Brutus, performed in Paris in 1790, inflamed revolutionary passions; David’s painting of Brutus (1789) was also appreciated for its revolutionary implications” (ibid., 41). Remnants of revolutionary rhetoric remain in Mazzolà’s libretto, for example, Vitellia’s comment to

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Political Theology Sesto, “I propose to you to liberate the fatherland” (Io ti propongo la patria a liberar) in Act I, Scene 9. See also Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 202–203. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 41 and 14. I, 12, No. 12 Quintet with Chorus (V’è in Roma una congiura, / Per Tito ahimè pavento). I, 10, No. 11 Accompanied Recitative (un gran tumulto … d’armi, e d’armati). I, 14, No. 12 Quintet with Chorus (O nero tradimento, oh giorno di dolor!). Rice, W. A. Mozart, 84. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 82. Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 214, suggests that Mozart and his librettist deliberately wanted to shock their audience. Fritz proposes that the two acts each have different functions in the plan of the opera’s conception: the first act was supposed to emphasize the need for political reforms in the Habsburg territories by demonstrating the danger of revolution if Leopold’s new course of restoration was not reversed and reforms guided by the idea of humanitas similar to those in Tuscany were not undertaken. By contrast, the second act would have suggested how such humanitas or humanité should come to political expression, namely, through the humanization of the ruler, which is rooted in his own human sensibilities: Tito pardons Sesto first and foremost as a friend. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 273 and 277–278. See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 353; Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 320; and Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 198. See Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act II, Scene 7, 744–820. See Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act II, Scene 7, 803–810. See Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act II, Scene 11, 908–975. See Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act III, Scenes 1–4. See Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act II, Scene 6. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 395 (ihre Gefährlichkeit für die ‘arkadische Politik’ des Fürsten; entfällt die strikte Unterordnung der machiavellistischen Politik der Amoral unter die rechtsetzende ‘arkadische’ Politik, die von diesem Zeitpunkt an den Handlungsablauf bei Metastasio bedingt). Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 387 (Typen höfischer Politik und höfischen Verhaltens). See also Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 93–94 and 111; and Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 278. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 400 (schwacher Monarch). Alfred Einstein, Mozart: His Character, His Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 409. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 401 (einer neuen Zeit zugehörig). See also Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 242–244. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 395 (degeneriert … quasi zur Zwangshandlung). Borchmeyer points out, however, that the preponderance of clemency over severity is not uncommon in eighteenth-century theater. See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 361–362. Tito shares this fate of appearing as a weakling with another one of Mozart’s tenor roles, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni. When asked in baroque fashion by his fiancée, Donna Anna, to avenge her, he instead calls the police. See Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, Don Giovanni, Act II, Scene 10, Recitative: “An appeal I wish to make to whomever is necessary and in a few moments to avenge you I promise.” (In questa casa per poche ore fermatevi: Un ricorso vo’ far a chi si deve, e in pochi istanti vendicarvi prometto.) See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 350. For a critical view of Leopold’s rule, see Gerda Lettner, Das Rückzugsgefecht der Aufklärung in Wien 1790–1792 (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 1988).

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78 Quoted in Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 256. See also Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 349, who points to a contemporary article entitled, “Der Patriot,” published in the radical Enlightenment journal, Deutschlands 18. Jahrhundert. 79 See Wandruszka, “Die Clementia Austriaca,” 188. 80 See Pia Janke, “La clemenza di Tito—Mozarts politisches Bekenntnis,” in Wege zu Mozart, ed. Herbert Zeman, vol. 2, W. A. Mozart in Wien und Prag: Die großen Opern, ed. Herbert Zeman, in cooperation with Claudia Kreutel (Wien: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1993), 159–175, at 164–166; Rice, W. A. Mozart, 14 and 83; and Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 347. 81 As Austrian Chancellor Wenzel Anton Reichsfürst von Kaunitz-Rietberg (1711– 1794) reported in 1790, Marie-Antoinette and Leopold never felt much affection for one another. She was only ten when he left Vienna in 1765, and they never met again. Leopold also never met her husband, Louis XVI. Nevertheless, Leopold understood it to be his monarchical duty to defend the French royal couple’s safety, especially since they were related through family ties. See Wandruszka, Leopold II, vol. 2, 355. 82 Quoted in Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 271. 83 See Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 274. 84 See Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 271. 85 See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 240. 86 Quoted in Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 292 (Ces gens ne veulent point de souverains. Ils démolissent la monarchie pierre par pierre). 87 Quoted in Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 292 (Tout est perdu!). 88 Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 292. On the question of enlightened despotism, see Derek Beales, “Was Joseph II an Enlightened Despot?” in Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, distributed in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 262–286. 89 See Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 289 and 311; Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 393. Diderot claimed that all political rule emerges from the will of the people. Beaumarchais adapted Diderot’s justification of sovereignty for the stage. See Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 285–286. 90 See Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 317. 91 [Cesare] Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, ed. Richard Bellamy, trans. Richard Davies with Virginia Cox and Richard Bellamy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), § 27 “Lenience in Punishing,” 63–66. For Immanuel Kant, see his “The Metaphysics of Morals,” in Political Writings, ed. and with an introduction by Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet, 2nd enlarged ed., Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 131–175, at 156–160. It is perhaps not surprising that Kant favored the first option, while Beccaria opted for the second, as did Mozart and Mazzolà. While all four are representatives of the late Enlightenment, Kant’s background is Protestant, while that of Beccaria, Mozart, and Mazzolà is Catholic. Culturally, Protestantism seems to develop a more stringent moral rigidity than Catholicism. For the different ways in which the Enlightenment played out in England and the United States, on the one hand, and continental Europe, on the other, see James Q. Whitman, Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Whitman alludes to the fact that religion has had a significant influence on criminal punishment practices but does not elaborate on this question. 92 Proß points out that Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments, which was published in 1764, helped overcome “the old, absolutist natural law theory” (Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 396: des alten absolutistischen Naturrechts).

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93 See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 281; Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 362– 363; and Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 171. 94 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder, Die Zauberflöte, Act II, Scene 12, No. 15 Aria. For the similarities and connections between La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte, see Daniel Heartz, “La clemenza di Sarastro: Masonic Benevolence in Mozart’s Last Operas,” The Musical Times 124, no. 1681 (March 1983): 152–157; and Lühning, “La clemenza di Tito (KV 621),” 240–259, especially 249. 95 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 96. For a more comprehensive musical analysis of the aria, see Rice W.A, Mozart, 96–98. 96 See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 361; Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 239– 241; and Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 159–175. 97 Jean-François de Saint-Lambert (attributed), “Humanité [Morale],” in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers par une société de gens des lettres, vol. 8, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (Neufchastel: Samuel Faulche & Companie, 1765), University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe (eds.), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu (8:348) (un sentiment de bienveillance pour tous les hommes, qui ne s’enflamme guere [sic] que dans une âme grande & sensible. Ce noble & sublime enthousiasme se tourmente des peines des autres & du besoin de les soulager; il voudroit [sic] parcourir l’univers pour abolir l’esclavage, la superstition, le vice, & le malheur). See also Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 169. 98 See Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 168. Well known in this context is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (1729–1781) The Education of the Human Race of 1780. 99 See Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 166. 100 John Locke (1632–1704), for example, contends that “Princes, indeed, are born superior unto other men in power, but in nature equal.” See John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. J. Ebbinghaus (Hamburg 1957), 46, quoted in Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 168. 101 Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 173. 102 See Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 167–168. Mozart’s lodge was called “Benevolence.” 103 See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 352–353 and 361. Borchmeyer notes that the absolutist ruler was never alone, even on the toilet. See also Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy, 7 and 58–59. 104 Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 350 (moralische Legitimation). For the following, see ibid., 350–352. 105 Proß calls this the “ethicizing of politics and … an increasing politicizing of civil ethics” (Ethisierung der Politik und … einer zunehmenden Politisierung der zivilen Ethik). Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 290. For this philosophical and political development, see ibid., 289–290; and Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 350–352. 106 Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 171 (In ihrer Offenheit, Natürlichkeit und Wahrhaftigkeit entspricht sie von allen Figuren des Stücks am ehesten dem neuen Ideal des Menschen, der sich nicht gemäß der höfischen ‘bienséance’ verhält, sondern der Stimme des Herzens folgt). 107 On this point, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 216. As Fritz notes, already in Metastasio’s original version of the libretto, Servilia challenges the social norms at court by rejecting the possibility of becoming empress—a marriage that would have entailed ultimate upward mobility for her. See ibid., 120. In the context of the baroque Habsburg Court of Charles VI, such a behavior entailed a provocation for the society at court. Thus, already Metastasio’s Servilia shows herself to be influenced by Enlightenment ideals and the age of sensibility. Even for the early Enlightenment, truthfulness and justice were highly prized virtues for the absolute

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111 112

113 114 115 116 117 118

119 120 121

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state. Metastasio himself kept a critical distance to the Viennese court. See ibid., 127 and 200. See Fritz’s analysis of this and the following scene, Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 193–199. Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 197 (Gefahr der absolutistischen Herrschaftsordnung). Similarly, in Die Zauberflöte, Pamina expresses her love for truth regardless of its potentially dire consequences. When caught trying to escape her captor, Sarastro, and asked by the bird catcher, Papageno, who had been sent ahead by Prince Tamino to liberate her, how they should respond to the charges they will surely confront, she answers with a determination comparable to Servilia’s courage: “The truth! Even if it be (a) crime” (Mozart/Schikaneder, Die Zauberflöte, Act I, Scene 17: Die Wahrheit! sei sie auch Verbrechen). For the philosophical significance of this absolute commitment to truth in contrast to the courtly ideal of dissimulation, see Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 363. See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 352–353, 358. See Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 381. Already Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu; 1585–1642), among other absolutist politicians, had argued that mildness is more dangerous to the inner peace of society than cruelty (see Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 357). Two centuries later, the German poet Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) still believed that “a Prince, even though he should have all the character traits of a gracious private individual … can cause as much evil as the most cruel tyrant, merely through the absence of princely characteristics” (ein Fürst, mit allen Eigenschaften eines liebeswürdigen Privatmannes […], durch den bloßen Mangel fürstlicher Eigenschaften soviel Böses stiften kann, als der gräulichste Tyrann)(Christoph Martin Wieland, C. W. Wielands Sämtliche Werke: Der goldene Spiegel, ed. Johann G. Gruber [Leipzig, 1818–1828], 259, quoted in Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 358). Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 284 (Repräsentation idealer Herrschaft). See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 291. Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 397 (Tendenz der Vereinfachung; Festlegung des Charakters von Titus auf einen Grundton humaner Schlichtheit und Geradlinigkeit). Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 397 (die Güte in Titus, das verführerische Raffinement in Vitellia und die Ekstase von Liebe und Verzweiflung in Sesto). Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 400 (erscheint als humaner Vertreter einer klassischen ‘edlen Einfalt’). As such, Proß adds, he must not be interpreted according to political criteria, otherwise his character becomes highly problematic. Ludwig Finscher, “La clemenza di Tito,” in Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, vol. IV, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Munich: Piper, 1991), 338, quoted in Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 355 (ein höchst moderner Beitrag zur Verwandlung der metastasianischen Opera seria in die klassizistisch-heroische Oper der Jahrhundertwende). See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 355; Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 397; Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 219. For the esteem that this scene in Metastasio’s libretto had in the eighteenth century, see Rice, W. A. Mozart, 89–90. Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 361 (zwischen öffentlich-repräsentativem und privatinformellem Auftreten; im Drama des 18. Jahrhunderts sehr beliebt … da er dem herkömmlichen Bild des absolutistischen Herrschers widersprach, der schlechterdings in keinem Moment allein war). II, 11, Recitative (Ma dunque faccio sì gran forza al mio cor). II, 11, Recitative (Viva l’amico! benché infedele).

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124 II, 10, No. 18 Trio (Mille diversi affetti in Tito guerra fanno. S’ei prova un tale affanno, lo seguita ad amar). 125 Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, 138 (Mille affetti diversi ecco a cimento). 126 See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 168, 279, and 290–291. 127 For Metastasio’s version on this point (Act III, Scene 7), see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 166. 128 Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 359 (in den bürgerlichen Rührstücken wimmelt es von gütig-verzeihungswillen Vätern, die in ihrem Hause ‘la clemenza di Tito’ spielen). 129 Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 360. 130 See Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte,” 359 n. 11 (Der Vatergott wird nach dem Bild des zärtlichen, stets vergebungsbereiten Familienvaters modelliert, das seinerseits auf den verzeihenden Gott des Neuen im Gegensatz zum ‘rächenden’ Gott des Alten Testaments zurückweist). Here we are dealing, of course, only with a long-standing Christian perception of a purported juxtaposition between the God of Old Testament to that of the New. This perception says more about the church’s anti-Judaism than it says about the real differences between the Old and New Testaments’ respective understandings of the God of Israel whom Jesus called Abba-Father.

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3

Tito Grace Freely Given

Having now established the opera’s historical context and its philosophical and political background, in the remaining chapters I look at the three principal characters on stage and ask how a theologically educated Catholic in a late eighteenth-century audience might have perceived them. I argue that such a person could have heard in the opera an anthropological and, indeed, theological vision that went beyond the historical occasion of the day. It is this possible reception that I now seek to unearth. Methodologically, for the most part I move from a diachronic to a synchronic approach. I take the opera in its final form, the form in which it was performed in 1791. Of course, those present in the opera house might have noted changes between Mazzolà’s libretto and Metastasio’s, for the latter was well known to an eighteenth-century audience from many other compositions.

Act One In this chapter, I begin with the opera’s title hero. Although Tito does not appear on stage until the fourth scene of the first act, the audience is introduced to him right from the beginning. In the first scene, Vitellia quarrels with Sesto about why, contrary to his promises, he has not yet killed the emperor to avenge her. Sesto shows himself hesitant. He begs her to reconsider, indicating that there is no good reason to murder Tito: Ah, let us not in Titus take from the world its delight, from Rome its father, from us a friend. Find one in ancient memory who is equal, if you can. Fashion in your mind a more generous, a more gracious hero.1 Sesto here paints Tito in the most idealized colors: delightful, fatherly, friendly, heroic, generous, beneficent, giving, lenient in punishment, and understanding of human weakness. “Useless, lost, he calls the day, on which he did not make someone happy.”2 With his long list of titles and virtues, Sesto sets the tone for the audience’s perception of Tito as a noble and gracious emperor, and he immediately offers a plethora of instances of Tito’s character. He does more than that, though: for a Catholic audience, Sesto’s list of titles and descriptions DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452-4

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could have brought to mind the biblical and also Catholic liturgical tradition of addressing Jesus (and, for her part, Mary) with a long list of similar and even identical titles and adjectives: Christ, Messiah, Lord, Master, Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, Lamb of God.3 In addressing Tito with a long list of titles and attributes, Sesto sets the tone for a Christological interpretation of Tito’s role by the audience. King and friend In the second scene, Sesto’s friend (the courtier Annio) further contributes to this impression of Tito (I, 2, Recitative). He joins Sesto and Vitellia to bring them the news of Tito’s decision to ban his lover, the Jewish princess Berenice from Rome, due to popular Roman sentiment against a foreigner being on the throne. Annio provides a detailed description of the parting between Tito and Berenice as well as the emotions involved. “She left,” Annio reports of Berenice, “but one saw that she left as one who is loved, and that this hard blow hit her lover as much as it hit her.”4 And a moment later, Annio adds: Oh, one knew that Tito needed all the courage of a hero to conquer the lover. He won, but he fought. He was not oppressed, but he was not calm, and in this face (one has to say to his honor) one saw the battle and the victory.5 The courtier’s report provides the audience with a personal view of the emperor. It shows Tito’s emotions, well suited for an audience in the age of sensibility, but also that Tito has his emotions under complete control. It thus reveals his heroic character: Tito is perfectly capable of prioritizing the common good (of the state) over his own emotions. For a theologically educated Catholic, this example might well have brought to mind church father Augustine of Hippo’s contention that sin stems from an inability or unwillingness to rightly order one’s goods.6 Tito, however, sets the common good above his personal good and, in so doing, shows that he acts in accordance with God’s will. When Tito first appears on stage, therefore, the audience is already expecting him. He appears in good baroque fashion as God’s image and representative on earth. As René Jacobs observes, a triumphant march with “trumpets and drums as the sonic symbol of the sovereign’s absolute authority” announces the emperor’s arrival, followed by a chorus paying him homage (I, 4, No. 4 March and No. 5 Chorus).7 The chorus, which greets him and offers tribute, also glorifies him and asks the gods for his protection.8 Preserve, o gods guardians of the fate of Rome, in Titus the just, the strong, the glory of our age.

Serbate, oh Dei custodi della romana sorte, in Tito il giusto, il forte, l’onor di nostra età.

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Right from the outset, Tito also establishes himself as a benevolent ruler. He refuses the people’s offer to build a temple in his honor and suggests that the money be used instead to help the victims of the recent eruption of Mount Vesuvius (I, 4, Recitative). Even if these actions are rooted in information about the historical Titus drawn from Roman sources, they helped establish Tito for a Catholic audience as a Christian emperor in the biblical tradition. Many would have known that, as Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold had similarly declined to have a monument in his honor erected in Florence, suggesting instead that the collected money be used for an infrastructure improvement project.9 A biblically literate Catholic would also have been reminded that in the Old Testament it is the monarch’s task to protect the people’s welfare, especially of the most vulnerable in society: the widow and the orphan, the poor and the oppressed. This regal responsibility reflects God’s own care for the people and their wellbeing since the Davidic king rules in Zion as God’s adopted son.10 In the recitative that follows the repetition of the march (I, 4, Recitative), Tito informs Sesto of his decision to send Berenice away from Rome so that the Romans can see a Roman as empress. Tito tells Sesto that he now wants to marry Sesto’s sister Servilia: “Since love vainly chose my bonds, I wish at least for friendship to forge them. Let the imperial blood be united to yours, Sextus. Your sister shall be my bride this day.”11 Tito here establishes the important theme of friendship, which he relates directly to the question of love. From now on, Tito seems to suggest, friendship substitutes for love. It may even fill the emotional gap left by his necessary rejection of Berenice. The notion of friendship, with its roots in Greek antiquity, played an important role in eighteenth-century literature.12 According to Aristotle’s classical understanding in his Nicomachean Ethics, true friendship is only possible between equals.13 This makes true friendship between Tito and Sesto impossible, as Tito will indeed learn later.14 The issue of equality may well stand behind Tito’s efforts to raise Sesto to an equal status through his marriage with Servilia. Tito himself makes this clear when he explains to Sesto a little later in the recitative that, “You shall have such a share in the throne, and I will so elevate you that very little will remain of that vast gap which the gods set between Sextus and Titus.”15 Beyond the connection with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, for Catholics in the audience, Tito’s friendship with Sesto could also have evoked biblical associations. First, it could have reminded them of David’s friendship with Jonathan, son of Israel’s first king Saul.16 According to 1 Samuel 18:1, “When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (see also 1 Samuel 18:3; 20:17).17 Just as in Tito’s friendship with Sesto, however, David’s friendship with Jonathan is complicated by Saul’s enmity toward David, which prompts Saul to seek David’s death (1 Samuel 19:1–17; 20:32–33), just as Vitellia seeks Tito’s death (to avenge her father). When Jonathan eventually dies in battle together with Saul, David greatly mourns his death:

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I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. (2 Samuel 1:26) Obviously, there are significant differences between David’s friendship with Jonathan and Tito’s friendship with Sesto. Most importantly, Jonathan is a prince and, as the king’s son, is higher in social rank than David, who initially is only a warrior and military hero. Sesto, by contrast, is simply a courtier. Also, in contrast to Sesto, who allows himself to become the tool of Vitellia’s revenge, Jonathan seeks to protect David from his father’s wrath against him. Still, in the biblical narrative, just as in the opera, the theme of friendship between royalty and courtier plays an important role and, more importantly, is connected with the theme of love. Indeed, when David laments Jonathan’s death, he favorably compares his friendship with a man to his love for a woman. Similarly, for Tito, the friendship with Sesto substitutes for his love for Berenice. Tito’s efforts to raise Sesto to an equal social status, so that friendship between them becomes possible, could also have reminded a Catholic in the audience of the importance of the theme of friendship in the Gospel of John. In his farewell speech to the disciples before his arrest, Jesus famously says: I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. (John 15:15) Although Jesus calls his disciples friends, their relationship is hierarchically ordered. Jesus declares right before this, “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14). But it is also a friendship that builds on a selfsacrificial love of the one who is offering the gift of friendship: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). In many ways, Tito’s friendship to Sesto resembles that of Jesus to his disciples: It is a friendship among two unequal men, and it requires obedience on the part of the inferior. As it turns out at the end of the opera, Tito’s friendship with Sesto also builds, if not literally on a self-sacrificial death, then at least on selfnegating love, as Tito forgoes erotic love entirely. In light of these parallels, an eighteenth-century Catholic might well have interpreted as a Christological reference the early establishment of the notion of friendship as the bond which unites Tito and Sesto. Grace There is yet another theme that a theologically literate, enlightened Catholic in the audience might have associated with Tito’s friendship towards Sesto: the

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equalizing effect of grace. Although Martin Luther obviously stands in a different theological tradition than the majority of the Catholic audience in Prague in 1791, his writings can serve as an example. In his theological Thesis 28 of his “Heidelberg Disputation,” Luther argues against Aristotle that the “love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.”18 By contrast, Luther notes, here in agreement with Aristotle, that the “love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.” Luther’s point is clear: God’s love creates that which is worthy of love rather than responding to an inherently lovable quality. In so doing, God’s love reduces the infinite difference between the Creator and the creature.19 Tito’s love for Sesto is quite similar insofar as it is not based on similar status, but rather reduces the status difference between them. Sesto does not deserve Tito’s love, nor is he in any sense his social equal. And yet Tito’s love elevates Sesto just as God’s love makes the sinner worthy of love. A Catholic audience might well have interpreted Tito’s plan to marry Servilia to elevate Sesto’s status as a parable for God’s grace, which makes sinners lovable and elevates their status to that of children of God. A comment by Annio in the same scene suggests as much. When Tito informs Sesto about his decision and the reasoning behind it, Sesto has a hard time expressing his thanks, knowing that Annio, who is present in the conversation, is in love with Servilia. Yet Annio, ever the obedient courtier, speaks up and defends Sesto’s silence by remarking upon Sesto’s hesitance to accept Tito’s equalizing grace (I, 4, Recitative): “Sesto … has a modest opinion of himself, and he doesn’t realize that a favor from Cesar can span any distance.”20 The emperor’s grace annihilates all differences just as God’s grace enables love and friendship between God and God’s creatures. This theological association would have been reinforced through the ending of the exchange between Tito and Sesto in this recitative (I, 4). Sesto suggests to the emperor that he limit his generosity (i benefici) if he does not wish his friends to be ungrateful. Tito, however, rejects the idea, noting that his generosity is all he has: “(If you deny me my generosity,) what do you leave me?”21 The Italian term used here—benefico/benefici—would have been reminiscent to theologically trained ears of Christological and, here specifically, soteriological terminology. An eighteenth-century Catholic might not have thought of Philip Melanchthon’s famous dictum that “Hoc est Christum cognoscere beneficia eius cognoscere” (“to know Christ is to know his benefits”) but likely would have remembered the analogous use of the term in Catholic theology going back through Thomas Aquinas all the way to Augustine of Hippo.22 In the opera, this important notion of generosity/benefits defines Tito’s understanding of monarchical rule. The emperor expounds on it in the immediately following aria, Del più sublime soglio (I, 4, No. 6 Aria with text by Metastasio):

Tito Of the most splendid of thrones this is the sole fruit: all the rest is torment, all else is servitude.

Del più sublime soglio l’unico frutto è questo: tutto è tormento il resto, e tutto è servitù.

What should I have, were I also to lose the only happy hours I have in helping those in distress, in raising up my friends, in awarding riches to merit and to valor?

Che avrei, se ancor perdessi le sole ore felici, ch’ho nel giovar gli oppressi, nel sollevar gli amici; nel dispensar tesori al merto, e alla virtù?

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As Abert notes, the aria’s “mood is one of tender, lyrical half-lights” reminiscent of Sarastro’s low-registered aria In diesen heil’gen Hallen from Die Zauberflöte.23 A Catholic audience would have readily noted that Tito’s aria is saturated with theological notions. Terms, such as generosity, torment, servitude, merit, and virtue, as well as notions, such as helping the oppressed, raising up one’s friends, and distributing treasures, would all have conjured up theological and biblical connotations. The self-image of the ruler that Tito paints here resembles the ideal ruler in the Old Testament, who is called to protect the widow and the orphan, help the poor and the oppressed, and judge rightly.24 The theme of friendship once more could have evoked Jesus’s relationship to his disciples in the Gospel of John. The aria could thus have reinforced the image of Tito as a Christian ruler. Truth Tito returns in the short sixth scene (I, 6, Recitative) with Publio, who hands him a sheet of paper with the names of those who have committed crimes of lèse-majesté. Tito, however, is not interested in prosecuting such crimes, noting in an enlightened fashion that, “It is a barbarous inquest that doesn’t serve the dead, and provides a thousand ways for deceit to ensnare the innocent.”25 Even the idea that he himself could be the target of such a crime does not change his mind. Tito suggests that whatever the person’s motivation, it can be excused: “If his motive was frivolous: I ignore him; if foolishness: I pity him; if (with) reason: to him I am grateful; and if in him are impulses of malice: I forgive him.”26 In the following seventh scene (I, 7, Recitative), Tito meets Servilia, whom he addresses immediately as “Empress” (Augusta). Servilia, however, asks him to hear her first, and she shares the secret of her love for Annio. Servilia is willing to be obedient to her emperor and marry him, but she wants him to know that her love for Annio will not cease, even if she marries Tito. To this unheard-of rejection of courtly etiquette, Tito responds with a prayer thanking the gods for such honesty: “I thank you, O gods in heaven, that one has been found who

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will dare to speak an unwelcome truth.”27 Tito marvels at the thought that Annio sacrificed his love for Servilia for the possibility that she become empress, and that Servilia, for her part, sacrificed the throne for her love of Annio. Tito also shows himself as a child of the age of sentimentality when he admits that his “heart cannot harbor such wicked sentiments” (non produce sentimenti sì rei di Tito il core), which would “disturb” such “tender love” (turbar fiamme sì belle). And he reveals the political implications of Servilia’s absolute commitment to veracity (not dissimilar to Pamina’s absolute commitment to telling the truth in the Act One finale of The Magic Flute), remarking to her: “If only our state had more citizens like you!”28 Tito reinforces the political dimension of Servilia’s veracity in the following aria, Ah, se fosse intorno al trono (I, 7, No. 8 Aria with text from Metastasio): Ah, if around my throne every heart were so sincere, a vast empire wouldn’t be a torment, but joy.

Ah, se fosse intorno al trono

Rulers wouldn’t have to bear such grave burdens, to distinguish from deceit the disguised truth.

Non dovrebbero i regnanti tollerar sì grave affanno, per distinguer dall’inganno l’insidiata verità.

ogni cor così sincero, non tormento un vasto impero, ma saria felicità.

The aria has a simple ternary form with a free development of the da capo section.29 In the context of Mozart and Mazzolà’s reconceived first act, it functions somewhat as a political testament, for Tito disappears from the stage for the rest of the first act, which ends—as we have seen above—with a requiem-like mourning of his purported death.

Act Two When Tito reappears on stage in the second act with a chorus (II, 5, No. 15 Chorus), a seismic societal change has taken place, as becomes immediately apparent when one compares this chorus with Tito’s first appearance on stage in Act One. Here, in Act Two, his appearance is no longer couched in baroque fashion, as in the first act, where a march and a chorus of praise preceded it. Now, Tito appears and sings together with the chorus, which offers thanksgiving to the Creator for Tito’s survival: Ah, let us render thanks to the supreme Creator who in Titus the throne’s glory preserved.

Ah, grazie si rendano al sommo fattor, che in Tito del trono salvò lo splendor.

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Tito, for his part, recognizes the blessings, which he enjoys despite the recent attempt on his life: Ah no, I am not so unfortunate if in Rome my lot finds sympathy, if prayers for Titus are still offered up.

Ah no, sventurato non sono cotanto, se in Roma il mio fato si trova compianto, se voti per Tito si formano ancor.

The chorus and Tito’s singing are intertwined, this time without trumpets and drums, but instead with clarinets and basset-horns, “the Masonic instruments par excellence.”30 The emphasis now is on Tito’s common humanity with everyone else. The triumphalism of his first appearance on stage in Act One is gone. René Jacobs suggests that Mozart [here] sets out to exploit the contrast between two worlds: that of the past, the ancien regime … and the utopian world of post-revolutionary, illuminated, Masonic future. … Between these two worlds, we sense—and hear, in the first act finale—the yawning chasm of the Revolution, physically anticipated by Mozart and the aristocratic audience, which, as subversive as he was, he surely intended to annoy at the Prague premiere.31 This chorus is musically forward-looking in other ways, too.32 Tito’s encapsulated part in the middle of the number takes the form of a Romantic song. The chorus, in the meantime, exhibits all the marks of Mozart’s late or imperial style: a deep seriousness, an inner serenity, melancholy, and simplicity.33 It is meditative, prayerful, introspective, solemn, and seems to transcend all suffering and death.34 A Catholic audience might have noticed the religious terminology in this chorus. To begin with, the chorus is a prayer directed towards the “supreme Creator” (sommo fattor)—a title that alludes to the Christian understanding of God as the Creator, despite the opera’s ostensible Roman pagan context. This prayer of thanksgiving could have been evocative of the Greater Doxology (Gloria in excelsis Deo) in the Ordinary of the Mass: gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam, Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.

we give thanks to you for your great glory. Lord God, heavenly King, God Father almighty.

There are several close terminological and/or theological correspondences between the chorus and the doxology. Compare grazie si rendano and gratias

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agimus tibi; sommo fattor and Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens; splendor and magnam gloriam tuam. Other terms in the chorus, such as sympathy (compianto) and prayers (voti), underscore such a liturgical association and help to associate Tito with Christ. In fact, the thanksgiving to the supreme Creator for Tito’s life could have appeared as an allusion to the Christian understanding of the heavenly Father’s role in Christ’s resurrection. The apostle Paul, for example, opens his Letter to the Galatians with the following formulation: “Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (1:1). Affliction, face, and heart Publio informs Tito that the people of Rome are awaiting him (II, 5, Recitative), but Tito longs to hear the news of Sesto’s interrogation by the Senate. Tito, who is incapable of malice himself, cannot believe that Sesto is guilty: “Can you believe Sextus disloyal? I measure his feelings by my own; and it seems an impossibility to me that he could have betrayed me.”35 But Publio tells Tito otherwise: “But my lord, not all have hearts like Titus.”36 A Catholic listener might have here recalled Jesus who, according to the theological tradition, is without sin. The apostle Paul, for example, claims that “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Similarly, the Letter to the Hebrews states that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15; see also 1 John 3:5; and 1 Peter 2:22). Publio reinforces this Christological analogy in his following aria, Tardi s’avvede (II, 5, No. 16 Aria), in which he notes that the one who has not known betrayal cannot imagine it in others. In the short subsequent scene (II, 6), Tito reiterates that he cannot believe Sesto to be guilty, given his tender feelings for him. Tito further develops the theme of friendship by asking if it is possible for such an intimate friend to betray him. Annio comes to Tito, though not to inform him of Sesto’s innocence, as the emperor hopes, but rather to beg for mercy for his friend. In the next scene, Publio returns (II, 7, Recitative) to let Tito know of the Senate’s verdict: “Here is the terrible, but just, decree.”37 Sesto and his co-conspirators will be thrown to the wild beasts. With this announcement, Publio introduces the important theme of the relationship between justice and clemency/grace. The theme would have been well known to Catholics from the Sequence of the Requiem Mass for the Dead, which juxtaposes God’s justice and the sinners’ hope for divine mercy in the last judgment.38 Once Sesto’s guilt has been established beyond doubt, Tito is in shock at his friend’s betrayal. Tito has a hard time believing what is happening and wants to be left alone, but Annio summons his courage to address Tito once more. In his aria, Tu fosti tradito (II, 7, No. 17), he again begs Tito for mercy.39

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Left alone, Tito contemplates Sesto’s fate. He continues to think there might be extenuating circumstances for his friend’s action. Tito’s accompanied recitative in the eighth scene (II, 8) and his exchange with Publio in the short ninth scene (II, 9) suggest that Tito still wants to save Sesto. He is anxious for Sesto’s arrival. When he sees Sesto approach, his love for him is rekindled. Speaking to himself, he acknowledges that, “Hearing of his approach, the old affection already pleads on his behalf. But no, he shall find his sovereign, not his friend.”40 Personal affection and reason of state enter into a conflict in Tito, which occupies the opera’s plot to the end. The eighth scene together with the tenth (II, 10), in which Tito confronts Sesto, undoubtedly constitute the opera’s emotional climax. Mozart gives Tito an accompanied recitative (II, 8) to express his feelings after Sesto’s guilt has been established. As Abert notes, The music modulates through a wide range of keys, but always in close association with the ideas contained in the text. The more that Tito’s anger towards Sesto grows, the more the harmonies descend into flattened tonalities, reaching D flat major with the death sentence.41 Tito sings of treachery (tradimento), of infidelity (infedeltà), and of feigned friendship. Momentarily, Tito’s desolation expresses itself in the conviction that Sesto must die: “Ah yes, let the miscreant die!”42 A Catholic might well have been reminded of Jesus’s word against Judas: “For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born” (Mark 14:21). But Tito finds it hard to sign the verdict without speaking to Sesto first. Imagining that there is an exonerating secret that the Senate was not able to extract from Sesto, Tito orders his friend to be brought before him. As Tito waits, he meditates on the fate of the powerful, whose life he contrasts with that of the simple peasant: How unhappy is the fate of those who reign! To us is denied what is given to the lowliest. That needy peasant in the depths of the woods, whose rough sides are clad in rough wool, whose shapeless hovel is an unreliable shelter from the inclement elements, sleeps peacefully, passes his days in tranquility. He asks little: he knows who hates him, who loves him: in company or alone he goes safely to the forest and to the mountain, and sees everyone’s hearts mirrored in their faces. And we, even among such riches, always live in uncertainty, for in our presence, man’s hopes or fears cause them to dissemble the feelings in their heart.43 As appropriate for a reflection on the life of a simple peasant, the music in this accompanied recitative is full of pastoral overtones. As Abert suggests, it reflects Tito’s alternating moods:

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Tito’s lament about the monarchs’ lot, which denies them the freedom from deception that the lowly peasant enjoys, picks up on the classical trope that the ruler cannot trust anyone. The powerful lack what is worth most: honesty and true human relationships. They are constantly faced with deceit, especially in a baroque court society governed by dissimulation. A Catholic audience could have been reminded by Tito’s comparison between the monarch’s lot and that of the simple peasant of a recurring biblical theme, namely, the contrast between the fate of the powerful and the pauper. The Hebrew prophetess Hannah sings of it (1 Samuel 2:1–10), as does the Virgin Mary in her Magnificat (Luke 1:51–53 Vulgate [Luke 1:46–55]). The latter is an integral part of the Catholic liturgy of the hours at Vespers: fecit potentiam in brachio suo, dispersit superbos mente cordis sui, deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles, esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes.

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

Again, Jesus picks up on the theme in the blessings and woes, especially in the version preserved in the Gospel of Luke: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.’ […] But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

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Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. (Luke 6: 20–21 and 24–25) To be sure, the thematic focus in Tito’s little pastoral is different. Tito looks at the fate of the powerful and the simple from the perspective of the former, while the biblical texts look from that of the latter. Accordingly, Tito’s focus is on dishonesty and deception, while the biblical focus is on poverty and oppression. Still, ex negativo, Tito’s lament seems to confirm what the biblical text announces, namely, the reversal of blessings that the lowly and the powerful receive from God’s hands already. Because rulers lack what is most important, namely, receiving truth and honesty, not they but rather the lowly already now are the ones who receive true blessings. A Catholic prelate in the audience might also have noticed Tito’s remark about the face as the gateway to the heart: “[that needy peasant] sees everyone’s hearts mirrored in their faces.”45 This theme becomes even stronger in the tenth scene (II, 10), in which Publio brings Sesto to Tito. Here, all three protagonists join in a trio (II, 10, No. 18) in E flat major— according to near-contemporary music theorist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, “the tone of love, of devotion, of the confidential dialogue with God; expressing through its three flats, the holy trinity.”46 The trio picks up on the theme of the face. It consists of two parts, a larghetto followed by an allegro. As Abert notes, it is rather unusual among Mozart’s trios, as the characters sing a parte and “are merely juxtaposed, rather than played off against each other.”47 The protagonists are almost hermetically sealed off from each other as Mozart renders their focus on each other’s faces through individual musical emphasis. As a result, each observes the others without engaging them. Sesto is the first one to comment. Upon seeing Tito for the first time since the failed attempt on the emperor’s life, Sesto is frightened by the change in Tito’s face: (This is Tito’s face! Oh, you stars! Where is his usual mildness gone to? Now he makes me tremble!)

(Quello di Tito è il volto! Ah dove oh stelle! e andata la sua dolcezza usata! or ei mi fa tremar!)

Sesto’s “phrase, in a trochaic rhythm, is at once broad and plain, square,”48 He “is accompanied by a convulsive tremolando motif in the orchestra,”49 expressing, as Hocquard suggests, “the psychological shaking of the unhappy [man]”50 by “dark-toned, strange-sounding harmonies.”51 Tito, for his part, remarks on the changed features of Sesto’s face:

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(Eterni Dei! di Sesto dunque il sembiante è questo! oh come può un delitto un volto trasformar!)

Mozart renders Tito’s comment “by means of a simpler, two-note motif that is constantly repeated”52—an eighth note is followed by a quarter note, either rising or descending—and by an “iambic phrase with large intervals,” while the orchestra comments “on the storyline in the style of a Greek chorus.”53 From the perspective of the neutral observer, finally, Publio compassionately remarks on the conflicting emotions about Sesto, which Tito’s face reveals: (A thousand conflicting emotions are at war within Titus. If he feels such torment, he still loves him.)54

(Mille diversi affetti in Tito guerra fanno. S’ei prova un tale affanno, lo seguita ad amar.)

As Hocquard explains, Publio’s “vocal line, first made up of connected notes which in Mozart always signify affection, then adopts, by a kind of mimicry, the iambic pace of Tito’s phrase, but with reduced intervals.”55 Finally, Tito and Sesto engage each other, with “Sesto’s very expressive laments [responding] a parte to Tito’s dry and hard injunctions.”56 The shorter allegro section of the trio begins with a brief broken line by Sesto, followed by a contrapuntal ensemble of all three voices where the male sotto voce voices of Tito and Publio form the basis for Sesto’s heart-wrenching lamentation.57 Sesto’s once more broken line rises pathetically, reaching “first, forte, a long cry; then, twice, it tears and breaks on a very moving cadence a piacere.”58 For biblically literate Catholics in the audience, the trio’s focus on the face as the gateway to the heart could have recalled various scriptural themes. As for Sesto’s face, Catholics in the audience might have correlated the biblical claim that shame covers the sinner’s face: All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face. (Psalm 44:15)59 The twelfth stanza of the Sequence hymn of the Mass for the Dead thematizes the face of the sinner in a similar fashion: “My face reddens in guilt” (Culpa rubet vultus meus). With regard to Tito’s face, Catholics could have associated several passages in the Old Testament, according to which access to God’s face signals favor and grace. Cain, after murdering his brother Abel and being cursed by God, remarks, “Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face” (Genesis 4:14). Humans hide their face in God’s presence. Thus, Moses “hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus

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3:6). God warns Moses that “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). Thus, when the prophet Elijah becomes aware of God’s presence in “a sound of sheer silence,” he covers his face (1 Kings 19:12–13), as do the seraphs around the throne of God (Isaiah 6:2). Nevertheless, Exodus 33:11 reports that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” And Deuteronomy 34:10 insists, “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” When Moses speaks with God, his own face reflects his interaction with God: “his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Exodus 34:29). And so, Moses hides his face with a veil until he speaks with God again (see Exodus 34:33, 35). God’s enmity against people expresses itself when God “sets his face” against them, or when God hides God’s face from them.60 God also enters judgment face to face.61 When the people harden their faces and their hearts against God, God in turn hardens the prophet’s face against them.62 By contrast, to wish for God’s blessing is to ask that “the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.”63 Indeed, it is a sure sign of God’s gracious presence when God is seen face to face.64 Thus, the righteous seek God’s face.65 Indeed, it is a sign of righteousness to lift up one’s face to God and behold God’s face.66 At the same time, in the presence of the Lord, it is appropriate for humans to fall on their faces.67 The centrality of the notion of the face in the Hebrew Bible continues to make itself felt in the New Testament. In his transfiguration, Jesus’s “face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Matthew 17:2; see also Luke 9:29). It is a sign of blessing when the angels continually see God’s face (see Matthew 18:10). And the apostle Paul expects that in the end times he will see no longer as “in a mirror, dimly,” but rather “face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). In fact, Paul avers that already God “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Similarly, the Book of Revelation insists that in the New Jerusalem “the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (Revelation 22:4). Biblically literate Catholics in Mozart’s audience might have recalled these notions of the faces of God and of Jesus. They also would have known that Thomas Aquinas conceived of heavenly bliss as the visio beatifica (beatific vision) of God.68 And they would regularly have been reminded of the divine face through the Catholic liturgy, for example, during the ritual of the Stations of the Cross—a devotion going back to the Middle Ages—that includes the commemoration of the face of Jesus on the Veil of Veronica (Sixth Station).69 According to the legend (in connection with Luke 23:27–28), Saint Veronica met Christ carrying his cross to Calvary and wiped the sweat off his face using her veil. Miraculously, an image of Christ’s face appeared on the veil. Through this image, the face of Christ became an object of devotion for Catholics, a gateway for believers to the heart of God.

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Considering the biblical and liturgical importance of the theme of the divine face, Catholics in Mozart’s Prague audience might well have heard in the opera’s repeated focus on Tito and Sesto’s faces a theological allusion to the human encounter with the face of God/Christ, particularly in the last judgment. Sesto’s face is a gateway to his guilt-ridden conscience, just as sinners’ reddened faces betray their contrition. Tito’s face, for its part, becomes a gateway to the emperor’s heart, be it gracious or severe, just as God’s face reveals either sinners’ salvation or damnation. Catholics in Mozart’s audience could also have noticed the similar range of conflicting emotions of fear and hope, which the Sequence hymn shares with Sesto, Tito, and Publio’s trio in the opera. Here, they might first have considered the moment when Sesto observes how Tito’s changed appearance “makes me tremble” (ei mi fa tremar). Sesto remarks, “I feel myself bathed in sweat, oh God” and “a dying man couldn’t suffer more.”70 For their part, Tito and Publio remark on the fact that, “The traitor trembles / and dares not raise his eyes.”71 The Sequence hymn similarly notes the trembling, which the presence of the “just judge of vengeance” (justus judex ultionis), that “king of fearful majesty” (rex tremendae majestatis), causes in the sinner at the moment of judgment: Quantus tremor est futurus, quando judex est venturus, cuncta stricte discussurus.

How great will be the quaking, when the Judge is about to come, strictly investigating everything.

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus? quem patronum rogaturus, cum vix justus sit secures.

What then will I say, poor wretch that I am? Which patron will I entreat, when even the just may hardly be certain?

Ingemisco, tamquam reus: culpa rubet vultus meus, supplicant parce, Deus.

I sigh, like the guilty one: my face reddens in guilt: Spare the imploring one, oh God.72

Catholics in the audience could furthermore have perceived Sesto’s comment about the former, now disappeared tenderness of Tito’s face and Publio’s remark relating to Tito’s continuous love for Sesto as reminiscent of the Sequence’s references to the past tenderness of Jesus and continuous hope in Christ’s future acts of mercy: Recordare, Jesu pie, quod sum causa tuae viae; ne me perdas illa die.

Remember, kind Jesus, my salvation caused your suffering; do not forsake me on that day.

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem.

Merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest.73

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After Sesto’s first encounter with his sovereign, Publio and the guards leave (II, 10, Recitative). Sesto is now alone with Tito, who admits to himself that he still has compassion for Sesto: “And yet, he arouses my pity.”74 Tito wants to speak with Sesto not as sovereign but rather as friend. As the libretto instructs, Tito “abandons his majestic tone” (depone l’aria maestosa), as he asks his friend for the reasons for his betrayal: “What wrong did your prince, father, and benefactor do to offend you so? If you could forget Tito the Emperor, how could you not remember Tito as your friend?”75 Sesto recalls the “benefits” he received from Tito and admits his guilt, but he does not help Tito understand the reasons for his deed. Again, Sesto directs the listener’s focus to the theme of the face: “That sacred face, your voice, your clemency itself have become my torture.”76 Sesto wishes to die. After a lengthy confrontation between the two men, in which Tito seeks in vain to discover the cause of Sesto’s assassination attempt, Tito is frustrated and finally dismisses Sesto: “Guards, take the culprit/sinner out of my sight.”77 Parting, he reminds him that “now I am your judge” (or tuo giudice sono). The libretto notes that Tito dismisses Sesto “without looking at him” (senza guardarlo). He refuses to show his face. In biblical perspective, Tito hides his face and, in so doing, refuses Sesto access to his heart and to grace, or so it might have seemed to a Catholic audience if they associated Tito with the heavenly judge in the last judgment. Sesto bids Tito farewell with his parting Rondo, Deh, per questo istante solo (II, 10, No. 19), and Tito remains alone. In a long monologue in the recitative that follows, he contemplates his options (II, 11, Recitative). His first thought is revenge: “I must avenge his disregard and scorn for my clemency.”78 But Tito stops himself at the word vendetta (revenge).79 It seems to be a feeling that Tito refuses to know: “Avenge! … Can the heart of Titus nurture such feelings?”80 Tito does not want to become the victim of his desire for revenge.81 But Tito knows that, as ruler, he is the guardian of the law. Thus, his own feelings for the friend must take a back seat: “Sesto is guilty; Sesto shall die.”82 But now Tito worries about how history will perceive him: “They will say that Tito became tired of mildness, just like Sulla and Augustus of cruelty. That Tito was hurt and that he could have easily forgotten his own hurts without abusing the law.”83 No, Tito does not want to part with the familiar ways: “Ah, let me not forsake my usual path. …”84 He rips the verdict into pieces, deciding that Sesto, the friend, shall live: “And if the world wants to accuse me of some failing, let it accuse me of mercy (throwing away the torn sheet) not of harshness.”85 Tito’s decision to reject revenge as a course of action appears to be a political decision dictated by considerations of how posterity will judge him as an emperor. At the same time, it is reminiscent of Jesus’s demand to offer the other cheek (Matthew 5:39 and Luke 6:29) and Augustine’s fundamental moral rejection of revenge as a legitimate motivation for legal action, either for an individual or for the state itself.86 Once again, Tito appears for the audience as a ruler guided by Catholic moral principles.

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Publio returns and joins Tito, who keeps him in the dark as to his final verdict (II, 12, Recitative). In his next aria, Se all’impero (II, 12, No. 20, text by Metastasio), Tito explains why he needs to stay true to himself: If to a ruler, ye benevolent gods, a hard heart is necessary either take the empire from me or give me another heart.

Se all’ impero, amici Dei, necessario è un cor severo; o togliete a me l’impero, o a me date un altro cor.

If the loyalty [faith] of my realms I cannot assure by love, I care not for a loyalty [faith] that is born of fear.

Se la fè de’ regni miei coll’amor non assicuro: d’una fede non mi curo che sia frutto del timor.

Mozart set the traditional da capo aria (allegro, andantino) in B flat major, which Schubart describes as expressive of “cheerful love, good conscience, hope, longing for a better world.”87 Indeed, in this aria, Tito expresses his longing for a better world in which the ruler no longer needs to govern with severity. The melody is emphasized “through the symphonic accompaniment.”88 The aria is traditional not only through its da capo form, but also in that it includes ornamental coloratura. As Hocquard notes, however, in its seconda parte it includes “less conventional accents, with a more sensitive harmonic search (modulations to G minor bar 62, to C minor bar 66, and to F minor bar 69).”89 For a Catholic in the audience, it would not have been hard to find theological allusions in this aria. Take the first verse, in which Tito announces that the gods may give him another heart if it is indeed necessary to have a severe heart to rule an empire. The image of the heart is a prominent biblical one, just as that of the face. The Hebrew Bible regularly speaks both of God’s heart and of human hearts. In the Book of Genesis it is said that “the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6). The flood is an expression of God’s frustration with the corruption of the human heart, but afterwards God seems to reconcile God’s self with the inevitability of human sin. The Book of Genesis reports that, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.” (Genesis 8:11) The theme of the heart also permeates other parts of the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Deuteronomy instructs God’s people, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”90 Moreover, they shall put God’s Word “in [their] heart and soul” (Deuteronomy 11:18) and observe the “statutes and ordinances” of God’s will “diligently with

Tito 101 all [their] heart and with all [their] soul” (Deuteronomy 26:16). When Israel was incapable of keeping God’s Law, sinned, and was taken into (Babylonian) exile, the exilic prophets announced that God would give his own people a new covenant and new hearts, because with their old hearts they were not willing or able to keep the original covenant. Jeremiah says: But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33) The prophet Ezekiel makes the same point in a slightly different way: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). The Book of Deuteronomy uses yet another image—that of the circumcised heart: “Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). The theme of the heart is also present in the New Testament, for example, when Jesus announces, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8), and when he asks his disciples to “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). If a biblically literate eighteenth-century Catholic heard Tito’s aria with these biblical echoes in mind, they might have noted that the Italian term severo (severe) can be a synonym for the related term duro (hard). A “severe heart” (un cor severo) could be said to equal a “hardened heart” (un cor duro). When Tito asks the gods to either “take the empire from me or give me another heart,” this prayer could have been heard as a reference to the hardened heart mentioned so many times in Scripture. For example, Exodus 9:12 reports that “the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses” (see also Exodus 7:3).91 And Psalm 95:8 calls on Israel: “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, / as on the day at Massah in the wilderness.” The image of the hardened heart reappears in the New Testament. For example, the Letter to the Hebrews asks its recipients: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness’” (Hebrews 3:7–9).92 In Mozart’s eighteenth-century Austrian context, Tito’s clement constitution would have proved that he did not have a hardened heart. As we saw, although a Roman, pagan emperor, Tito was a model for the Catholic rulers of the House of Habsburg. In him, Ezekiel’s prophecy that God “will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26) appears to have been fulfilled. In fact, he matches the biblical description of the Christian life: “But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath,

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malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. … As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:8, 12). For Tito now to receive a severe heart—that is, a hardened heart—would have implied a reversal of Ezekiel’s prophecy. It would have put him on the same level as Pharaoh. For Catholics in the audience, another part of Tito’s aria could have been important. In its last two verses, Tito announces, “I have no interest in a fidelity/faith that is the fruit of fear.”93 Since the Italian term fede can mean both fidelity and faith, Catholics could have perceived this term as an allusion to the Christian faith. The emperor’s wish for a fidelity/faith born of love rather than fear reflects the biblical mandate to love God without fear: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18). Tito as image of God Tito disappears when he departs for the arena where Sesto and his co-conspirators are supposed to be thrown to the wild beasts. It is not until the final two scenes that the audience encounters the emperor again, this time on a resplendent square leading towards the arena in which the conspirators are already visible awaiting their execution. Lictors, senators, Roman patricians, and the Praetorian guards surround the emperor. The chorus (II, 16, No. 24) praises him with a baroque apotheosis, which reinforces the theological imagery: That of heaven and of the gods, you are the care, the darling great Hero, has been shown in the brief course of this day.

Che del ciel, che degli Dei tu il pensier, l’amor tu sei, grand’Eroe, nel giro angusto si mostrò di questo dì.

But there is no cause for wonder, fortunate Augustus, that the gods thus watch over one so like them.

Ma, cagion di maraviglia non è già, felice Augusto, che gli Dei chi lor somiglia, custodiscano così.

As Abert remarks, the chorus’s strict, archaizing, almost churchlike tone evokes the sense of horror at the attempt on Tito’s life that still haunts the minds of all involved in the drama, conjuring up a mood that finds expression in the solemnly measured, independent accompaniment, with its rhythmic ostinato in the bass, and in the numerous dissonant suspensions in the part-writing.94 Oulibicheff noted that “the atmosphere takes on a sort of religious solemnity.”95 The fact that this traditional chorus follows the previous enlightened

Tito 103 appearance of Tito with the chorus (II, 5, No. 15) suggests that the philosophical shift from the early to the late Enlightenment was a gradual development rather than an abrupt break.96 For a Catholic in the audience, the imagery used in the chorus could have had messianic overtones stemming from monarchical texts in the Old Testament, such as when Tito is described as the “thought, the love” (il pensier, l’amor) of the gods or as a great hero (grand’Eroe) over whom the gods watch as one of their own (see, for example, Psalm 2; 20; 72; 89:20–38; 101; 110; 132). In the recitative following the chorus (II, 16, Recitative), Tito asks for the culprits to be brought before him. To himself (a parte), he expresses the motivation for hiding his decision to pardon Sesto: “He no longer hopes for a pardon. The less it is expected, the more welcome it will be.”97 And so, when Annio and Servilia appear once more to beg for mercy for Sesto, Tito—with subtle irony—pretends that it is already too late, which, of course, it is in a certain sense since Tito has already made the decision for clemency: “If you come to ask for it for Sesto, it’s too late. His fate has been decided.”98 Annio and Servilia are dumbstruck, but Tito avoids further questioning and lets them agonize. At the beginning of the opera’s crucial final scene (II, 17, Recitative), Tito announces the many reasons for Sesto’s verdict, ironically including lèsemajesté, which he had earlier abolished in his dialogue with Publio. Here, though, Tito mentions the whole list of crimes of which Sesto is guilty to underline the inevitability of Sesto’s seeming fate: “Rome in turmoil, majesty offended, laws affronted, friendship betrayed—the world and heaven call for your death.”99 Tito’s deeper purpose, as he had laid out to himself before, is of course to increase Sesto’s thankfulness for the clemency he is about to receive. Before Tito can bestow his mercy on Sesto, Vitellia enters and finally reveals the full extent of the truth, namely that she herself is “the author of the wicked plot,” and that she “seduced from you your most faithful friend” by taking “advantage of his blind love for me.”100 When asked for the reasons, Vitellia gives an unexpected answer: “Your goodness.”101 She then explains that, “I thought that this was love. I hoped for your hand and the throne as a gift from you, and then I was repeatedly passed over, and sought revenge.”102 Tito simply incarnates goodness, so much so that his motivations are easily misunderstood by those who are different. If, in the eyes of others, he has a fault, it is at best that he is precisely that: all goodness. That there are no shadow sides to his character seems incomprehensible to those who are morally impure. Of course, Vitellia’s reasoning for her conspiracy only names what the entire plot up to the end has already amply revealed: Tito is identical with his clemency. For a Catholic audience, Vitellia’s comments here would have underscored one more time the image of Tito as a messianic figure without fault or blemish. According to the Christian theological tradition, Jesus is without sin. His sinlessness reflects his divine identity, but it is easily misunderstood. By seemingly mirroring Christ’s sinlessness, Tito quite naturally would have become for Catholic listeners an analogy, a parable, and an image for Christ.

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In Tito’s following accompanied recitative (II, 17, No. 25), the emperor expresses his astonishment at finding ever-new culprits: But what a day this is! At the very moment that I absolve one wrongdoer, I discover another? And when, just gods, shall I find a loyal soul?

Ma che giorno è mai questo? Al punto stesso che assolvo un reo, ne scopro un altro? E quando troverò, giusti Numi, un’anima fedel?

Tito resembles the holy one who cannot imagine that evil exists in the world. As he remarked earlier (II, 5, Recitative), he measures the feelings of others by his own. And so, he suspects a heavenly conspiracy against him that aims to lure him away “despite himself” (a mio dispetto) from his path of mildness and towards cruelty. But by now Tito’s determination is no longer in question: “No: they shall not have this triumph… . Let us see whether others’ perfidy or my clemency will be the more enduring.”103 Tito orders Sesto and all conspirators to be released and dispenses his clemency upon all of them with the following theologically pregnant words, accompanied by strings that reinforce every line like repeated exclamation marks: “let it be known in Rome that I am the same, that I know everything, absolve everyone and forget all” (sia noto a Roma ch’io son lo stesso, e ch’io tutto so, tutti assolvo, e tutto oblio). That I am the same: ch’io son lo stesso. The statement occupies a dramaturgically elevated position because it forms the climax of Tito’s monologue right before the opera’s closing sextet with chorus (II, 17, No. 26). Moreover, as Rice notes, the “tonal destination” of Tito’s accompanied recitative is C major, which “completes a tonal progression on a grand scale” from the subdominant in Vitellia’s Rondo Non più di fiori (No. 23, in F major), via the dominant in the chorus Che del ciel (No. 24, in G major), all the way to the tonic in the closing sextet with chorus Tu, è ver, m’assolvi Augusto (No. 26). C major is also the festive key of the opera’s overture. If the closing lines of Tito’s recitative are emphasized through their position right before the opera’s closing number and through their significance for the larger tonal architecture of the opera’s end, they are also remarkable because of the explicit theological allusion to Exodus 3:14 (Vulgate): Ego sum qui sum (“I am who I am”).104 In the Book of Exodus, the revelation of God’s name serves the purpose of God’s self-identification to Moses in the burning bush. It identifies God as a God who will reveal God’s self through mighty acts in the future. Scholastic theology long understood the quotation, under the influence of Greek metaphysics, as defining God as immutable essence and ground of all being: esse per se subsistens (subsistent being itself).105 The fact that Mozart and Mazzolà took over this theological quotation from Metastasio, despite their vastly different philosophical and political context, seems surprising. It puts into question Ivan Nagel’s influential contention that

Tito 105 the succession of Mozart’s operas points away from the baroque notion of divine or quasi-divine grace from above and towards the idea of human autonomy.106 At the very least, it confirms that Catholics in Mozart and Mazzolà’s audience could still have understood Tito as a quasi-divine character (as in Metastasio’s original libretto). They also could have interpreted Tito’s steadfast commitment to mildness as a mirror and an expression of divine immutability amidst the changes of this world.107 Justice versus mercy A philosophically interested, enlightened Catholic (and others) in the Prague audience could have heard Tito’s final commitment to mercy as a contribution to the eighteenth-century discussion about criminal punishment reform. This debate garnered much attention in the second half of the eighteenth century in Europe, and especially in the Habsburg territories. Enlightened circles, and Freemasons in particular, deliberated greatly about the moral legitimacy and political expediency of monarchical acts of clemency. Enlightenment thinkers, including Leopold’s erstwhile minister in Tuscany, Cesare Beccaria, voiced strong opposition to the traditional monarchical prerogative of issuing pardons. This philosophical resistance stemmed from the concern that the use of clemency harms the course of justice. Beccaria wrote: To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than products of justice.108 And the Italian reformer concluded: “The laws, therefore, ought to be inexorable and so should their executors [be] in particular cases.”109 Similarly, Immanuel Kant warned in The Metaphysics of Morals: The right of pardon (ius aggratiandi), whereby the criminal’s punishment is either mitigated or completely remitted, is certainly the most equivocal of all the rights exercised by the sovereign; for while it may confirm the aura of his majesty, it can at the same time do a great deal of injustice.110 According to Kant, the ruler can easily appear to act immorally in letting grace triumph over justice. Considering the interests of crime victims, Kant argued that, “In cases involving crimes of the subjects against one another, the sovereign should on no account exercise this right, for exemption from punishment (impunitas criminis) in such cases means doing the greatest injustice to the subjects.”111 The only exception to this rule would be a pardon in the case of a crime against the sovereign him- or herself (crimen laesae maiestatis), but only as long as the security of the sovereign’s subjects is not compromised.112

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Beccaria rejected the use of pardons based on the utilitarian argument that it endangers rather than helps respect for the law. Unlike Kant, however, who favored playing out the full severity of the law in each legal case, Beccaria left room for the praiseworthy intention that stands behind the ruler’s right to pardon. Rather than leaving clemency up to the liberum arbitrium of the sovereign, in which case it produces more harm than good, Beccaria wanted to shift that “most beautiful prerogative of the throne” and “most desirable endowment of sovereignty” to the “code of laws.”113 Beccaria argued that “clemency is a virtue of the law-giver and not of the laws’ executor, that it ought to shine in the legal code and not in particular judgements.”114 How can this be done? For Beccaria, “the lawgiver ought to be gentle, lenient and humane.”115 If Mozart’s philosophically informed audience heard the opera in light of this legal-philosophical debate, they might well have understood Tito’s immovable commitment to mildness as a show of support for Beccaria’s reform ideas. Ivan Nagel notes that a ruler who has forfeited from the very beginning even the possibility of using rigore has no liberum arbitrium left. In light of Beccaria’s reasoning, however, Tito’s unswerving commitment to mildness appears to suggest that clemency is not the prerogative of the ruler’s always seemingly arbitrary free will as executor of the law, but rather as the giver of the law. In other words, with Beccaria, Mozart and Mazzolà could have been understood as suggesting that it is not the application of the law that needs to be mitigated by mercy, but rather the code of law itself that should be immutably marked by mildness. To say it with Beccaria, what is needed is both “unswerving judicial severity” and “a lenient code of laws.”116 Of course, many enlightened observers in the opera house might not have thought of a lenient code of law and a ruler’s prerogative of clemency as mutually exclusive alternatives. Despite both Kant and Beccaria’s rejection of the practice of clemency, many enlightened rulers in Europe, such as Frederick the Great of Prussia or Joseph II, were not willing to give up their right to administer pardons, and for good reason. As Mark Berry points out, they “might hold a strong political interest in asserting that the quality of mercy should not be strained, that Seneca’s justification for leniency regarding punishment of an inferior was not obsolete.”117 Montesquieu might well have agreed.118 Berry suggests that for rulers, such as Frederick the Great and Joseph II, A prince’s personal justice upheld both understandings of clemency better than a modern state’s indifferent administration. … To respond to direct petitions and to grant a personal audience … was far from an outmoded form of communication between monarch and subject. Modern clemency was at worst a minor sin whose advantages in a particular case might readily outweigh ideological objections. A touch of personal monarchy, Hohenzollern or Habsburg, tempered suspicion of a bureaucratic machinestate and reminded subjects of the monarch’s benevolent power. Princeps legibus solutus est.119

Tito 107 Even in European states, which in the wake of the French Revolution abolished the ruler’s right to grant clemency, this practice made a comeback within a generation—presumably because of the perception that the bureaucratic application of a lenient code of law leaves open the possibility of judicial error, which might require acts of clemency.120 If many in the audience did indeed interpret the opera as a contribution to the contemporary philosophical debate about criminal punishment, Catholics might also have heard it as a contribution to the related theological question about the eschatological tension between God’s justice and God’s mercy. Immanuel Kant argued that without some sort of ultimate divine reckoning, the injustices of this life would put the moral order of the universe into question.121 If the relationship between mercy and justice in the political arena has implications for the relationship between mercy and justice in the eschatological arena—as Kant suggests—then a Catholic audience might well have interpreted Tito’s unswerving commitment to clemency in the opera as implying an eschatological message. More precisely, they might have understood the tension between Tito’s desire to honor justice and his impulse to let clemency prevail as a reflection of the tension between Christ’s role as just judge and as gentle savior, which marks the Catholic liturgy for the dead—as Mozart’s Requiem, composed in the same year as La clemenza di Tito, indeed suggests.122 What, however, would that eschatological statement entail? That God in the last judgment dispenses pardoning grace on all sinners regardless of considerations of justice? Considered from a Beccarian perspective, such an action on God’s part would seem unwise. From a Kantian perspective, it would be altogether immoral. The divine Judge could not possibly let sins go unpunished, or else God would rob the victims of history of their last chance to achieve justice. Saint Augustine had already argued that Christians must suppress their desire for revenge precisely because they can pray for vengeance to be administered at the last judgment when sinners no longer have the opportunity to reform.123 What if such an ultimate reckoning were not to take place? For the victims of history, heaven then might well resemble hell. Tito’s dilemma between justice and grace thus mirrors the eschatological dilemma between divine justice and grace. In contradistinction to Kant who—in the case of human law—unbendingly opts for the use of the “law of retribution (ius talionis),”124 the Christian tradition has been far more ambiguous when it comes to the relationship of divine justice and grace. Biblical texts that propose a last judgment by works, including the possibility that some sinners might be condemned to eternal damnation, stand side by side with texts that privilege God’s universal love for the salvation of all.125 The Christian theological tradition has taught that at the last judgment, human beings will be judged according to their works.126 At the same time, it has always been known that if human beings were judged without grace, there would be no hope of salvation. Psalm 130:3 puts it succinctly when it asks: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” No one. But how then do God’s justice and God’s grace cohere with one another? Does justice make grace impossible? Or

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vice versa, would grace, if allowed to have the last word, destroy justice? For the Christian tradition, there has never been an easy answer to the eschatological issue at hand. Almost from its very beginning, the tradition privileged either one set of texts or the other. It is conceivable that a Catholic audience could have interpreted Tito’s unchanging commitment to clemency as an operatic proposal for how to escape this eschatological dilemma. They might have heard this opera suggesting the hope that even in the last judgment grace ultimately prevails over justice, the pius Jesus (pious Jesus) over the rex tremendae maiestatis (king of tremendous majesty). Such an eschatological proposal would not have needed to imply that God’s mercy eliminates the need for a final divine reckoning. For those who are wronged in life, divine mercy without justice would be unbearable. By the same token, however, divine justice without mercy would be the death of all. But are divine justice and mercy mutually exclusive alternatives? For a Catholic audience, the opera might have suggested that they are not. After all, Tito’s final act of mercy does not mean that there is no justice on stage. Justice here simply does not take the form of retributive justice. Rather, it takes place in Sesto and Vitellia’s respective moments of contrition and confession. For both characters, those moments contain experiences of intense pain, as their respective rondos in Act Two demonstrate musically. They are experiences of death; not physical death, to be sure, but the death of their former, sinful selves. In their painful experiences of dying to themselves, both Sesto and Vitellia experience justice—and yet this justice is eventually mitigated by mercy so that they can live. The opera might have suggested to Catholics that God’s justice may similarly be mitigated by mercy one day—not in the sense that a last judgment does not take place, but rather in the sense that it occurs in the necessarily painful experience of contrition and confession on the day of reckoning. If Tito functions in the opera as an image of the heavenly judge, and if Tito is immutably committed to mildness over against severity, then the opera’s ending would indeed have implied that God’s mercy allays God’s justice, that Christ is not a seemingly arbitrary divine Judge to be feared, but rather a tender, loving, and gentle savior who upholds the need for justice, and still allows contrite sinners to live.127 Tito’s unswerving commitment to clemency would have allowed Catholics in the audience to understand God’s grace as triumphing even if sin becomes sinful beyond measure. And they might have heard Tito’s comment (II, 17, No. 25), “Let us see whether the treachery of others or my clemency is the more constant” (Vediamo, se più costante sia l’altrui perfidia, o la clemenza mia), as a reflection of Paul’s famous dictum that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). That a Catholic audience might have read the opera in this way seems possible, not least considering the changed theological image of God in the age of sensibility. People of this era increasingly contrasted the supposedly vengeful God of the Old Testament with the ever-loving Father (der liebe Gott) of the New Testament. Jesus-sayings—such as “Let the little children come to me; do

Tito 109 not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14 and parallels)—led the way to this new sentimental perception of God, according to which Christians ought to love rather than fear “their heavenly Father,” just as little children cling to their earthly father.128 The sentimental, loving, and ever-gracious Tito fits well into this emerging religiosity of the age of sentimentality and could have been read as advocating the increasingly popular image of God as mild and merciful. Tito appears for the last time in the opera’s concluding number (II, 17, No. 26 Sextet with Chorus), which is set in a festive C major, as behooves both the opera’s ending and the occasion of its first performance. As Hocquard notes, Mozart progressively introduced the popular demonstration of joy, reserving the beginning … to the expression of the protagonists’ reaction. The structure is simple and very readable: two solos to begin with (Sextus, then Titus); then Vitellia’s voice will be sustained by two others (Annius and Servilia), and it is this trio which will launch the entry of the choral mass. That will be aired by Titus’s alternating interventions, before it ends in the triumph.129 An initial exchange between Sesto and Tito is followed by an ensemble of all soloists and, finally, the entry of the chorus. As Abert notes, the chorus is ushered in by a mighty unison in the full orchestra, which now includes trumpets and timpani, and by Vitellia’s dramatically effective triadic ascent to a top gʺ, which soars above the others like a radiant star over the chorus’s hymnlike ‘Eterni dei’.130 Tito asks the gods: Cut short, eternal gods, cut short my days, that day when the good of Rome is no longer my care.

Troncate, eterni Dei, troncate i giorni miei, quel dì che il ben di Roma mia cura non sarà.

In the meantime, all other protagonists and, finally, the chorus pray: Eternal gods, watch over his sacred days; For Rome, in him preserve her happiness.

Eterni Dei, vegliate sui sacri giorni suoi, a Roma in lui serbate la sua felicità.131

As Berry notes, This final ensemble restores the C major tonality of prior rejoicing, the dark chromaticism of revolutionary chaos replaced by bright and sturdy

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We have seen that in Metastasio’s version of the opera, Tito’s reference to the God revealed in the burning bush is followed by the emperor’s joining of Vitellia and Sesto in marriage and his announcement that he will no longer look for a wife, taking Rome as his bride instead. Metastasio’s opera ends with a chorus offering homage to Tito.133 Mazzolà eliminated both Tito’s joining Vitellia and Sesto in marriage, Tito’s announcement of his betrothal to Rome, and the acclamation chorus. Instead, the opera ends with the sextet with chorus, influenced by French models, which, as Fritz notes, Mozart set “in a profound and contemplative solemnity in the subdued tone of ‘humanitas.’”134 As Abert notes, Tito’s vocal line “maintains his melodic independence” throughout the closing number: “On some occasions Tito himself spins out the melodic thread, on others he completes the line begun by the tutti, ending it in the manner of a refrain.”135 In Metastasio’s ending of the opera, the ruler is a lone individual removed from the rest of humanity. He mirrors God by exercising a liberum arbitrium (free will), as the proponents of early enlightened absolutism would have suggested. In Mozart and Mazzolà’s version, by contrast, Tito mirrors God to the extent that he takes care of the people and provides for their happiness, or so it might have appeared to an enlightened Catholic audience. Care and happiness are late enlightened notions and signal a new understanding of the ruler’s role in state and society. A theologically literate Catholic, however, could have recognized in these concepts central biblical ideas about monarchy by divine right. That the monarch ought to care for the people’s well-being certainly reflects the Old Testament’s understanding of the Davidic monarchy. Take Psalm 72, for example: Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. […] For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.

Tito 111 From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight. (Psalm 72:1–4, 12–14; see also Psalm 101) There is yet another biblical allusion in the final scene of the opera that a Catholic in the audience might have recognized. It connects a plausible theological interpretation of Tito by a Catholic audience with that of Sesto in the next chapter. The closing number of the opera—the final sextet—begins with Sesto’s confession of guilt, voiced with the true contrition of the Christian sinner: Yes, it is true. You absolve me, Emperor, but my heart does not, which will lament the error as long as memory it shall have.

Tu, è ver, m’assolvi Augusto, ma non m’assolve il core, che piangerà l’errore, finché memoria avrà.

To this confession, Tito responds: The true repentance of which you are capable, is worth more than a true, constant fidelity.

Il vero pentimento, di cui tu sei capace, val più d’una verace, costante fedeltà.

Tito’s response to Sesto contains a reference to Luke 15:7: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninetynine righteous people who need no repentance.”136 The audience might also have associated Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:17–32, esp. vv. 31– 32) with this speech.137 Through this biblical allusion, Tito’s act of clemency would have appeared one last time as an image of divine mercy.

Findings In this chapter, I suggested that theologically educated Catholics in Mozart’s eighteenth-century audience in Prague might have interpreted the role of Tito as a parable for Jesus Christ—adored in Catholic liturgy as heavenly king, divine judge, and merciful savior. In support of my thesis, I offered a reading both of Tito’s character and recurring testimonies by others about him. I argued that other protagonists and the chorus would have guided the audience’s Christological interpretation of Tito by consistently praising his virtuous and noble character, his goodness, his ability to set the common good over his own emotional needs, and his generosity (i benefici). Other comments could have reminded the audience of the Christologically charged themes of betrayal, pain, and suffering; of the Sacred Heart; and of the tension between justice and mercy, fear and hope in the sinner’s encounter with Christ at the last judgment.

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A Christomorphic interpretation of Tito’s role would also have been suggested by the emperor’s own appearances on stage, whether he enters in baroque fashion as God’s representative on earth or as a benevolent and messianic ruler who protects the widow and the orphan, helps the poor and the oppressed, and judges the innocent and the guilty rightly. Tito’s friendship with Sesto could have evoked Jesus calling his disciples friends and the elevating effect of God’s grace for the faithful. Still other statements of Tito’s might have reminded the audience of Mary’s Magnificat and of God’s promise to give Israel and its rulers “a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). The opera’s last scene sealed a theological interpretation of Tito’s role through the quotation from Exodus 3:14, by presenting the emperor’s unchanging goodness and mercy as an image of God’s simple, self-same, and immutable oneness. Finally, in my interpretation of the opera’s last scene, I proposed that a Catholic audience might have interpreted Tito’s unswerving commitment to clemency as a contribution to the eighteenth-century debate about criminal punishment. Here, I suggested that the audience could have interpreted this commitment as support for Beccaria’s program of criminal punishment reform. They might also have applied the contemporary legal-philosophical debate to the theological understanding of Christ’s conflicting eschatological roles as judge and savior and could have heard in the opera an emphasis on God’s mercy amidst the final reckoning with human sin. Such an interpretation, I argued, could have been possible considering the changed theological image of God in the age of sensibility, with its dual emphasis on the gentle, ever-loving Father and the meek Jesus adored through the pious image of the Sacred Heart.

Notes 1 W[olfgang] A[madeus] Mozart, La clemenza di Tito KV 621, ed. Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition (Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997), Act I, Scene 1, Recitative (Ah, non togliamo in Tito la sua delizia al mondo, il Padre a Roma, l’amico a noi. Fra le memorie antiche trova l’egual, se puoi. Fingiti in mente Eroe più generoso, e più clemente). Henceforth, when quoting the libretto to Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, I will list only the numbers of the act and the scene in the text and indicate if the quote comes from a recitative or from a musical number (for example, I, 9, No. 9 Aria). In my translations from Mozart’s operas, I often (though not exclusively) follow the translation of Nico Castel, The Libretti of Mozart’s Completed Operas, in two Volumes, with International Phonetic Alphabet Transcriptions, Word for Word Translations, Including a Guide to the I.P.A. and Notes on the Italian and German Transcriptions, Foreword by Julius Rudel, Illustrations by Eugene Green (Mt. Morris, NY: Leyerle Publications, 1997). 2 Inutil chiama, perduto il giorno ei dice, in cui fatto non ha qualcun felice. 3 See, especially, the ancient Christian hymns Gloria in excelsis Deo (“Glory to God in the highest”), also known as the “Greater Doxology,” and Te Deum laudamus (“Thee, O God, we praise”), both of which are regularly prayed in the Sunday liturgy, and the Litany to the Sacred Heart—the oldest German version of which stems from 1699. See Karl Richstätter, Deutsche Herz-Jesu-Gebete des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, aus mittelhochdeutschen und mittelniederdeutschen Handschriften

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4 5 6 7 8

9

10 11 12

13 14 15

16 17 18

übertragen und zusammengestellt (Munich: Verlag Josef Kösel, and Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet KG, 1926), 297–298. Partì, ma vide, che adorata partiva, e che al suo caro men che a lei non costava il colpo amaro. Eh, si conobbe, che bisognava a Tito tutto l’Eroe per superar l’amante: vinse, ma combattè; non era oppresso, ma tranquillo non era; ed in quel volto [dicasi per sua gloria] si vedeva la battaglia, e la vittoria. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robinson, Jr. (New York and London: Macmillan, 1958), Book One, Ch. 3–4. René Jacobs, “Seven Misconceptions about La Clemenza di Tito,” in Booklet to CD “W. A. Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito,” Harmonia Mundi HMC 901923.24 (Arles: Harmonia Mundi, 2006), 39–50, at 48. For Tito’s initial appearance on stage, see Pia Janke, “La clemenza di Tito—Mozarts politisches Bekenntnis,” in Wege zu Mozart, ed. Herbert Zeman, vol. 2, W. A. Mozart in Wien und Prag: Die großen Opern, ed. Herbert Zeman, in cooperation with Claudia Kreutel (Wien: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1993), 159–175, at 170–171. See Hans-Joachim Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito: Die Geschichte einer Oper (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2013), 253. Janke interprets Tito’s refusal that a temple be built in his honor as an expression of late Enlightenment ideals. See Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 171. See, for example, Psalm 19:7–11 and Psalm 99:4. For the conception of the Davidic kingship, see 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 2, and many other psalms. Giacchè l’amore scelse invano i miei lacci, io vò, che almeno l’amicizia li scelga. Al tuo s’unisca, Sesto, il cesareo sangue. Oggi mia sposa sarà la tua germana. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the antique ideal of friendship evolved from a mostly utilitarian notion in the context of Baroque court society to an ideal based on emotional and philosophical proximity. Friendship (focused around sensibility and tenerezza—tenderness) is a central element of the plot already in Metastasio’s version. Here, Sesto seems to take over the emotional role, which Berenice originally held for Tito. In Metastasio’s libretto, the notion of friendship features prominently, not just between Tito and Sesto, but also between Sesto and Annio, as becomes most obvious in the cloak-exchange scene. Important here is that in the courtly-absolutist society of the Baroque, friendship is viewed as more important than love. The man who is willing to sacrifice his life for his friend features prominently in early eighteenth-century operas. For these questions, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 145–147. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, revised with an introduction and notes by Lesley Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Books VIII and IX, esp. Book VIII, 3–6. Aristotle discusses at some length the question of whether people in positions of authority, and particularly kings, can have friends. He believes that possibility to be rather small. See Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, 6–7. Avrai tal parte tu ancor nel soglio, e tanto t’innalzerò, che resterà ben poco dello spazio infinito, che frapposer gli Dei fra Sesto, e Tito. At the end of the opera, Tito renews his friendship, but now as one among those who are unequal. Similarly, Annio’s friendship to Sesto is a friendship among those who are unequal. For this complex of ideas, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 146–153. See 1 Samuel 18:1–4; 19:1–7; 20:1–21; 23:16–18; 2 Samuel 1:5, 17–27; 19:25–31; 21:5–7, 12–14. Here and throughout this book, I quote the Bible from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). The “Heidelberg Disputation” is included in Martin Luther, Career of the Reformer I, vol. 31 of Luther's Works, edited by Harold J. Grimm, Helmut T. Lehmann, general editor for vols. 30–55. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1957). In Book VIII, 3 of his

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20 21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29

30

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Tito Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle had argued that there is a kind of friendship for the sake of pleasure. Here, people seek friendship because they find others pleasant. That Luther’s theological reasoning is directly opposed to the influence of Aristotelian philosophy on Christian theology becomes clear when he explains in Thesis 28 of the “Heidelberg Disputation” that “Aristotle’s philosophy is contrary to theology since in all things it seeks those things which are its own and receives rather than gives something good.” Ei di se stesso modesto estimator, teme, che sembri sproporzionato il dono; e non s’avvede ch’ogni distanza eguaglia d’un Cesare il favor. [Se mi niegate che benefico io sia] che mi lasciate? Philip Melanchthon, Commonplaces: Loci communes (1521), trans. with introduction and notes by Christian Preus (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2014), “Common Topics of Theology or Theological Outline.” See also, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 1 a. 4 ad. 3, with reference to John Chrysostom, available at: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.III.Q1.A4.C.2; Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 1–10, trans. John D. Retig, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 78 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002), Tractate 28. Other authors include Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Peter Abelard, and Ambrosiaster. Hermann Abert, W. A. Mozart, trans. Stewart Spencer, ed. Cliff Eisen (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 1234. For the “melodic connections” to “Sarastro’s nobility” in his hall-aria, see John A. Rice, W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 76–77. See, for example, Psalms 9:9; 10:12, 18; 69:32; 76:9; 103:6; 146:7; Isaiah 1:17. Barbara inchiesta, che agli estinti non giova, e somministra mille strade alla frode d’insidiar gl’innocenti. Se’l mosse leggerezza: nol curo; se follia: lo compiango; se ragion: gli son grato! e se in lui sono impeti di malizia: io gli perdono. Grazie, o Numi del ciel. Pur si ritrova chi s’avventuri a dispiacer col vero. E n’abbia poi cittadini la patria eguali a voi! Among an earlier generation of commentators, the aria has not had the best press. Abert comments that, “We look in vain here for any sign of Mozart’s true greatness” (Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1235), while Hocquard notes the aria’s “stylistic indecision” (indécision stylistique) between the musical worlds of opera buffa and opera seria (Jean-Victor Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart [Paris: Les Belles Lettres – Archimbaud, 1995], 901). Jacobs, “Seven Misconceptions,” 48. See also Roger Cotte, La musique maçonnique et ses musiciens (Paris: Borrego, 1987); Cotte, “La musique maçonnique de W. A. Mozart: L’Empereur Joseph II et la Franc-Maçonnerie. Les éléments symboliques et rituels du livret et de la partition de La flûte enchantée,” Le guide du concert, du disque, de la musique et du son (February 1972): 12–13. Jacobs, “Seven Misconceptions,” 48. For the following musical observations, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 293–295. Both tonally and in terms of instrumentation, the piece resembles other works of Mozart’s later Viennese years, such as, Così fan tutte (K. 588) and, here in particular, the trio, Soave sia il vento (Act I, Scene 6, No. 10 Trio); the Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat Major (K. 595); Mozart’s little motet, Ave verum corpus (K. 618); the Clarinet Concerto in A major (K. 622), particularly its Adagio movement; Die Zauberflöte (K. 620); and finally the unfinished Requiem (K. 626). For the term “imperial style,” see Christoph Wolff, Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788–1791 (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012).

Tito 115 34 Fritz suggests that the music of the entire opera is permeated by a “sonic symbolism of death” (Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 295 [Klangsymbolik des Tode]), with reference to Horst Goerges, Das Klangsymbol des Todes im dramatischen Werk Mozarts: Studien über ein klangsymbolisches Problem und seine musikalische Gestaltung durch Bach, Händel, Gluck und Mozart (Wolfenbüttel and Berlin: Georg Kallmeyer, 1937) (republished in Munich, 1960), 242. Mozart paints the horror of death in stark colors, however, only to present mercy and grace in even more vivid tonal colors. 35 E puoi creder Sesto infedele? Io dal mio core il suo misuro; e un impossibil parmi ch’egli m’abbia tradito. 36 Ma, Signor, non han tutti il cor di Tito. 37 Ecco il decreto terribile, ma giusto. 38 See Fidel Rädle, “Dies irae,” in Im Angesicht des Todes: Ein interdisziplinäres Kompendium, ed. Hansjakob Becker (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1987), 331–340; Alex Stock, ed., Lateinische Hymnen (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen im Insel Verlag, 2012), 285–304, esp. 295–304. 39 For my discussion of the aria, see the next chapter. 40 [A]ll’udir che s’appressa, già mi parla a suo prò l’affetto antico. Ma no; trovi il suo prence, e non l’amico. 41 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1238–1239. 42 Ah sì, lo scellerato mora! 43 È pur di chi regna infelice il destino! A noi si nega ciò che a’ più bassi è dato. In mezzo al bosco quel villanel mendico, a cui circonda ruvida lana il rozzo fianco, a cui è mal fido riparo dall’ingiurie del ciel tugurio informe, placido i sonni dorme, passa tranquillo i dì. Molto non brama: sa chi l’odia, e chi l’ama: unito e solo torna sicuro alla foresta, al monte; e vede il core ciascheduno in fronte. Noi fra tante ricchezze sempre incerti viviam: che in faccia a noi la speranza, o il timore sulla fronte d’ognun trasforma il core. 44 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239. 45 [Quel villanel mendico] vede il core ciascheduno in fronte. 46 Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, ed. Ludwig Schubart (Vienna: J. V. Degen, 1806), 377 (der Ton der Liebe, der Andacht, des traulichen Gesprächs mit Gott; durch seine drey B, die heilige Trias ausdrückend). 47 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239. 48 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 930 (La phrase, au rythme trochaïque, est à la fois ample et sobre, carrée). 49 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239. 50 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 930–931 (l’ébranlement psychique du malheureux). 51 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239. 52 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239. 53 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 931 (sa phrase iambique à grand sauts d’intervalles; commentant l’action à la façon d’un chœur antique). 54 As Abert notes, Tito and Publio form “a self-contained group in which Publio begins by simply repeating his imperial master’s thoughts” and continues to offer a commentary on the whole scene, which “later composers and even Mozart in his other operas would have entrusted to the orchestra alone” (Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239). 55 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 931 (Sa ligne vocale, d’abord faite des notes liées qui, chez Mozart, signifient toujours l’affection, adopte ensuite, par une sorte de mimétisme, l’allure iambique de la phrase de Titus, mais avec des intervalles plus réduits). 56 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 931 (aux injonctions sèches et dures de Titus répondent des plaintes très expressives en aparté de Sextus).

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57 Publio here has no dramaturgical function of his own, as his vocal line merely follows Tito’s. See Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239, and Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 931. 58 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 931 (La ligne atteint d’abord, forte, un long cri: ensuite, par deux fois, elle se lacère et se brise sur une cadence a piacere très émouvante). 59 Psalm 43:16 Vulgate: Tota die verecundia mea contra me est, et confusio faciei meæ cooperuit me. See also Psalm 69:7; 83:16; Isaiah 3:9. 60 For setting God’s face against someone, see, for example, Leviticus 17:10; 20:3, 5, 6; 26:17; Psalm 34:16. For hiding God’s face from someone, see, for example, Deuteronomy 31:17, 18, 20; Job 13:20, 24; 34:29; Psalm 10:11; 13:1; 22:24; 27:9; 30:7; 44:24; 51:9; Isaiah 8:17; Ezekiel 39:24, 29 and elsewhere. 61 See Ezekiel 20:35. 62 See Ezekiel 3:8. 63 Numbers 6:5. See also Psalm 4:6; 31:16; 67:1; 80:3, 7, 19 and elsewhere. 64 According to the Book of Deuteronomy 5:4, Moses reminds the people of Israel that “The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the fire.” According to the Book of Numbers 14:14, Moses reports that the Egyptians “have heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people; for you, O Lord, are seen face to face.” 65 See Psalm 24:6; 27:8; 42:2. 66 See Job 22:26; Psalm 11:7; 17:15. 67 See, for example, Numbers 16:4, 22, 45; 20:6; 22:31. 68 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 3, a. 8, available at: https://a quinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I-II.Q3.A8, and Summa Theologiae: Supplement, q. 92, available at: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.IIISup.Q92. 69 A copy of the image was present in the Hofburg in Vienna. For the Veil of Veronica or Sudarium see, for example, Eva Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a “True” Image (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), and Dario Rezza, Il “Sudario” della Veronica nella basilica Vaticana: storia e testimonianze di una devozione (Vatican City: Edizioni Capitolo Vaticano, 2010). 70 Di sudore / Mi sento oh Dio bagnar. – Non può chi more / Non può di più penar. Note the presence of the term sudore (sweat), which is reminiscent of the Sweat Cloth, Sudarium, or Veil of Veronica. 71 Palpita il traditore, / Nè gli occhi ardisce alzar. 72 Stanzas 2, 7, and 12. See also stanzas 8–11, 17, and 18. See Stock, Lateinische Hymnen, 295–304. 73 Stanzas 9 and 19. 74 Eppur mi fa pietà. 75 In che t’offese il tuo Prence, il tuo Padre, il tuo Benefattor? Se Tito Augusto hai potuto obliar, di Tito amico come non ti sovvenne? 76 Quel sacro volto, la voce tua, la tua clemenza istessa diventò il mio supplicio. 77 Custodi, il reo toglietemi d’innanzi. 78 Deggio alla mia negletta disprezzata clemenza una vendetta. 79 See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 95. 80 Vendetta! … il cor di Tito tali sensi produce? 81 See Dieter Borchmeyer, “Herrschergüte versus Staatsraison: Politik und Empfindsamkeit in Mozarts La clemenza di Tito,” in Bürgersinn und Kritik: Festschrift für Udo Bermbach zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Michael Th. Greven, Herfried Münkler, and Rainer Schmalz-Bruhns (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998), 345– 366, at 362–363. 82 Sesto è reo; Sesto mora.

Tito 117 83 Diran, che in Tito si stancò la clemenza, come in Silla, e in Augusto la crudeltà; che Tito era l’offeso, e che le proprie offese, senza ingiuria del giusto, ben poteva obliar. 84 Ah, non si lasci il solito cammin. … 85 E se accusarmi il mondo vuol pur di qualche errore, m’accusi di pietà [getta il foglio lacerato], non di rigore. 86 See Augustine, Political Writings, ed. E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7 (Letter 91 to Nectarius). Augustine understands that victims might easily be tempted to pursue their personal desires for revenge, but he counsels them instead to reflect on human sin, which unites both victims and perpetrators. See ibid., 76 (Letter 153 to Macedonius). For the influence of Augustine on Metastasio’s libretti, see Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 288–298. 87 Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 377 (heitere Liebe, gutes Gewissen, Hoffnung, Hinsehnen nach einer bessern Welt). 88 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 935 (par l’accompagnement symphonique). 89 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 935 (des accents moins conventionnels, avec une recherche harmonique plus sensible [modulations au sol mineur mes. 62, à l’ut mineur mes. 66 et au fa mineur mes. 69]). 90 Deuteronomy 6:5. See also Deuteronomy 10:12; 11:13; 13:3; and Matthew 22:37. 91 See also Exodus 4:21; 7:3, 13, 14, 22; 8:15; and elsewhere. 92 See, for example, Mark 3:5; 6:52; 8:17; 10:5. 93 For the aria, see Rice, W. A. Mozart, 95–98. 94 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1242. 95 Alexandre Oulibicheff, Nouvelle biographie de Mozart suivie d’un aperçu sur l’histoire générale de la musique et de l’analyse des principales œuvres de Mozart (Moscow: Auguste Semen, 1843), quoted in Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 948. 96 In contrast to Pia Janke’s suggestion that the second act offers an enlightened image of the emperor that is quite different from the first act. Janke argues that over the course of the opera Tito undergoes what resembles a Masonic process of initiation and education, in which he distances himself increasingly from Baroque notions of absolutist rule and learns to be steadfast in his commitment to mildness despite all trials and tribulations. See Janke, “La clemenza di Tito,” 170–174. 97 Più di perdono speme non ha: quanto aspettato meno, più caro essergli dee. 98 Se a chiederla venite per Sesto, è tardi. È il suo destin deciso. Rice points out the “delicate layer of irony” (Rice, W. A. Mozart, 95), for only the audience and Tito himself know of his decision in favor of mercy. 99 Roma sconvolta, l’offesa Maestà, le leggi offese, l’amicizia tradita, il mondo, il cielo voglion la morte tua. 100 [L’] autor dell’empia trama – il più fedele amico io ti sedussi – io del suo cieco amore a tuo danno abusai. 101 La tua bontà. 102 Credei che questa fosse amor. La destra e’l trono da te sperava in dono, e poi negletta restai più volte, e procurai vendetta. 103 No: non avranno questo trionfo. … Vediamo, se più costante sia l’altrui perfidia, o la clemenza mia. 104 Proß suggests that Mozart accentuated the quotation musically (measures 30–34 of the accompanied recitative), namely, “to emphasize the quasi-divine position of the ruler over against all deficiencies of his subjects” (Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 322: um die Stellung des gottgleichen Herrschers über allen Unzulänglichkeiten seiner Untertanen zu betonen). 105 For the significance of Exodus 3:14 in Catholic theology, see Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch, ed. James Canon Bastible (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1960), 25–27. Ott refers to the

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Tito contributions of Jerome, Augustine, John of Damascus, and Thomas Aquinas in this context. For Augustine, see Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 45 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 177. For John of Damascus, see De fide orthodoxa, Book I, Ch. 9, in John of Damascus, Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr., The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 37 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 1958), 189. For Aquinas, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I q. 13 a. 11, available at: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I.Q13. A11. See Ivan Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas, trans. Marion Faber and Ivan Nagel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 4–7, 10–11, 31–37, and 46. Wolfgang Proß contends as much. For him, the divine name’s literal meaning (“I am who I am”) helps to identify the emperor with the immutability of God against the ever-changing tide of events and loyalties in this world. See Wolfgang Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation in Metastasios und Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito,” in Mozart und die Europäische Spätaufklärung, ed. Lothar Kreimendahl (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-holzboog Verlag, 2011), 276– 325, at 323, with reference to Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius. [Cesare] Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, ed. Richard Bellamy, trans. Richard Davies with Virginia Cox and Richard Bellamy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), § 46, 111. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 112. Immanuel Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” § 49, E. The Right of Punishment and the Right of Pardon, II, in Political Writings, ed. with an introduction and notes by Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 131–175, at 160. Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” § 49. See Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” § 49. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 111. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 111. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 112. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 63. Mark Berry, “Power and patronage in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte,” in Cultures of Power in Europe During the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Brendan Simms and H. M. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 325–347, at 335. See Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. and ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn millers, and Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Book 11, Ch. 27. For Montesquieu’s position, see Proß, “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation,” 315–320. Berry, “Power and patronage,” 335. Berry points to the millers Arnold case in Prussia as a contemporary example in which Prussia’s Frederick II felt the need to intervene. See Berry, “Power and patronage,” 335, with reference to David M. Luebke, “Frederick the Great and the Celebrated Case of the Millers Arnold (1770–1779): A Reappraisal,” Central European History 32 (December 1999): 379–408, at 380, 401. On the reintroduction of the practice of clemency in post-revolutionary Europe, see James Q. Whitman, Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). For Immanuel Kant, see his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, Introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Some questioned the existence of

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the last judgment and eternal damnation. Mozart himself had touched on the topic in his 1787 opera, Don Giovanni, and in the summer and fall of 1791 he was dealing with the theme again in the composition of his unfinished Requiem Mass for the Dead. For this tension in Mozart’s Requiem, see Steffen Lösel, “‘May Such Great Effort Not Be in Vain’: Mozart on Divine Love, Judgment, and Retribution,” The Journal of Religion 89, no. 3 (July 2009): 361–400. Augustine, Political Writings, 36 (Letter 138). See also ibid., 7 (Letter 91); 15–16 (Letter 104); 61–62 (Letter 133); 76 (Letter 139); 135 (Letter 100). With this exclusion of retaliation as a legitimate motivation for punishment, Augustine influenced a long Christian tradition in regards to the question of the potential beneficiaries of punishment. Christian theologians removed victims from the list, arguing that their grievance was God’s concern to be dealt with in the eschaton. Any satisfaction that victims could have received from seeing punishment inflicted upon the perpetrator, in this perspective, was deemed an inappropriate desire for personal vengeance. See Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures, 2003 (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 115–116. Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” § 49, 155. On this complex of questions, see, for example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? With A Short Discourse on Hell, trans. David Kipp and Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988). May it suffice here to refer to Matthew 25:31–46 as a biblical example. See, for example, Jeremiah 31:3, Mark 12:1–12, and elsewhere. See, for example, Matthew 6:14, 26, 32; 7:11; 18:3; 19:13–14; Mark 10:13; Luke 11:13; 18:16; John 11:52; 12:36; 13:33; 21:5. Romans 8:14–21; Galatians 3:26; 4:5–6; Ephesians 1:5; Philippians 2:15; 1 John 2:1, 12, 14, 18, 28; 3:1–2, 7; 5:2. Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 950. (Mozart a introduit progressivement la manifestation populaire de la joie, réservant le début … à l’expression des réactions des protagonistes. La structure en est simple et très lisible: deux solos pour commencer (Sextus, puis Titus); ensuite la voix de Vitellia sera soutenu par deux autres (Annius et Servilia), et c’est ce trio qui déclenchera l’entrée de la masse chorale. Celle-ci sera aérée par des interventions alternantes de Titus, avant de se terminer dans le triomphe.) Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1242. Note the close textual parallels between the words here and Sesto’s words at the beginning of the Act I finale (I, 11, No. 12, Quintet and Chorus). “Preserve, oh ye gods, / for Rome her splendor, / or else, my days / cut short with his” (Deh conservate, oh Dei, / A Roma il suo splendor, / Oh almeno i giorni miei / Coi suoi troncate ancor). This textual overlap (troncate, Dei, Roma, i giorni miei/suoi, conservate/ serbate, splendor/felicità) forges a strong connection between the two acts. It contrasts the threatening outcome of the rebellion with the stability of Tito’s rule. Castel translates the text as “his happiness,” but the sentence structure suggests that the text more likely refers to Rome’s happiness rather than Tito’s, as most other translators interpret it. Berry, “Power and patronage,” 336. Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Act III, Final Scene, Chorus. Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 241 (in einer tiefgründig-besinnlichen Feierlichkeit im gedämpften Ton der “humanitas”). See also Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1242. Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1242. Note that Tito’s singing in the closing number is accompanied only by the strings. Perhaps only an older opera guest from Leipzig who was present at the coronation festivities in Prague would have been reminded of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, in which Jesus is accompanied by the strings. This analogy would certainly have reinforced the Christological reference of Tito’s role.

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136 Or again, Luke 15:10: “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” 137 See Mary Hunter, Mozart’s Operas: A Companion (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 73.

Bibliography Abert, Hermann. W. A. Mozart. Translated by Stewart Spencer and edited by Cliff Eisen. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae: Part I–II, q. 1–70. Aquinas Institute Inc, 2020. https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I-II. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae: Part III, q. 1–91. Aquinas Institute Inc, 2020. http s://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.III. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae: Supplement, q. 69–99. Aquinas Institute Inc, 2020. https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.IIISup. Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David Ross, revised with an introduction and notes by Lesley Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Augustine. On Christian Doctrine. Translated by D. W.Robinson, Jr. New York and London: Macmillan, 1958. Augustine. Political Writings. Edited by E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Augustine. The Trinity. Translated by Stephen McKenna. Vol. 45 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963. Augustine. Tractates on the Gospel of John 1–10. Translated by John D. Retig. Vol. 78 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? With a Short Discourse on Hell. Translated by David Kipp and Lothar Krauth. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988. Beccaria, [Cesare]. On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings. Edited by Richard Bellamy and translated by Richard Davies with Virginia Cox and Richard Bellamy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Berry, Mark. “Power and Patronage in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte.” In Cultures of Power in Europe During the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Brendan Simms and H. M. Scott, 325–347. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Borchmeyer, Dieter. “Herrschergüte versus Staatsraison: Politik und Empfindsamkeit in Mozarts La clemenza di Tito.” In Bürgersinn und Kritik: Festschrift für Udo Bermbach zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Michael Th. Greven, Herfried Münkler, and Rainer Schmalz-Bruhns, 345–366. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998. Castel, Nico. The Libretti of Mozart’s Completed Operas. 2 vols. With International Phonetic Alphabet Transcriptions, Word for Word Translations, Including a Guide to the I.P.A. and Notes on the Italian and German Transcriptions, Foreword by Julius Rudel, Illustrations by Eugene Green. Mt. Morris, NY: Leyerle Publications, 1997. Cotte, Roger. “La musique maçonnique de W. A. Mozart: L’Empereur Joseph II et la Franc-Maçonnerie. Les éléments symboliques et rituels du livret et de la partition de La flûte enchantée.” In La guide du concert, du disque, de la musique et du son (February 1972): 12–13. Cotte, Roger. La musique maçonnique et ses musiciens. Paris: Borrego, 1987. Fritz, Hans-Joachim. Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito: Die Geschichte einer Oper. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2013.

Tito 121 Goerges, Horst. Das Klangsymbol des Todes im dramatischen Werk Mozarts: Studien über ein klangsymbolisches Problem und seine musikalische Gestaltung durch Bach, Händel, Gluck und Mozart. Wolfenbüttel and Berlin: Georg Kallmeyer, 1937. Hocquard, Jean-Victor. Les Opéras de Mozart. Paris: Les Belles Lettres – Archimbaud, 1995. Hunter, Mary. Mozart’s Operas: A Companion. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2008. Jacobs, René. “Seven Misconceptions about La Clemenza di Tito.” In the booklet to the CD W. A. Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito, 39–50. Harmonia Mundi HMC 901923.24. Arles: Harmonia Mundi, 2006. Janke, Pia. “La clemenza di Tito—Mozarts politisches Bekenntnis.” In W. A. Mozart in Wien und Prag: Die großen Opern, edited by Herbert Zeman, in cooperation with Claudia Kreutel, 159–175. Vol. 2 of Wege zu Mozart, ed. Herbert Zeman. Wien: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1993. John of Damascus. Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Vol. 37 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 1958. Kant, Immanuel. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings. Edited and translated by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Kant, Immanuel. “The Metaphysics of Morals.” In Political Writings, edited with an introduction by Hans Reiss and translated by H. B. Nisbet, 131–175. 2nd enlarged edition. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kuryluk, Eva. Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a “True” Image. Cambridge, MA, and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Lösel, Steffen. “‘May Such Great Effort Not Be in Vain’: Mozart on Divine Love, Judgment, and Retribution.” In The Journal of Religion 89, no. 3 (July 2009): 361–400. Luebke, David M. “Frederick the Great and the Celebrated Case of the Millers Arnold (1770–1779): A Reappraisal.” In Central European History 32, (December 1999): 379–408. Luther, Martin. Career of the Reformer I. Vol. 31 of Luther's Works, edited by Harold J. Grimm, Helmut T. Lehmann, general editor for vols. 30–55. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1957. Melanchthon, Philip. Commonplaces: Loci communes (1521). Translated with introduction and notes by Christian Preus. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2014. Montesquieu. The Spirit of the Laws. Translated and edited by Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Mozart, W[olfgang] A[madeus]. La Clemenza di Tito KV 621. Edited by Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition. Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997. Nagel, Ivan. Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas. Translated by Marion Fabel and Ivan Nagel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. O’Donovan, Oliver. The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures, 2003. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005. Ott, Ludwig. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. Translated by Patrick Lynch and edited by James Canon Bastible. Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1960.

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Oulibicheff, Alexandre. Nouvelle biographie de Mozart suivie d’un aperçu sur l’histoire générale de la musique et de l’analyse des principales œuvres de Mozart. Moscow: Auguste Semen, 1843. Proß, Wolfgang. “Aufklärung, Herrschaft und Repräsentation in Metastasios und Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito.” In Mozart und die Europäische Spätaufklärung, edited by Lothar Kreimendahl, 276–325. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog Verlag, 2011. Rädle, Fidel. “Dies irae.” In Im Angesicht des Todes: Ein interdisziplinäres Kompendium, edited by Hansjakob Becker, 331–340. St. Ottilien: EOS, 1987. Rezza, Dario. Il “Sudario” della Veronica nella basilica Vaticana: storia e testimonianze di una devozione. Vatican City: Edizioni Capitolo Vaticano, 2010. Rice, John A. W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Richstätter, Karl. Deutsche Herz-Jesu-Gebete des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, aus mittelhochdeutschen und mittelniederdeutschen Handschriften übertragen und zusammengestellt. Munich: Verlag Josef Kösel, and Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet KG, 1926. Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel. Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Edited by Ludwig Schubart. Vienna: J. V. Degen, 1806. Stock, Alex, ed. Lateinische Hymnen. Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen im Insel Verlag, 2012. Whitman, James Q. Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Wolff, Christoph. Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788–1791. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.

4

Sesto Concupiscence and Conversion

In the previous chapter, I analyzed the opera’s title character. Now, we turn to the protagonist who dominates most of the plot: Tito’s favorite, Sesto. To understand how a theologically educated, enlightened Catholic member of the audience might have understood Sesto’s character and his development, we need to follow the courtier through the plot, as we did with Tito.

Act One Concupiscence As we saw in the previous chapter, the audience meets Sesto in the opera’s opening scene where Vitellia showers him with reproaches that “her revenge” (la mia vendetta) is nowhere near, even though Sesto had promised to execute it swiftly. Remarkably, Sesto’s first word in the whole opera is simply: “Oh God!”1 Of course, at first glance, this is simply a sigh, as Vitellia immediately remarks (Sospiri!). But this sigh has deeper meaning on multiple levels. First, it expresses Sesto’s horror at the thought of Vitellia’s revenge and the murder it entails and thus guides the audience’s interpretation of Sesto’s character in what follows. If Vitellia’s reference to revenge indicates her own evil inclinations from the outset, Sesto’s sigh, by contrast, signals that at core he is not evil, but rather the victim of his own weakness. On a second, deeper level, Sesto’s initial sigh Oh Dio! alerts the audience to the plot’s transcendent dimension. For Catholics, the fact that Sesto’s first word in the opera is an invocation of God would hardly have been insignificant. This “theological sigh,” which is reminiscent of how the faithful in the Bible address God (see, for example, Joshua 7:8; Psalm 116:4; Jeremiah 1:6), could have suggested that the plot does not simply contain the story of a failed political intrigue or a story about the benefits of enlightened absolutism, but also a parable for human life coram Deo (before God) more generally. Those in the audience familiar with Mozart’s other operas (both Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni were popular in Prague) would have known that he was prone to thematize the human condition in ways that went beyond the political questions of the day. Sesto’s opening comment could have alerted them to the possibility of a theological interpretation of the plot. DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452-5

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Sesto, through his sigh, expresses his horror at Vitellia’s evil plan. For the rest of the opening recitative, he tries to persuade her to abandon that plan by pointing out all the emperor’s virtues. Vitellia counters Sesto’s panegyric by enumerating Tito’s vices: that he is usurping her father’s throne, and more importantly, “that he betrayed me, that he seduced me [and that is his biggest fault] almost to love him.”2 Sesto, however, recognizes Vitellia’s love for Tito and her jealousy as her true motivation, but—remarkably—he is not jealous himself, although he loves her. Vitellia, however, wants him to be jealous so she can better control him. She therefore pretends to absolve him from all obligations towards her: “I can find someone worthier to carry out my hatred.”3 Promptly, she achieves the desired effect. At the end of the first recitative, the audience knows that Sesto is like putty in Vitellia’s hands. Although he recognizes the good in Tito, his fatal attraction to Vitellia makes him incapable of following his better intuitions. Sesto knows the evil that motivates Vitellia’s actions, but he is not able to resist her ensnarement: “Forgive me; I believe you; I was wrong.”4 For a Catholic audience, it would have been clear: Sesto, although well intentioned, is a slave to his concupiscence.5 To begin with, his intentions are good. He tries to prevent Vitellia’s evil schemes. A Catholic in the audience could have remembered what the contemporary catechism, approved by Prague’s Archbishop Anton Peter Count von Przichowsky (1707–1793) for his diocese in 1778, teaches about “alien sins” (fremde Sünden): Alien sins are those of which, even though we do not commit them ourselves, we are guilty of if we tempt others to commit them, or if we do not prevent them, even though it is our duty to do so or we are capable of doing so.6 The catechism lists nine such alien sins, namely, “to advise sinning” (Zur Sünde rathen), “to tell others to sin” (Andere heißen sündigen), “to agree to the sins of others” (In anderer Sünde einwilligen), “to tempt others to sin” (Andere zur Sünde reizen), “to praise the sins of others” (Anderer Sünde loben), “to remain silent about sin” (Zur Sünde stillschweigen), “not to punish sin” (Die Sünde nicht strafen), “to participate in sin” (An denselben Theil nehmen), and, finally, “to defend them” (Diesselben vertheidigen).7 Sesto does not want to commit any of these “alien sins.” On the contrary, at first he makes every attempt to avoid doing so. And yet he is too weak to persist and, in his weakness, runs the risk of becoming guilty himself. As Saint Ambrose writes in Jacob and the Happy Life: “It is not that we can attribute our trouble to anything but our own will. No one is held to guilt unless he has gone astray by his own will.”8 The beginning of his first duet with Vitellia reveals the depth of his servitude (I, 1, No. 1 Duet, text by Mazzolà). “Command me as you will,” Sesto tells her, “order my every move. You are my destiny; I will do anything for you.”9 That Sesto, as Abert notes, “is the beneficiary of Mozart’s sweet-toned melodies, whereas Vitellia is closer to the rhetorical style of the Neapolitans with her

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leaping intervals and wide-ranging compass,” musically reinforces right from the outset that Sesto is not an evil but rather a fallen character.10 For a biblically literate Catholic in the audience, Sesto could have served as a perfect example of how the apostle Paul describes sin in the seventh chapter of his Letter to the Romans (7:15–25). “I do not understand my own actions,” Paul writes. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate … I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:15–19) The person is existentially torn between the recognition of the good, on the one hand, and the false desire (concupiscence), on the other, which paralyzes their ability to do the good.11 An eighteenth-century prelate could have found in Sesto’s existential dilemma a perfect description of the existential situation of the human person, which the apostle Paul—according to the dominant interpretation of Romans 7 in the Augustinian West—seemed to attribute to the believer.12 Sesto is too weak to resist evil, and for him this weakness has the power of seeming inevitability. In the entire first act of the opera, Sesto struggles to navigate between his recognition that Tito incarnates the good and his inability to act accordingly—an inability born out of his infatuation with Vitellia’s beauty and the resulting emotional slavery, both of which prompt him to obey her evil ploy. In the first section of his duet with Vitellia, Sesto reveals his emotional enslavement to her. By the duet’s end, Sesto admits the dilemma of his torn existence. The beginning of the concluding allegro section musically imitates agitation: A thousand emotions wage a pitiless battle within me. There isn’t a soul torn more deeply than mine.

Fan mille affetti insieme battaglia in me spietata. un’alma lacerata più della mia non v’è.13

As Rice notes, Mozart has Sesto express his “excitement with rests between syllables, as sudden leaps and syncopations give the music a breathless quality.”14 A Catholic in the audience might also have heard Sesto’s breathlessness as a sign of the emotional confusion of a man at war with himself. Sesto would thus have appeared as the human being in sin, exactly as Paul describes him. Sesto would also have fulfilled what the contemporary Catholic catechism defines as one of the seven “capital sins” (Hauptsünden), “unchastity” (Unkeuschheit): “Unchastity is a disordered desire for carnal lust.”15 According to the explanation of the catechism, unchastity leads to “blindness of the mind, ardent yearning for the temporal life, oblivion of God, of death, and of the coming judgment, despair in one’s ability to achieve one’s own bliss.”16 Sesto

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matches this description: He is blinded by his desire for Vitellia; he yearns only for carnal love and life; he is oblivious to the one who—on stage—represents God (Tito), oblivious to death, and oblivious to the coming judgment. Finally, Sesto despairs of his own ability to achieve bliss. In other words, he doubts that he can ever be truly happy. Sesto’s emotional dilemma worsens when Annio joins Sesto and Vitellia (I, 2) and brings them the news that Tito has sent Berenice away. Vitellia is now hopeful that Tito might choose her as his new bride and suddenly tells Sesto to pause the plans for the uprising (I, 2, Recitative): “Sextus, defer carrying out my orders: the time is not yet ripe for the blow.”17 Only a few seconds earlier she had chided him that the plans had not progressed swiftly enough. Once again, Sesto shows himself aware of the reasons for Vitellia’s change of mind. “(O God!) Whoever suffered torments like mine.”18 The suffering that Sesto is willing to endure deepens the audience’s perception of his emotional slavery to Vitellia. He is obviously willing to do anything for her, even though she clearly has no interest in him beyond using him for her own political gain. Through her demand of blind faith, Vitellia’s first aria (I, 2, No. 2 Aria, text by Metastasio), which closes the scene, makes Sesto’s slavery to concupiscence blatantly obvious.19 Weakness and infatuation In the short third scene, Sesto remains alone with Annio, who asks his friend for his sister’s hand in marriage. Sesto happily agrees, and the two sing the charming duettino Deh prendi un dolce amplesso (I, 3, No. 3), in which they exult in their mutual friendship—as we already saw, a classical theme in the eighteenth century and, for the audience, a clear indication that at his core Sesto is a good (even if weak) person. Villains on the operatic stage do not have true friends—or any friends, for that matter. Mozart wrote the little duet in the form of a Lied for two voices, not dissimilar to Papageno and Pamina’s little duet on love in Die Zauberflöte, Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen.20 Again, the amiable melody and lied-like form of the Duettino indicate Sesto’s quintessential goodness. Both Sesto and Annio join Tito in the fourth scene, in which the emperor finally makes his first appearance on stage. In Annio’s presence, Tito reveals to Sesto his intention to marry Sesto’s sister, Servilia (I, 4, Recitative). Sesto greets Tito’s announcement with empathy for his friend Annio. At the same time, Sesto is aware that Tito’s plan foils Vitellia’s hope that the emperor might choose her as his new wife. While Sesto is at a loss for words, Annio selflessly rescues the situation. He sings Sesto’s praises: August one, I know Sesto’s heart. Since our youth, he has been moved by a tender love. He deems himself little, fears that the gift could appear as too great. He does not realize that the grace of the emperor makes all differences equal.21

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For the audience, Annio’s characterization of Sesto as an inherently lovable character reinforces the impression that Sesto’s downfall is caused by emotional weakness—theologically, by the bondage of the will, which Paul describes in Romans 7. Sesto returns in the ninth scene with Vitellia, who has just learned that Tito has chosen Servilia as his new bride (I, 8, Recitative). Vitellia does not know about Servilia’s conversation with Tito yet and seeks bloody revenge once again. She immediately confronts the unsuspecting Sesto with reproaches about why the Capitol is not yet in ashes and Tito not yet killed. Sesto’s response that he was only heeding her own orders receives merely a cold reply from the capricious princess. When he suggests that there is no cause to start a revolt and murder Tito— “If only one reason could justify me?”22—she counters his objection with a whole phalanx of purported reasons culminating in “glory, ambition, love” (gloria, ambizione, amore). Through her diatribe, Vitellia predictably achieves her desired goal: Sesto once again gives in, fearing her fury, even though he is horrified at the very thought of murdering Tito. But Vitellia is not one to give up easily. She reproaches him about his already felt remorse— “you are already remorseful/ repentant” (tu pentito già sei)—and, suggesting once more that he does not love her, rejects him: “Get out of my sight forever, and forget about me.”23 Sesto breaks down immediately, further evidence of his character weakness: “Stop, I give in; I just want to serve you.”24 And so he leaves, parting with his exit aria with obbligato clarinet (a style popular in Neapolitan opera), Parto, ma tu ben mio (I, 8, No. 9 Aria).25 The aria offers the audience the most comprehensive inside view of his fluid and malleable character: I go, but, my dearest, make peace again with me. I will be what you would most have me be, do whatever you wish.

Parto, ma tu ben mio, meco ritorna in pace; Sarò qual più ti piace, quel che vorrai farò.

Look at me, and I will forget all and fly to avenge you; Only of that glance at me I will think. Ah, ye gods, what power you have given beauty.

Guardami, e tutto oblio, e a vendicarti io volo; a questo sguardo solo da me si penserà. Ah qual poter, oh Dei! donaste alla beltà.

Enthralled by her beauty, Sesto here allows himself to become Vitellia’s slave and thereby a slave to his own concupiscence. Sesto is bereft of his will and reason, and only in this way can he overcome his own scruples. His erotic infatuation wins out over conscience and friendship ties. Let us look at the aria in further detail. It begins with an adagio section, in which Sesto “projects a feeling of tender melancholy.”26 Abert notes that in this

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slow section “the expression of love gains in intensity and ultimately achieves a note of rapt enchantment.”27 Sesto wants to make Vitellia and (mostly) himself believe that he is finally at peace with carrying out her will to murder Tito. But Mozart soon lets the audience know otherwise, as the continuation of the aria, first in the allegro section and then in the even more accelerated allegro assai section, makes clear. “[N]ervous triplets in the clarinet part,” which Sesto “then takes up … in a display of coloratura” as well as “breathless rests [that] separate words within phrases … and syllables within words” suggest that he is anything but calm.28 The change of tempi and the haunting dialogue between the voice and the solo clarinet both express the character’s inner emotional conflict, which results from the decision to take a course of action against his own better moral and emotional intuitions. As Hocquard notes, “This evocation of the power of beauty engenders a delirious trance which escapes in hallucinatory, highly expressive coloraturas.”29 Sesto’s is a torn existence. And only a few moments later, the audience gets immediate confirmation of what the music was already communicating. Repentance too late In the eleventh scene (the scene marks the beginning of the first-act finale, even though the latter is not numbered as such), Sesto appears alone on the Capitol (I, 11). The scene starts with a frenzied accompanied recitative (numbered separately as No. 11), followed by a Quintet with Chorus (No. 12). The recitative is divided into three parts, which correspond to Sesto’s torn psyche: “[a] brief andante is embedded in a wildly impassioned and motivically exceptionally unified section: within it the figure of the magnanimous emperor is conjured up in Sesto’s thoughts in a recitative that is strikingly reminiscent of Gluck.”30 Sesto opens up to the audience his confused and torn self. The accompanied recitative (I, 11, No. 11) begins with an allegro assai section that expresses Sesto’s “extreme agitation” at the thought of Tito’s murder.31 The tumult, which will soon capture the whole city, has already taken hold of Sesto’s soul: O gods, what frenzy this is, what a torment within my heart! I quake, freeze, set out, draw back; every breath, every shadow alarms me.

O Dei, che smania è questa, che tumulto ho nel cor! Palpito, agghiaccio, m’incammino, m’arresto; ogn’aura, ogn’ombra mi fa tremare.

It is as if Sesto is in a mad frenzy. The orchestra accompanies Sesto’s thoughts about the contemplated murder with a recurrent threatening motive, which appears first in C minor, “that is struck so resolutely at the outset, descending to the region of its subdominant at each renewed outburst of

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passion.” That Sesto’s moral compass is still working well the audience learns from his self-realization that “I never thought it / so hard to be evil” (Io non credea, che fosse / sì difficile impresa esser malvagio), set by Mozart in E flat major, which, according to near-contemporary music theorist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, functions as “the tone of love, of devotion, of the confidential dialogue with God; expressing through its three flats, the holy trinity.”33 But Sesto is torn: “But I must fulfill my task.”34 He considers dying a courageous death (con valor a perir), but he quickly realizes that a traitor has no worth: “Courage? And how can / a traitor show that?”35 As Hocquard notes, at this point the “agitation suddenly falls on a painful languidness … when [Sesto] becomes aware of being a traitor: the cadence in G minor marks, piano, his meditative sadness.”36 In his mind, there is no doubt that this is what he is: a traitor who betrays the one to whom he owes everything: “Sesto unhappy! / You a traitor! What a horrible name!”37 On the word “name” (nome), a cadence takes the tonality back to the initial C minor. The accompanied recitative’s allegro assai section is followed by an andante section in which Sesto evokes Tito’s goodness, both as an emperor in general and especially towards him. As Oulibicheff remarks, here “the recitative becomes almost an arioso.”38 Sesto condemns himself as he reflects with a tender melody on Tito’s noble character, at which moment the tonal mode changes again to major:39 “And yet / you’re hastening to deserve it. And whom are you betraying? / The greatest, the most just, the most clement / prince on earth, to whom you owe / what you can [do], what you are.”40 Hocquard notes that “Tito’s image … is evoked with growing pain: the speech, more and more meditative, takes more scale and becomes more melodic.”41 Note here that a Catholic in the audience might have recognized the imagery of Sesto describing himself as a “creature” to his quasi-divine “creator” as a theological trope, just as the painful tone of meditation could have evoked a confessing sinner’s contrition, and Sesto’s self-indictment as a traitor could have evoked Judas’s betrayal of Jesus (see Matthew 26:14–16, 47–56; 27:3–10). Finally, the recitative reverts to the initial allegro assai, as the full orchestra returns to the threatening motif from the beginning of the recitative. At last, Sesto attempts to defy Vitellia’s command to kill Tito. He, who has been captive so long to his infatuation with her, now realizes that he cannot do what she is asking him to do. Speaking to himself, Sesto admits: “Ah, I have no heart, / Vitellia, to further your wrath. / I would die before striking him this blow.”42 Hocquard rightly notes that “this recitative will allow him to describe the total collapse of passion: the fictive image which Sextus had forged for himself rips apart and he is suffering from hopelessness.”43 Yet, just at this moment, when Sesto is ready to free himself of her spell, he notices that his realization comes too late: the Capitol is already ablaze. I hear a great tumult

arde già il Campidoglio. Un gran tumulto io sento

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Sesto of soldiers and weapons: alas, my repentance comes too late.

d’armi e d’armati: ahi! tardo è il pentimento.

His involvement with evil has already gone too far. Now, there is no turning back. Evil takes its course. Note that while in Metastasio’s libretto Sesto spoke of his remorse (i rimorsi), Mazzolà uses the theologically stronger term “repentance” (pentimento).44 Mozart once more set the following quintet with chorus (I, 11, No. 12), which begins with an allegro section and ends with a rather unusual andante section, in the theologically pregnant E-flat major (see Schubart’s characterization quoted above). Sesto begs the gods to protect Tito. As we saw above, the words are reminiscent of Tito’s words in the closing sextet with a chorus of Act Two: Preserve, oh ye gods, for Rome her splendor, or else, my days cut short with his.

Deh conservate, oh Dei, a Roma il suo splendor, oh almeno i giorni miei coi suoi troncate ancor.

Then, Sesto disappears, leaving Annio and the audience in the dark as to his plans: “I am going … you will know / oh God, by my shame.”45 Here, the music modulates to G-flat major, leaving “an almost eerie expression.”46 Sesto returns shortly in Scene 14, full of remorse, obviously having committed his attempted murder: (Ah, where can I hide? Earth, open up and swallow me, and in your deep bosom enclose a traitor.)

(Ah, dove mai m’ascondo? Apriti, oh terra, inghiottimi, e nel tuo sen profondo rinserra un traditor.)

Vitellia who has appeared on the scene in the meantime recognizes his shocked facial features (I, 14, Recitative): “Why do you look around so wildly?”47 Sesto is beyond himself: “The day terrifies me.”48 He believes that he killed Tito: “The noble soul / his pierced breast yielded up.”49 At the moment when both protagonists and the audience must assume that the emperor is dead, “Sesto’s recitative slowly subsides and comes to rest on a dissonance, followed by a grand pause. Now, instead of a tempestuous outpouring of horror, the ensemble answers quietly, andante, as though transfixed, then stammering its response.”50 Servilia, Annio, and Publio wonder who could have committed such a crime. As Abert notes, “the following build-up of tension is indescribably effective. The foundations are laid for Sesto’s terrible confession of his guilt with eloquent sequencing suggestive of tremendous psychological pressure.”51 Sesto is

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about to reveal his guilt, but Vitellia stops him short, fearing she will be implicated as well. Still, Sesto condemns himself obliquely by responding that: “It was the most villainous of men, / the horror of nature.”52 Now, the mood abruptly changes. Abert observes that, in the following andante … Sesto and Vitellia are submerged within the unified ensemble, which now launches into a moving dirge for the murdered emperor, their voices alternating with those of the equally subdued chorus.53 Musically and dramaturgically, Mozart and Mazzolà’s Act One finale is a tourde-force, which leaves the audience as agitated as the protagonists. Characters arrive on stage in rapid succession, while Sesto leaves and then returns. With each new protagonist entering, the tension slowly increases.54 As Rice notes, the rising musical tension is created by the simultaneous appearance of string tremolos and “the sound of trumpets and drums, the effect of whose sudden entrance at this moment is increased by the fact that these instruments have not been heard since the triumphal march much earlier in the act.”55 The music, which begins in E-flat major with Sesto’s prayer for Tito, changes quickly into C minor as news of the rebellion reaches the stage. Note that the quintet’s tonal structure mirrors Sesto’s preceding solo scene, with an emphasis on C minor and its dominant and subdominant keys, G minor and F minor, respectively.56 Only when Sesto reappears towards the end does the tonality change towards A-flat major. As Abert notes, after Sesto’s disappearance from the stage, each subsequently arriving character, namely, Servilia, Publio, and then Vitellia, expresses the sense of common horror by means of the same musical phrase, while the orchestral accompaniment remains the same, with its tremolando, wild bass motif, and heavy forte wind chords above it, as does the soloists’ Phrygian cadence and the agitated outcry of the distant chorus that throws the harmonies into wild disarray at the end of every section.57 Importantly, the tragic tension here is not related to exterior events unravelling on stage, but rather to the psychological state of the various protagonists, both those directly involved in the conspiracy (Sesto, Vitellia) and those merely witnessing it (Annio, Servilia, Publio, chorus).58 Abert observes that the finale builds on the tensions between the ensemble and the chorus, “with the solemnly measured tread and symmetrical structures of the chorus offset against the more animated and freer ensemble.”59 Furthermore, Mozart divides the orchestra between ensemble and chorus, with the chorus accompanied by horns, trumpets, and timpani and, at its initial entry, unison writing in the upper strings that creates an impressive effect, while the ensemble relies on the remaining winds and on the string choir, which is here treated more individually. At the end there is a muffled timpani roll with horns (but without trumpets).60

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Rice further notes that “[t]onal instability, syncopations, and abrupt shifts of dynamics all contribute to the sense of confusion and terror.”61 When an offstage chorus repeatedly cries out a terrifying “Ah!” on a diminished seventh chord while the voices of the ensemble “die away piano,” the musical agitation climaxes.62 The scene ends with a requiem-like mourning of chorus and protagonists (I, 14, No. 12)— “Oh black betrayal, oh day of grief”63—which might have reminded a Catholic audience of the Lamentations of Jeremiah 1:2: She [that is, the city that was once full of people] weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Sesto’s role in the first-act finale likely would have conjured up a theological association for theologically educated Catholics in the audience: Sesto twice refers to the earth opening up and swallowing him. The first time, his comment appears in the conjunctive in his accompanied recitative in Scene 11 (I, 11, No. 11): “May I be swallowed up by the earth before I become that.”64 The second time, the reference appears in the imperative in Scene 14 (I, 14, Recitative), after Sesto has accomplished his attempted murder: “Ah, where ever can I hide? Open up, oh earth, swallow me up.”65 For a biblically literate member in the audience, the comment could have evoked Numbers 16:1–35, the story of the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (together with 250 leaders of the congregation of Israel) against Moses and Aaron. These leaders of the congregation served as the right hand of Moses and Aaron in their liturgical duties. They rebelled against Moses and Aaron and, as the divine punishment for their insurrection, were swallowed up by the earth: “The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households—everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods” (Numbers 16:32). In light of this text, for a biblically literate audience Sesto’s wish to be swallowed up by the earth would have likened him to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Sesto serves as the right hand of Tito. And just as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel against Moses and Aaron, so too does Sesto rebel against Tito. The image of being swallowed up by the earth thus associates Sesto’s attempted murder of Tito with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram’s insurrection against Moses and Aaron and marks his action as an insurrection against God’s representative on earth—and thus as blasphemy. Let me sum up: In Act One, for a Catholic audience Sesto could have served as an operatic image of sinful humanity. More to the point, Sesto could have been seen as exemplifying sinful humanity as the apostle Paul describes them in Romans 7. Sesto lives a torn existence: He loves the good, but he is unable to do the good. His fleshly desires again and again cause him to choose evil, despite his better intuitions. Worst of all, his inability to order his conflicting

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desires rightly (love for Vitellia versus friendship with and loyalty to Tito) eventually leads him to rebel against God’s representative on earth and thus against God. This is exactly how Augustine of Hippo describes the nature of sin: an insurrection against God, caused by a wrong evaluation of one’s priorities, as the sinner gives lower, worldly goods priority over higher, divine goods and even uses the higher good as a means to achieve the lower goods. Sesto could have offered a Catholic audience a lesson in theological anthropology.66

Act Two Repentance renewed In Act Two, the audience encounters a different Sesto. As Jean-Victor Hocquard notes, “It is only in the second act that Sextus becomes a hero in the full sense of the word and that he reveals himself not only as Vitellia’s equal but as superior to her in greatness of soul.”67 Here, Sesto finally frees himself both of Vitellia’s spell and his own concupiscence. He now turns into a repentant sinner. As we just saw, the theme of repentance already appeared in the accompanied recitative in Scene 11 of Act One. It reappears at the beginning of Act Two and dominates the whole act. In the opening scene of the second act, Annio and Sesto meet up again in the emperor’s apartments (II, 1). Annio informs Sesto that Tito is alive; another man was mistaken for the emperor. When Annio suggests that Sesto go and greet Tito, Sesto reveals his complicity in the revolt. Annio is surprised but is loyal to his friend. Sesto reveals his plan to go into exile, but Annio proposes instead that his friend stay in Rome and keep his guilt secret. The scene establishes that the paradox of Sesto’s character has not yet been resolved. His loving concern for Tito is unbroken. This is clear when Sesto asks Annio to “Defend Tito from new plots.”68 When Sesto furthermore reveals to Annio that he wants to “wander the woods in sorrow, to lament my crime,” the audience learns that contrition for the attempted murder dominates Sesto’s feelings.69 For the audience, his contrition indicates that he is finally turning into a repentant sinner. Annio is the one who first recognizes and names this development. He also takes the first step toward helping Sesto to overcome the unresolved tensions between his love for Tito and his lust for Vitellia. His tender aria, Torna di Tito a lato (II, 1, No. 13), is an admonition to confess and repent: Return to Tito’s side, return and your past error redeem with repeated proofs of fidelity.

Torna di Tito a lato, torna, e l’error passato con replicate emenda prove di fedeltà.

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Sesto Your bitter sorrow is a manifest sign, that the image of virtue still remains in your heart.

L’acerbo tuo dolore è segno manifesto, che di virtù nel core l’immagine ti sta.

The aria is written in G major, and it perfectly fits Schubart’s description of this key: “Everything pastoral, idyllic, and eulogical, every calm and contented passion, all tender gratitude for sincere friendship and loyal love;—in a word, every tender and calm movement of the heart can be felicitously expressed in this tone.”70 The aria has a traditional tripartite structure, but the da capo part introduces a variation of the initial melody and a more robust accompaniment. The instrumentation is limited to the strings, which, Hocquard notes, “create a climate of gentleness and transparence.”71 This impression is reinforced both by the predictable harmonic structure (the second part is in the dominant key), and by the “quite easy-going [melody], with warm intonations, but without any vocalizing.”72 This aria conjures up Tito’s presence through several musical parallels to the emperor’s musical language and especially to Tito’s equally noble aria Del più sublime soglio (I, 4, No. 6), which in turn is reminiscent of Sarastro’s hall-aria in Die Zauberflöte.73 Indeed, Hocquard suggests that Mazzolà’s primary intention with Torna di Tito a lato was to “draw attention to the greatness of Tito’s soul.”74 Yet, Annio’s aria is also remarkable in its expansion of Sesto’s earlier reference to repentance. Annio uses several words pregnant with theological associations: torna (to return, to turn around, biblically also: to repent), fedeltà (faith, faithfulness, fidelity), dolore (pain), and virtù (virtue). Mozart emphasizes the appellative character of Annio’s address to Sesto by putting the emphasis on the word torna and, more specifically, by reducing the refrain to the twice repeated word—torna, torna—in the repetition of the first verse in the aria.75 Moreover, Mozart has Annio repeat the words, torna, torna, both at the beginning and the end of each verse, one time without the orchestral accompaniment. This underlines even more the poignancy of the imperative that Sesto return to Tito’s side and, by implication, repent. Annio’s admonition gains additional symbolic power through its contrast to Vitellia’s suggestion in the immediately following recitative (II, 2, Recitative) that Sesto flee (fuggi) to preserve his life and (mostly) her honor: “Sesto, flee. Preserve your life and my honor.”76 After Annio’s theologically pregnant address to Sesto, however, Vitellia has already lost the war for Sesto’s soul.77 Annio’s aria thus marks the turning point for Sesto. From now on, he manages to overcome his concupiscent emotional dependence on Vitellia. By introducing the notion of repentance (pentimento) towards the end of Act One and by opening Act Two with an aria that highlights the call to repentance in a quasi-priestly way, the opera turns into Sesto’s conversion story, a conversion from evil (Vitellia) to good (Tito), from concupiscence to virtue, and from sin to salvation. Central to this conversion story is the Catholic notion of

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repentance with its traditional three requirements: contrition of the heart, confession of the mouth, and satisfaction of the work (contritio cordis, confessio oris, satisfactio operis).78 Indeed, Annio acknowledges Sesto’s contrition: “Your bitter sorrow is a manifest sign that the image of virtue still remains in your heart.”79 His request for Sesto to “Return to Tito’s side” amounts to an indirect confession of his guilt. Finally, Annio suggests that Sesto offer satisfaction: “redeem your past error with repeated proofs of your fidelity.”80 Before we proceed to see how Annio’s call to repentance plays itself out in Sesto’s behavior over the course of the second act, we need to pause and look for a moment at Annio himself. I suggest that an eighteenth-century Catholic audience could have understood Annio as taking the role of a priestly confessor.81 The priest mediates between God and the people. The priest’s responsibility is, on the one hand, to ask the people to repent of their sins, renounce their evil ways, and return to God, and, on the other hand, to appeal to God to let mercy triumph over the demands of justice when dealing with the sins of the people. In Torna di Tito a lato, Annio assumes the first exhortative of these two tasks. He calls on Sesto to repent for his sins, much like the prophets did in ancient Israel.82 In his second aria, Tu fosti tradito (II, 7, No. 17, text by Mazzolà), Annio assumes the second priestly task as he takes on the intercessory role, begs for the emperor’s clemency on behalf of Sesto, and asks him to let mercy triumph over justice: You were betrayed: he deserves to die, but yet Titus’s heart allows room for hope.

Tu fosti tradito: ei degno è di morte, ma il core di Tito pur lascia sperar.

Ah, take counsel my lord, of your heart: Our pain deign to look upon.83

Deh prendi consiglio, Signor, dal tuo core: il nostro dolore ti degna mirar.

A Catholic in the audience could have read Annio’s appeal to Tito as a form of prayer. Words common in liturgical contexts dominate: tradito, morte, core, sperar, Signor, il nostro dolore. Annio, moreover, introduces what a Catholic audience could have recognized as several important theological motives: betrayal, pain and suffering, hope, a loving heart. To begin with, Sesto’s treachery of Tito could have evoked Judas’s betrayal. In both instances, a friend, vassal, or disciple is disloyal. In both cases, the culprit deserves death. While Judas hangs himself (see Matthew 27:5), Annio still has hope for Sesto. On the latter’s behalf, he appeals to Tito’s heart: “deign to look upon our pain.” The courtier’s appeal is biblical and liturgical in tone. It could have reminded a Catholic audience of the confidence expressed in the psalms that God will

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hear the destitute: “He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer” (Psalm 102:17).84 And again: “Look on my misery and rescue me” (Psalm 119:153).85 Or again: “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem” (Psalm 130:7).86 Note also Annio’s appeal to Tito’s heart against the demands of justice, which could have reminded the audience of the biblical portrayals of God who, time and again, forgives Israel its sins against the demands of justice because of the compassion God feels for them (see, for example, Psalm 51).87 The aria is also evocative of the Sequence hymn in the Requiem Mass for the Dead. The hymn acknowledges the sinners’ guilt and the fact that there is nothing they can do to deserve being spared punishment. Still, the faithful implore the Heavenly Judge for mercy by appealing to the mercy He has shown in the past. In two short verses, Annio captures exactly this twofold pattern. He acknowledges Sesto’s guilt and the righteous verdict it deserves only to ask for mercy by reminding Tito of his own former love for Sesto and of the suffering of the afflicted. Finally, for the audience Annio’s appeal to Tito’s heart could have been reminiscent of the adoration of the “Most Sacred Heart of Jesus” (Sacratissimum Cor Iesu), which increasingly functioned in eighteenth-century popular piety as a visible symbol for God’s boundless love for humanity. This cult of adoration, which finds its biblical base in the claim that Jesus died out of love for humankind (see John 19:34), developed in religious orders in the late Middle Ages. It grew in importance beginning in the seventeenth century, especially through missionary efforts of the Jesuits. In the late eighteenth century, it also began to flourish among the common people, much to the dismay of Jansenists, representatives of the Catholic Enlightenment, and Catholic rulers, such as Joseph II and Leopold II.88 Satisfaction, redemption, and freedom But we need to return to Sesto. After Annio’s first solo aria in the opera, Sesto indeed embarks on a new course of action. He overcomes his emotional enslavement to Vitellia and seeks to make amends.89 This becomes clearer in the very next scene when Vitellia meets Sesto and urges him to flee (fuggi) to save his life and, mostly, her honor (II, 2, Recitative). Despite Sesto’s determination to repent and from now on be true to Tito, he promises Vitellia to keep secret her involvement in the assassination plot: “I shall die in silence.”90 Vitellia, however, who knows quite well the weakness of Sesto’s character, fears that he cannot keep silent. She offers the audience a fitting analysis of Sesto’s current emotional state when she comments on both his love for Tito and on the impact of Tito’s mildness on Sesto: “I would trust you if I saw less tenderness for Tito in you. His severity I do not fear much; his mildness I fear; it will win you over.”91 The test comes in the third scene when Publio arrives with guards and arrests Sesto, whose complicity in the plot has been revealed by a conspirator, Lentulo

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(II, 3, Recitative). While Vitellia despairs, Sesto seems almost relieved to rid himself of her evil influence once and for all: “Finally, tyrant!”92 And a moment later: “Farewell, ungrateful one!”93 Nonetheless, his love for Vitellia is unbroken, as revealed by Sesto’s lines in the trio with Vitellia and Publio in the fourth scene. The trio (II, 4, No. 14) has two sections, andantino and allegretto, both of which Sesto begins solo. In the andantino section, he addresses Vitellia yearningly: If ever you feel a light breeze playing on your face, that breath will be my dying sighs.

Se al volto mai ti senti lieve aura che s’aggiri, gli estremi miei sospiri quell’alito sarà.

Despite the situation, or perhaps because of it, an inner peace has taken hold of Sesto’s soul here. Mozart set the trio in B-flat major—a key that Schubart describes as expressive of “cheerful love, good conscience, hope, longing for a better world.”94 Indeed, because Sesto can now confess his guilt, he can free his conscience in hope and longing for a better world. This musical impression is further enhanced by what Hocquard calls the “profound poetry, nostalgic and strange, [that] establishes itself from the beginning on with that marvelous line of the oboe solo (dolce) sustained from the second bar by the bassoon.”95 At the outset of the allegretto section, a note of pain enters Sesto’s music, although its tenderness continues through “binary groups of connected notes”96 (des groupes binaires de notes liées), as Hocquard suggests. Sesto bids Vitellia to

Remember the one who loves you, even in this plight still. Let your pity at least be solace for my pain.

Rammenta chi t’adora in questo stato ancora. Mercede al mio dolore sia almen la tua pietà.

With his arrest, Sesto’s love for Vitellia has turned from what Thomas Aquinas calls “love of concupiscence” (amor concupiscentiae) to “love of friendship” (amor amiticiae). Aquinas describes the first in this way: “in love of concupiscence he who desires something intensely, is moved against all that hinders his gaining or quietly enjoying the object of his love.”97 By contrast, Aquinas understands the latter in this way: love of friendship seeks the friend’s good: wherefore, when it is intense, it causes a man to be moved against everything that opposes the friend’s good. In this respect, a man is said to be zealous on behalf of his friend, when he makes a point of repelling whatever may be said or done against the friend’s good.98

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Sesto’s love for Vitellia remains, but it is purged of any self-directed desire. He no longer loves Vitellia in the hope of gaining her love or hand for himself. To be sure, having had no success in winning Vitellia’s love, Sesto still hopes for her compassion (pietà). For a Catholic audience, the terminology here could have sounded a familiar religious note. The term pietà is reminiscent of the biblical term misericordia. In Catholic piety, it is often associated with the Virgin Mary. For example, the Litany of Loreto and the Salve Regina both address the Virgin as mater misericordiae (mother of mercy). Having forsaken his hope to marry Vitellia, Sesto now seems to resort to idealizing her as a saintly figure who, he hopes, at least shows him pietà/misericordia. For such pity, Sesto is willing to offer up his suffering (dolore) as a sacrifice. This offer also contains a theological notion, namely, that of substitutionary suffering. Catholic theology has long ascribed redemptive value to innocent suffering. The notion is originally rooted—among other sources—in the fourth song about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. It undergirds much of Christian soteriology and has been extremely influential in Catholic piety.99 Suffering has been a preferred way for many Catholics to express both their love for God and their willingness to participate in God’s work of redemption of the world. In this context, a verse from the Letter to the Colossians (1:24) has had an enormous influence in Catholic piety: “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (see also Romans 12:1). For a Catholic audience, Sesto’s willingness to suffer on Vitellia’s behalf to secure her compassion could have sounded a familiar religious note, and even more so since Vitellia indicates in the same trio that Sesto’s suffering affects her conversion from sin towards salvation. “(Through me he is being taken to his death)” ([Per me vien tratto a morte]), she observes to herself, and in her second verse in the trio, she adds: “Remorse, horror, and fear / rend my heart!”100 Below I will discuss further the impact of Sesto’s suffering on Vitellia’s conversion. For now, it suffices to say that Sesto has turned the corner here from his torn state to embracing the consequences of his sins. The remainder of the second act offers the audience increasing evidence that, despite his betrayal, Sesto is still redeemable. Tito tries to find every possible reason for why the Senate could have erred in holding Sesto responsible for the assassination attempt (see II, 5). He thereby reinforces the audience’s perception that, at his core, Sesto does have a good heart and is redeemable. To Annio, Tito puts it thus (II, 6, Recitative): “No, I do not believe my Sextus so wicked. I have seen him not only faithful and as a friend; but also full of tenderness towards me. A heart could not change so greatly.”101 Sesto’s conversion culminates in his confrontation with Tito in the crucial tenth scene (II, 10, Recitative). The libretto instructs Sesto to kneel in front of Tito (s’inginocchia). Sesto claims that if Tito could only “see this wretched heart, though false and ungrateful, I would rouse your pity.”102 And he confesses his guilt: “In my eyes you can see all my faults [also: sins], all of them.”103 He recalls the “benefits” (i benefici) that he has received from Tito

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and expresses horror at the very idea of his sinful self (l’idea di mi stesso). He confesses, “That sacred face, your voice, your clemency itself have become my torture,”104 and asks Tito to allow him to offer satisfaction for his crime: “Take my disloyal (infedel) life, and if you wish to show me mercy, let me spill my wicked blood at your feet.”105 For his part, Tito admits to himself he is touched by Sesto’s tears: “(His heartfelt weeping makes restraint very difficult).”106 He also returns to the previous theme of how the life of the powerful is hardly desirable: “And what did you ever hope to find in the throne? The pinnacle maybe of every happiness? Ah, you ill-advised one, observe what it has brought me, and wish for it, if you can.”107 Suggesting that Sesto’s motivation was the desire for power, Tito wants Sesto to reveal the reasons for his crime. But Sesto continues his silence. He only denies a desire for power. When Tito presses him again—“Then what was it?”—Sesto only confesses “my weakness, my mischance.”108 Tito demands that Sesto expresses himself more concretely, but to no avail. And so, Tito reaches out to Sesto explicitly as friend rather than emperor: Hear me, oh Sesto! We’re alone, your sovereign is not present. Open your heart to Tito, confide in your friend. I promise you that the Emperor won’t know of it. Tell me what first drove you to this crime. Let us look together for a way to excuse you. I will be even happier than you over it.109 But Sesto does not bend. He does not explain his actions, even though he remains firm in his confession of sin: “Ah, my guilt [also: sin] has no defense.”110 An increasingly emotional Tito keeps insisting, but again without success: “I ask this at least in return for friendship.”111 Still, Sesto refuses to betray Vitellia: “(Here is a new kind of punishment! Either displease Tito or accuse Vitellia).”112 Now, Tito becomes increasingly emotional: “Do you still doubt? But Sesto, you wound me to the bottom of my heart. You see that you offend our friendship too much with this lack of confidence.”113 Tito’s disappointment is seemingly infinite: “Ah! Since you can abuse my mercy so much.”114 This reminder almost gets Sesto to speak out, but he stops himself. All Sesto is willing to do is to accuse himself: That I am the object of the anger of the gods, that I have no longer the strength to tolerate my fate, that I confess to being a traitor and call myself wicked [also: sinner], that I deserve death and that I desire it.115 Already earlier, Sesto begged Tito repeatedly to end his life quickly: “Hasten at least, hasten my dying. Take my disloyal (infedel) life, and if you wish to show me mercy, let me spill my wicked blood at your feet.”116 In this crucial scene between the Tito and Sesto, Rice notes, Tito is “moved by Sesto’s dejected expression, [and] addresses him with kindness … Tito is hurt, disappointed, but not angry. His questions are full of comforting words— padre (father), benefattor (benefactor), amico (friend), tenera cura (tender

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care).”117 Sesto’s response, for his part, “is a self-accusation, answering Tito’s positive words with negative ones: misero cor (wretched heart), spergiuro (perjured), ingrato (ingrate), colpe mie (my crimes/sins), soffrir (to suffer), supplizio (torture), morir (to die), infedel (unfaithful), perfido sangue (perfidious blood).”118 For a Catholic audience, the scene might have evoked several biblical and ecclesial situations. To begin with, the confrontation between Sesto and Tito might have evoked several scenes in the Gospels’ accounts of the life of Jesus. When Sesto offers to spill his blood at Tito’s feet, a Catholic audience might have been reminded of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her tears (see Luke 7:36–50). Tito’s insistence on his friendship with Sesto might have evoked Jesus’s assertion that “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (John 15:15).119 Vice versa, Sesto’s failure to be a friend might have called to mind the behavior of Jesus’s disciples at his arrest: they desert him (Mark 14:50), Peter denies him (see Mark 14:66–72), and Judas betrays him (see Mark 14:10 and 43–46). This is what Sesto does: He deserts, denies, and betrays Tito. Tito confronts him about it, just like Jesus confronts Judas and Peter (see Mark 16:18–21 and 29–31). Again, when faced with his failings, Sesto reacts just like Judas and Peter. Peter “broke down and wept” (Mark 14:72); Judas repented, returned the blood money, and hanged himself (Matthew 27:3–5). Things do not go that far with Sesto, but he certainly is distraught and wishes for his death.120 Finally, when Sesto admits that “This holy face, your voice, your clemency itself have become torture for me,”121 his words might have reminded Catholics of the image of Jesus’s holy face commemorated in Saint Veronica’s legendary sweat cloth/veil or sudarium (see my discussion in Chapter 3). Beyond such biblical allusions, Sesto’s behavior might have offered the audience a concrete image for what it means to be a contrite sinner. The religious connotation of his conduct is apparent already in his gestures: he kneels before Tito as confessing sinners do before Christ and God, before their confessor, and before the altar in church. Terminologically, Sesto’s confession connotes Catholic sensibilities as well. Many of the words used here—such as misero, cor, ingrato, pietà, occhi, colpe, benefici, sacro volto, supplicio, soffrir, infedel, pietoso—would have been familiar to a Catholic audience from their use in liturgical contexts. In prayers and hymns, God and Jesus are often named in terms close to those Sesto uses for Tito—father (padre), benefactor (benefattor), friend (amico), just as it is claimed that God shows what one may call tender care (tenera cura), compassion (pietà), pity (pietade), and friendship (amicizia) towards the faithful.122 In light of such parallels, Sesto’s contrition would have provided the audience with an image for their proper relationship to God. Sesto addresses Tito in much the same way as the psalmist addresses God when he confesses (confesso) his sins (le colpe mie); confides (confidati) in Tito; admits that he was ungrateful (ingrato) and unfaithful (infedel); is aware that he is a sinner (reo) and impious (empio), that he has perfidious blood (perfido sangue) when he evinces a wretched heart (misero cor); suffers (soffrir) a guilty conscience; knows that

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he is unworthy (indegno), that he merits (merito) the wrath of the gods (ira degli Dei), and that he can expect punishment and suffering (pena, penar). More specifically, Sesto’s confession of his guilt might have evoked the language of the penitential psalms (Psalmi Poenitentiales), which play a fundamental role in the Catholic liturgy of the hours. Compare Sesto’s answers to Tito with Psalm 32:5: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity.” Or with Psalm 38:2, 4, 17–18: O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, or discipline me in your wrath. … For my iniquities have gone over my head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for me. … For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me. I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin. And again, with Psalm 51:1–5: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgement. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. Sesto’s muteness when questioned by Tito is reminiscent of Psalm 38:13–14: But I am like the deaf, I do not hear; like the mute, who cannot speak. Truly, I am like one who does not hear, and in whose mouth is no retort.123 When Sesto declares to Tito that “I can suffer neither the idea of myself nor your presence,”124 Catholics might have been reminded that sinful mortals

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cannot stand in the presence of God. Psalm 130:3 asks: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” And the prophet Isaiah expresses his fear when confronted with God’s holiness: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). A seraph must take a burninghot piece of coal and touch the prophet’s lips to cleanse him before he can endure God’s presence (see Isaiah 6:7). The sinner cannot withstand the presence of holiness. As I argued in Chapter 3, the confrontation between Sesto and Tito might also have reminded Catholics in the audience of the sinner’s encounter with the heavenly judge in the last judgment. Thus, when Sesto asks Tito to hasten his dying (affretta il mio morir), Catholics might have been reminded of a line from the Dies irae: Gere curam mei finis (“take care of my end”)—although the medieval poem expresses hope that God will save the sinner from eternal death, while Sesto hopes that Tito will save him from the torture of his sinful life precisely by hastening his death and his exit from this world. Furthermore, Tito’s willingness to separate his identity as Sesto’s friend from that of emperor—a stepping out of the role of ruler that was quite common in plays in the sentimental period and recalls the trope that the ruler has no friends—could have recalled the Sequence. The two sides of Tito’s identity (emperor versus friend) might have reminded the audience of the juxtaposition in the sequence hymn of the mass for the dead of Christ the ruler and judge and Jesus the savior: King of tremendous majesty, who freely saves those to be saved, save me, fount of mercy.

Rex tremendae maiestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis.125

The poem appeals to the savior to appease the ruler and judge, and it remains unclear how the two sides of Christ—judge and savior—are reconciled.126 For a Catholic audience, Tito might have offered an analogy for Christ, insofar as he has a similar double identity as gentle friend and severe emperor. Tito does precisely what the sinner asks of Jesus at the last judgment: Tito encounters Sesto as a friend rather than as his judge. Finally, a Catholic audience might also have interpreted Sesto and Tito’s way of relating to each other as that between confessing sinners and their confessor (as a representative of God). The confrontation between the two men, alone with each other, would indeed have recalled the privacy of the confessional. Sesto speaks explicitly of confession—“I confess to be a traitor” (traditor mi confesso)—and he also behaves like a confessing sinner: he shows contrition (a wretched heart); he admits to his unfaithfulness and perfidiousness, to having failed to live up to his promises, to having been ungrateful. His awareness of his sinfulness is torturous to him and makes him realize “that I merit death” (ch’io merito la morte). And so, a Catholic audience could have perceived the

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words he uses as words of contrition appropriate for an act of confession reminiscent of the liturgical act of confession (Confiteor) during mass: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa (“My sin, my sin, my greatest sin”).127 For his part, Tito in this scene functions like the priest ideally does in the confessional: as father, friend, and benefactor offering pastoral care (tenera cura). Thus, a Catholic audience might have read the confidential tenor of the conversation between Tito and Sesto not just as one among friends; rather, when Tito bids Sesto to “Open your heart to Tito” (Apri il tuo core a Tito) and “confide in the friend” (confidati al amico), they might have recognized him as encouraging the confessing sinner, just as any good confessor would. If Sesto’s presentation as repentant sinner remained somewhat ambiguous for the audience, this ambiguity would have stemmed from the fact that he fails to reveal the whole truth to Tito. A true Christian confession would require that Sesto confess the whole truth without reservation. Sesto’s failure stems, of course, from his unwillingness to betray Vitellia. As such, his unwillingness has an ambiguous character. When Sesto refuses to shift the blame for his own sins to Vitellia, Catholics in the audience could have remembered from Genesis 3:12 that blaming others for one’s own failures is itself a characteristic mark of sin: “The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’” Thus, if Sesto refuses to blame Vitellia as the source of the conspiracy, such a refusal would have had a redemptive side to it. Sesto departs with his Rondo, Deh per questo istante solo (II, 9, No. 19). The Rondo is set in A major, which Schubart describes as a key that “contains declarations of innocent love, contentedness over one’s condition; hope of a reunion at the parting of the lover; youthful cheerfulness, and trust in God.”128 It is the key in which Mozart’s characters do not lie or dissimulate and also the key of Mozart’s love-duets.129 Indeed, in his rondo, Tito and the audience get to experience Sesto at his most honest. Despite his betrayal, Sesto feels an innocent love for Tito, as he confesses: “Ah, for this single moment remember our former love.”130 The adagio section of the aria comprises the first two verses: Pray, for only a moment remember the first love, for your anger, your severity make me die of grief.

Deh per questo istante solo ti ricorda il primo amor. Che morir mi fa di duolo il tuo sdegno il tuo rigor.

Undeserving of pity, it is true I only must inspire horror; yet, you would be less severe if you could see into my heart.

Di pietade indegno è vero, sol spirar io deggio orror. Pur saresti men severo, se vedessi questo cor.131

In this slow movement, Sesto is trying to appeal to Tito’s emotions by recalling, as Abert puts it, “those tender pictures of lost happiness that were

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among the favourite themes of opera seria.”132 Only at the word orror does the rhythm pick up. At the same time, these first two verses once more evoke the sequence of the requiem mass for the dead and, here in particular, the sinner’s appeal to the grace and former love of the savior. In the aria’s third verse (allegro, then repeated più allegro), Sesto gives up on this hope. Now, his desolation dominates. Vitellia no longer plays a role for him. His focus is exclusively on his feelings for Tito: Desperate I go to death. But dying does not frighten me. The thought torments me that I was a traitor to you. (A heart can suffer such worry and yet not die of sorrow!)

Disperato vado a morte; ma il morir non mi spaventa. Il pensiero mi tormenta che fui teco un traditor! (Tanto affanno soffre un core, nè si more di dolor!)

Sesto goes to his presumed death without hope, but it is not death itself that causes his pain, but rather his betrayal, not unlike Judas after he betrayed Jesus. As Hocquard notes, a “crescendo ride in the orchestra … expresses … the manly decision to go into death without fear.”133 Quickly, however, a peaceful tranquility returns with the Rondo’s refrain, in which Hocquard detects “a cordiality and affability which make it similar to the lied.”134 The Rondo’s theme reappears three times in A major in between passages expressing Sesto’s pain. As Abert notes, the way in which the theme is invariably prepared for by passages evocative of contrasting moods creates a subtle psychological impression. Twice the mood of A major is interrupted by a brief and typically Mozartian harmonic shift, first to C major, then to F major. As a result, the expression of high emotion turns out to be more convincing here than that of sentimentality.135 The concluding più allegro section returns to Sesto’s resolve to accept death interrupted “by the curtailed refrain, which brings back the calm resignation … All of it ends quickly with a forte cadence which accompanies Sesto’s sudden departure.”136 In this Rondo, so expressive of Mozart’s simple imperial style, Sesto finally completes the process of liberation from his own concupiscence. His faithfulness (fede, fedeltà) toward Tito triumphs over his erotic attraction to Vitellia, even though his love for the latter continues unabated.137 Already early in the second act Vitellia recognized that she had lost the battle for Sesto’s soul. As she remarked prophetically then (II, 2, Recitative), it is Sesto’s love for the friend, rather than his fear of the emperor, that wins the day: “I do not fear [Tito’s] severity any longer. His clemency I fear. It will win you over.”138 The primary focus now is the friendship between two men.139 This likewise becomes clear in the eleventh scene when Tito, after deliberating what to do, finally

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declares (II, 11, Recitative): “Ah, let us not leave our usual path,” adding, after he tears up the paper: “Let our friend live, even faithless.”140 Note here that for a Catholic audience, the triumph of Tito’s quasi-divine love (caritas, philia) over Sesto’s concupiscent love for Vitellia (eros) would not have come as a surprise if they associated the redeeming power of Tito’s forgiving love for Sesto with Paul’s description of the effect that God’s love has on the sinner. For Paul, it is not the severity of God’s Law that leads the sinner to repentance and salvation, but rather the love that God shows for the sinner (by sending his Son into the world). Paul puts it in this way in Romans 8:2–3: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. A biblically literate and theologically educated member of the audience might well have perceived Mozart’s opera as presenting a similitude of God’s love, for here the sinner (Sesto) is also converted by love (clemency) rather than by severity or law. Faith and love Sesto does not reappear until the final scene. Still, the audience’s impression of him as an essentially redeemable character, who has good qualities despite his moral weakness, continues to consolidate. Curiously enough, it is Vitellia— herself the source of evil in the opera so far—who contributes most to strengthening the audience’s impression of the inherent goodness of Sesto’s character. We have already seen that his refusal to betray Vitellia prevents his confession to Tito from becoming fully effective, even if it could have been taken as a refusal to shift the blame away from himself. In the fourteenth scene, Vitellia acknowledges the selflessness of Sesto’s refusal to implicate her when she speaks to herself (II, 14, Recitative): “(Then Sesto has remained silent! What love! What faith!).”141 Love and faith—for an eighteenth-century Catholic, the two terms could have been reminiscent of the Council of Trent’s understanding of the requirements for a person’s justification. Since the Middle Ages, Catholic theology has argued that a person’s justification requires not just “faith alone,” but rather fides caritate formata (faith formed through love).142 If Sesto, according to Vitellia’s testimony, has both love and faith, he has exactly the two qualities that Catholic doctrine requires for one’s justification. From a theological perspective, Sesto would have appeared as one who is justified, even if Vitellia is speaking, of course, of Sesto’s love and faith for her. The audience continues to receive confirmation of hope for Sesto’s salvation in the fifteenth scene when Vitellia remains alone and experiences her own moral conversion after Annio and Servilia have left her (II, 15, No. 22 Accompanied Recitative). Here, Vitellia not only praises Sesto’s love once more, she

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also articulates clearly for the first time that Sesto has become guilty only because of her. She asks herself: Will you have the courage to look upon your faithful Sesto dead? Sesto, who loves you more than his own life? Who through your crime became guilty? Who obeyed you even when you were cruel? Who adored you even when you were unfair? Who in the presence of death keeps such great faith with you? And in the meantime, you, not ignorant of all this, will tranquilly go to the Emperor’s nuptial couch?143 For the audience, Vitellia’s statement functions like that of a character witness in the witness stand. Indeed, this seems to be her intention: “Let me lessen Sesto’s crime with my guilt, even if I can’t excuse it.”144 In the following scene (II, 16), in which Tito appears amongst lictors, senators, Roman patricians, and the Praetorian Guard on a public square leading to an amphitheater, two more character-witnesses step forward to plead Sesto’s case: Annio and Servilia (II, 16, Recitative). Both have proven themselves to be morally impeccable characters throughout the opera, so their intercession on Sesto’s behalf might, to an eighteenth-century audience, have resembled that of the saints pleading to God on behalf of the sinner.145 Tito, however, who has already decided Sesto’s fate, cuts them off, seemingly enjoying for a moment the cruel play with what they must consider to be his newly discovered severity. In the opera’s last scene, Sesto appears with Tito, Publio, and lictors. Tito confronts Sesto with the long list of his crimes (II, 17, Recitative): “Rome in confusion, offended majesty, the laws offended, the friendship betrayed.”146 He then informs him of the penalty he must expect: “The world, heaven, wish your death.”147 Note that Tito’s announcement of the deserved penalty implies that the matter has a theological dimension: Both the world and heaven desire Sesto’s death or, in other words, human and divine law call for it. By implication, Tito’s final act of clemency will also have a theological dimension. Before Tito can announce his clemency for Sesto, however, Vitellia enters and confesses the full extent of her guilt: “I am the most guilty of all. I thought up the plot. Your most loyal friend I seduced and I took advantage of his blind love for me to harm you.”148 With this last-minute confession, Vitellia consolidates the impression that Sesto is as much victim as he is perpetrator. In so doing, she helps the audience to sympathize with Sesto’s fate and to feel that Tito’s final act of clemency, rather than Sesto’s death, is the right and emotionally desirable outcome. And indeed, when Tito pronounces his clemency in the closing Sextet with Chorus (II, 17, No. 26), not just over Sesto but also over Sesto’s co-conspirators, Sesto proves himself to be a worthy recipient of Tito’s grace. “It is true, you absolve me, Emperor, but my heart does not absolve me. It will weep over the error as long as it shall have memory.”149 If the audience needed one more proof of the sincerity of Sesto’s contrition, here it is. Like the psalmist, Sesto expresses his thankfulness for the grace received (see, for example, Psalm

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32). In effect, Sesto declares himself to be repentant for life. If the opera were playing in a Catholic rather than a pagan (Roman) context, Sesto might well have announced that he was entering the religious life in a monastery. Such would have been quite appropriate for a repentant sinner of Sesto’s sort. It is what Donna Elvira does at the end of Don Giovanni. Indeed, Tito’s response to Sesto’s pronouncement (“The true repentance of which you are capable is worth more than a true, constant fidelity”) puts Sesto’s remark in a Christian (and here particularly in a biblical) context (Luke 15:7) and irrevocably turns Sesto into the model of Christian repentance, which he has appeared to represent throughout the entire second act.

Findings In this chapter, I analyzed the role of Sesto, Tito’s favorite and arguably the most interesting character on stage, both dramaturgically and musically. As in the previous chapter, I asked how a theologically educated, biblically literate, and enlightened Catholic in the audience might have understood this character and its development throughout the opera. I proposed that Sesto’s story could have offered such a spectator in the audience a lesson in theological anthropology and, more specifically, a parable for human sin and salvation. In Act One, I suggested, Sesto might have been understood as a parable for human sin in line with both the apostle Paul and Saint Augustine’s influential theological analyses of sin. Sesto lives a torn existence. He struggles to navigate between his recognition of the good in Tito, on the one hand, and his inability to escape his erotic infatuation with Vitellia’s beauty, on the other. Although Sesto recognizes the good, his concupiscence does not allow him to follow the inclinations of his heart. He loves the good, but he is unable to do it. He is too weak to resist evil. In fact, his fleshly desires cause him actively to choose evil. Sin becomes inescapable. In Augustinian terms, Sesto shows himself unable to order his priorities properly. He gives his obsession with Vitellia’s beauty precedence over his love for the good in Tito and, in so doing, rebels against God’s presumed representative on earth. Sesto impersonates what the apostle Paul describes as human beings at war with themselves. For a Catholic audience, then, Act One would have made clear that Sesto is the paradigmatic sinner: a slave to concupiscence, unable to do the good despite his own better intuition, and an insurrectionist against God. And yet, in Act One, there are various indications that Sesto can be redeemed. Indeed, in Act Two, I proposed, the opera turns into a story of conversion from sin to salvation. The audience encounters in Sesto a repentant sinner who undergoes the morally required stages of contrition, confession, and satisfaction. While Sesto is still torn between his friendship for Tito and his love for Vitellia, he liberates himself of both his concupiscence and his emotional dependence. Contrition now dominates his feelings. Repentance and the question of how to confess his guilt without implicating Vitellia occupy the second act. Sesto’s conversion from sin towards repentance has a decidedly religious

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character, not least through the religious terminology in Annio’s aria Torna di Tito a lato (No. 13), the focus on suffering in Sesto’s trio with Publio and Vitellia (No. 14), the fact that Vitellia’s own conversion is affected by the specter of Sesto’s impending suffering and death, and the evocation of various biblical passages in Sesto’s confrontation with Tito (II, 10). Sesto’s conversion thus offered Catholics in the audience a model of repentance. The triumph of Tito’s clemency might have reminded them of the apostle Paul’s insistence that it is not the severity of the Law but rather the love of God that leads the sinner to repentance and salvation.

Notes 1 W[olfgang] A[madeus] Mozart, La clemenza di Tito KV 621, ed. Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition (Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997), Act I, Scene 1, Recitative (Oh Dio!). Henceforth, when quoting the libretto to Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, I will list only the numbers of the act and the scene in the text and indicate if the quotation comes from a recitative or from a musical number (for example, I, 9, No. 9 Aria). For my translations from Mozart’s operas, see Nico Castel, The Libretti of Mozart’s Completed Operas, in two Volumes, with International Phonetic Alphabet Transcriptions, Word for Word Translations, Including a Guide to the I.P.A. and Notes on the Italian and German Transcriptions, Foreword by Julius Rudel, Illustrations by Eugene Green (Mt. Morris, NY: Leyerle Publications, 1997). Where necessary, I alter the translations. 2 [C]he m’ingannò, che mi sedusse, [e questo è il suo fallo maggior] quasi ad amarlo. 3 A me non manca più degno esecutor dell’odio mio. 4 [P]erdonami, ti credo, io m’ingannai. 5 For the notion of concupiscence in Catholic theology, see, for example, Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Book XIII, Ch. 15; Augustine, Against Julian, trans. Matthew A. Schumacher, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 35 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1957), Book II, Ch. 5, no. 12; Council of Trent, “Decree on Original Sin,” in Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, improved, extended, translated into German, and edited with the cooperation of Helmut Hoping by Peter Hünermann, 37th ed. (Freiburg im Breisgau, Basel, Rome, and Vienna: Herder, 1991), No. 1515 (henceforth abbreviated as DH followed by the respective number). English translations available at: http://www. clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/lt.htm#dz. 6 Der große Katechismus mit Fragen, und Antworten zu dem öffentlichen und privat Unterrichte der Jugend, in den kaiserl. königl. Staaten (Prague: Verlag der k. k. Normalschulbuchdruckerey, 1778), 111–112 (Fremde Sünden sind jene, die wir zwar nicht selbst begehen, deren wir aber schuldig werden, wenn wir andere dazu verleiten, oder solche nicht hindern, da wir es zu thun schuldig oder im Stande sind). 7 Der große Katechismus mit Fragen, und Antworten, 117. 8 Saint Ambrose, “Jacob and the Happy Life (De Iacob et vita beata),” in Ambrose, Seven Exegetical Works, trans. Michael P. McHugh, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 65 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1972), 117–184, at 125 (Book I, Ch. 3, no. 10). See also ibid., 121 (Book I, Ch. 1, no. 4), and 128 (Book I, Ch. 4, no. 13).

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9 Come ti piace imponi: regola i moti miei. Il mio destin tu sei; tutto farò per te. – The duet starts with a slow movement, followed by a fast one. Mozart imported this form from contemporary opera buffa. See Hermann Abert, W. A. Mozart, trans. Stewart Spencer, ed. Cliff Eisen (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 1233. 10 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1233. 11 Over the course of church history, Romans 7 has been the focus of intense disagreements of interpretation. The central question has been to whom Paul is referring when he speaks of “I”: Is it the I of the human being before and without Christ or the I of the faithful and the baptized or possibly even the I of the apostle Paul himself? Already the church fathers were divided on this question. Augustine modified his position over the course of his life. Before 409, he interpreted Paul as speaking of humanity before and without Christ. After 412, after the Pelagian controversy, Augustine attributes the I of Romans 7 to the Christian believer. Due to his unrivaled authority, most medieval theologians, including Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, and later, even more decisively, Martin Luther, prefer the late Augustine’s position. Given the authority of Augustine and Aquinas, in turn, for baroque scholasticism, their understanding of Romans 7 most likely dominated the understanding of the text by eighteenth-century Bohemian prelates. For a historical overview with detailed discussions of the church fathers, particularly Augustine, and also Luther, see Otto Kuss, Der Römerbrief, übersetzt und erklärt von Otto Kuss (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1957), 462–485; Ulrich Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer (Röm 6–11), Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, vol. VI/2 (Zürich: Benzinger Verlag, and Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993), 101–117; and Karl Hermann Schelkle, Paulus, Lehrer der Väter: Die altkirchliche Auslegung von Römer 1–11 (Düsseldorf: Patmos- Verlag, 1956), 242–248. 12 Note here that even those who have understood the I of Romans 7 as referring to the human being before and without Christ could allow for the baptized believer to experience some of the existential dilemma of the I in Romans 7 if, according to Catholic and specifically Tridentine doctrine, disordered desire and concupiscence continue to exist in the faithful even after their baptism and justification. See Council of Trent, Session V, “Decree on Original Sin,” DH 1510–1516, at DH 1515. In an influential essay, Otfried Hofius has suggested that the “I” in Romans 7:7–13 is the “I” of Adam, understood as a historical person, and the “I” in Romans 7: 14–23 is the “I” of humanity before and apart from Christ, that is, unredeemed humanity as inescapably marked by Adam’s fall. Hofius therefore interprets the conflict between the desire for the good and the inability to do the good as a conflict between the human person as they should be in the eyes of God, on the one hand, and human person as they in fact are as descendants of Adam, on the other. Hofius claims that Romans 7:14–23 does not suggest an inner conflict in the human person: “The contradiction, of which Rom 7:14–23 speaks, is not one within the Adamite human person, but rather the Adamite human person is themself this contradiction” (Der Widerspruch, von dem in Röm 7,7–23 die Rede ist, ist nicht ein solcher in dem adamitischen Menschen, sondern der adamitische Mensch ist selbst dieser Widerspruch). See Otfried Hofius, “Der Mensch im Schatten Adams. Römer 7,7–25a,” in Paulusstudien II (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 104–154, at 147–149. 13 See John A. Rice, W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 36. Note that Vitellia sings the same lines in the duet. Abert points out that Mozart and Mazzolà did not care for individual characterization of their characters, which function merely as “allegories.” When Sesto and Vitellia sing the same words at the end of the duet, Abert suggests, they “do not interact on a psychological level but simply join forces to express a common

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14 15 16

17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

39 40

Sesto feeling which, however agitated, is none the less impersonal” (Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1233). Rice, W. A. Mozart, 72. Der große Katechismus mit Fragen, und Antworten, 114 (Die Unkeuschheit ist eine unordentliche Begierde nach fleischlicher Wohllust). Der große Katechismus mit Fragen, und Antworten, 114 (Verblendung des Gemüthes, heftige Begierde nach dem zeitlichen Leben, Vergessenheit Gottes, des Todes und des zukünftigen Gerichtes, Verzweiflung die eigene Glückseligkeit zu erlangen). Sesto, sospendi d’eseguire i miei cenni; il colpo ancora non è maturo. [Oh Dio!] chi provò mai tormento eguale al mio. See my discussion in the next chapter. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder, Die Zauberflöte, Act I, Scene 14, no. 7 Duet. For the musical genre of this piece, see Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1234; and Jean-Victor Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart (Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles Lettres – Archimbaud, 1995), 893. Hocquard notes that, stylistically, the duettino also draws from Masonic cantatas. Augusto, conosco di Sesto il cor. Fin dalla cuna insieme tenero amor ne strinse. Ei di se stesso modesto estimator, teme, che sembri sproporzionato il dono; e non s’avvede ch’ogni distanza eguaglia d’un Cesare il favor. Se una ragion potesse almen giustificarmi? Agli occhi miei involati per sempre, e scordati di me. Fermati; io cedo, io già volo a servirti. For the use of the clarinet in the classical period, see Albert R. Rice, The Clarinet in the Classical Period (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 109–197; and Eric Hoeprich, The Clarinet (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). Rice, W. A. Mozart, 80. Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1235. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 81. See also Hans-Joachim Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito: Die Geschichte einer Oper (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2013), 205. Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 907 (Cette évocation du pouvoir de la beauté engendre une transe délirante qui s’échappe en coloratures hallucinatoires, lesquelles sont hautement expressives). Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1236. Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 911 (extrême agitation). Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1236. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, ed. Ludwig Schubart (Vienna: J. V. Degen, 1806), 377 (der Ton der Liebe, der Andacht, des traulichen Gesprächs mit Gott; durch seine drey B, die heilige Trias ausdrückend). Ma compirla convien. Valore! E come può / averne un traditor? Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 912 (agitation soudain s’arrête sur une langueur douloureuse … lorsqu’il prend conscience qu’il est un traître: la cadence en sol mineur marque, piano, sa tristesse méditative). Sesto infelice! / tu traditor! Che orribil nome! Alexandre Oulibicheff, Nouvelle biographie de Mozart suivie d’un aperçu sur l’histoire générale de la musique et de l’analyse des principales œuvres de Mozart (Moscow: Auguste Semen, 1843), quoted in Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 912 (le récitatif y devient presque un arioso). See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 82. Eppure / t’affretti a meritarlo. E chi tradisci? / il più grande, il più giusto, il più clemente / Principe della terra, a cui tu devi / quanto puoi, quanto sei.

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41 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 912 (L’image de Titus … est évoquée avec une douleur grandissante: le discours, de plus en plus méditatif, prend davantage d’ampleur et mélodicité). 42 Ah, non ho core, / Vitellia, a secondar gli sdegni tuoi. / Morrei prima del colpo in faccia a lui. 43 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 912 (ce récitatif va lui permettre de décrire la déroute de la passion: L’image fictive que Sextus s’était forgée se lacère et il est en proie au désespoir). 44 Pietro Metastasio, La clemenza di Tito, Dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nella cesarea corte per il nome gloriosissimo della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Carlo VI, imperadore de’ Romani sempre augusto, per comando della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Elisabetta Cristina, imperadrice regnante, l’anno MDCCXXXIV, a poesia è del signor abbate Pietro Metastasio, poeta di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica. La musica è del signor Antonio Caldara, vicemaestro di capella di sua maestà cesarea e Cattolica (Vienna: Giovanni Pietro van Ghelen, stampatore di corte di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica, 1734), available at: http:// www.progettometastasio.it/public/testo/testo/codice/CLEMENZA|P|002, Act II, Scene 1 [604–605]: “Perhaps my remorse is already too late” (Forse già tardi / sono i rimorsi miei). According to Il vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani, the term “pentiménto” refers, in particular, to a “feeling of pain over the guilt and the sins committed in transgression of the divine laws, of the religious commandments and rules, of the fundamental law of love of God and neighbors” (sentimento di dolore per le colpe e i peccati commesi in trasgressione delle leggi divine, dei comandamenti e precetti religiosi, della fondamentale legge dell’amore verso Dio e verso gli altri)(Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, “Pentiménto,” available at: https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/pentimento). Treccani explains “rimòrso” as “the tormenting awareness of having committed evil” (la consapevolezza tormentosa di aver fatto del male)(Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, “Rimòrso,” available at: https://www.treccani. it/vocabolario/rimorso2). I thank my colleague Professor Judy Raggi Moore for her help on this point. 45 Io vado … lo saprai / Oh Dio, per mio rossor. 46 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1236. 47 Quai sguardi vibri intorno? 48 Mi fà terror il giorno. 49 La nobil alma / versò dal sen trafitto. 50 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1237. 51 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1237. 52 Fu l’uom più scellerato, / l’orror della natura. 53 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1237. 54 See Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 915. 55 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 83. 56 Berry points out that the dark C minor is resolved only in the bright C major in the opera’s closing sextet with chorus in Act II (II, 17, No. 26). See Mark Berry, “Power and patronage in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte,” in Cultures of Power in Europe During the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Brendan Simms and H. M. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 325–347, esp. 333. 57 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1236. 58 See Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 911 and 915. 59 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1237. 60 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1237. See also Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 918. 61 Rice, W. A. Mozart, 83. 62 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1237.

152 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70

71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83

Sesto O nero tradimento, oh giorno di dolor. M’inghiotta il suolo prima ch’io tal divenga. Ah, dove mai m’ascondo? Apriti, o terra, inghiottimi. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robinson, Jr. (New York and London: Macmillan, 1958), Book I, Chs. 3–4 and esp. Chs. 22–27; Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 45 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), Book IX, Ch. 8. See also Anthony Dupont, “To use or enjoy humans: uti and frui in Augustine,” in Papers presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2003, ed. Frances Young, Mark J. Edwards, and Paul M. Parvis, International Conference on Patristic Studies, Studia Patristica (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 89–93; Dupont, “Using or Enjoying Humans: Uti and frui in Augustine,” Journal Augustiniana 54 (2004): 1–4, 475–506. Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 888 (C’est au second acte seulement que Sextus deviendra un héros au sens plein du mot et qu’il se révélera non seulement l’égal de Vitellia, mais son supérieur en grandeur d’âme). Tito difendi da nuove insidie. Io vo ramingo, afflitto a pianger fra le selve il mio delitto. Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 380 (Alles Ländliche, Idyllen- und Eklogenmäßige, jede ruhige und befriedigte Leidenschaft, jeder zärtliche Dank für aufrichtige Freundschaft und treue Liebe; – mit einem Worte, jede sanfte und ruhige Bewegung des Herzens läßt sich trefflich in diesem Tone ausdrücken). Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 920 (créent un climat de douceur et de transparence). Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 920 (très coulante [mélodie], avec des intonations chaleureuses, mais sans aucune vocalise). See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 76–78, 85, and especially Daniel Heartz, “La clemenza di Sarastro: Masonic Benevolence in Mozart’s Last Operas,” The Musical Times 124, no. 1681 (March 1983): 152–157, at 156 for a detailed comparison of both arias. Rice mentions specifically “the key of G major and a simple A B Aʹ structure, but also harmonic and melodic details” (Rice, W. A. Mozart, 85). Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 920 (attire l’attention sur la grandeur d’âme de Titus). See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 217. Sesto, fuggi, conserva la tua vita, e’l mio onor. This is the case only in Mozart and Mazzolà’s version, not yet in Metastasio’s. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 218. For these three requirements, see the Council of Trent, “Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist,” Chs. 4, 5, and 8 (DH 1676–1677, 1679–1683, and 1689–1692, respectively). Strictly speaking, from the perspective of the Council of Trent, Sesto’s attitude is best described as “imperfect contrition” or “attrition” (DH 1678). Fritz notes that Annio’s moral invective urging Sesto to repent transgresses the boundaries of courtly etiquette. As a status-inferior courtier, it would have been inappropriate for Annio to confront the emperor’s favorite Sesto with a moral invective. The rules at court in Vienna would have made such a reproach from a status-inferior courtier impossible. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 216. The Council of Trent discusses the role of the confessor and its requirements, namely, ordination, in its “Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist,” Ch. 6 (DH 1684– 1685). See, for example, 2 Samuel 12; Matthew 3:1–2, but also the books of the great prophets, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Amos. For this aria, see Rice, W. A. Mozart, 87.

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84 Psalm 101:18 Vulgate: Respexit in orationem humilium et non sprevit precem eorum. 85 Psalm 118:153 Vulgate: Vide humilitatem meam, et eripe me. 86 Psalm 129:7 Vulgate: quia apud Dominum misericordia, et copiosa apud eum redemptio. See also Psalm 31 (Psalm 30 Vulgate). 87 Annio takes up his intercessory role twice more, albeit only in two short scenes. In Scene 14, he and Servilia ask Vitellia, whom they take to be the new empress, to beg Tito for mercy on Sesto’s behalf. Believing that Vitellia fails to do this in time to save Sesto, both intercede with Tito themselves in Scene 16. 88 See Reinhold J. Dessl, “Die Herz-Jesu-Verehrung in Oberösterreich im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Etappen der kirchlichen Integration einer Frömmigkeitsform,” Jahrbuch des Oberösterreichischen Musealvereines – Gesellschaft für Landeskunde, vol. 132, no. 1 (1987): 81–136; Peter Hersche, Der Spätjansenismus in Österreich (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1977), 160; Hans Hollerweger, Die Reform des Gottesdienstes zur Zeit des Josephinismus in Österreich (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1976), 208–209; Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 64–66, 394; and John W. O’Malley, Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 51–52. 89 Note that Sesto makes no act of confession in the opera, as he does not want to implicate Vitellia in the crime. This confession, however, eventually comes from Vitellia, herself the source of the conspiracy, at the opera’s end. 90 Tacendolo morrò. 91 Mi fiderei, se minor tenerezza per Tito te vedessi. Il suo rigore non temo già, la sua clemenza io temo; questa ti vincerà. 92 Al fin, tiranna … 93 Ingrata, addio! 94 Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 377 (heitere Liebe, gutes Gewissen, Hoffnung, Hinsehnen nach einer bessern Welt). 95 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 923 (profonde poésie, nostalgique et étrange, s’instaure dès le début avec cette merveilleuse ligne du hautbois sole (dolce) soutenu dès la seconde mesure par le basson). Hocquard identifies in Sesto’s vocal line “the double quality of magnitude and brevity” (la double qualité d’ampleur et de brièveté; ibid.) and is reminded of the sweetness of Mozart’s lover-tenors. 96 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 923. 97 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II q. 28 a. 4 (Nam in amore concupiscentiae, qui intense aliquid concupiscit, movetur contra omne illud quod repugnat consecutioni vel fruitioni quietae eius quod amatur), available at: https://a quinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I-II.Q28.A4.C.2. 98 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II q. 28 a. 4 (Amor autem amicitiae quaerit bonum amici, unde quando est intensus, facit hominem moveri contra omne illud quod repugnat bono amici. Et secundum hoc, aliquis dicitur zelare pro amico, quando, si qua dicuntur vel fiunt contra bonum amici, homo repellere studet), available at: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I-II.Q28.A4.C.2. For the notion of substitutionary suffering, see also Karl-Heinz Menke, Stellvertretung: Schlüsselbegriff christlichen Lebens und theologische Grundkategorie (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1997). 99 See The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, ed. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004). 100 Mi laceran il core / rimorso, orror, spavento! 101 No, così scellerato il mio Sesto non credo. Io l’ho veduto non sol fido ed amico, ma tenero per me. Tanto cambiarsi un’alma non potrebbe.

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102 103 104 105

[S]e tu veder potessi questo misero cor; spergiuro, ingrato, pur ti farei pietà. Tutte ho sugli occhi, tutte le colpe mie. Quel sacro volto, la voce tua, la tua clemenza istessa diventò mio supplicio. Affretta almeno, affretta il mio morir. Toglimi presto questa vita infedel: lascia, ch’io versi, se pietoso esser vuoi, questo perfido sangue ai piedi tuoi. (Il contenersi è pena a quel tenero pianto.) E che sperasti di trovar mai nel trono? Il sommo forse d’ogni contento? Ah, sconsigliato! Osserva, quai frutti io ne raccolgo, e bramalo, se puoi. Dunque che fu? – La debolezza mia, la mia fatalità. – Treccani explains fatalità as inevitabilità, ineluttabilità, inesorabilità, and as predestinazione. The term thus has a distinct theological connotation. See Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, “Fatalità: Sinonimi e Contrari (2003),” available at: http:// www.treccani.it/vocabolario/fatalita_(Sinonimi-e-Contrari). Odimi, oh Sesto; siam soli; il tuo sovrano non è presente. Apri il tuo core a Tito; confidati all’amico. Io ti prometto, che Augusto nol saprà. Del tuo delitto dì la prima cagion. Cerchiamo insieme una via di scusarti. Io ne sarei forse di te più lieto. Ah, la mia colpa non ha difesa. In contraccambio almeno d’amicizia lo chiedo. (Ecco una nuova specie di pena! o dispiacere a Tito, o Vitellia accusar.) Dubiti ancora? Ma, Sesto, mi ferisci nel più vivo del cor. Vedi, che troppo tu l’amicizia oltraggi con questo diffidar. Ah! giacchè puoi tanto abusar di mia pietà. Ch’io son l’oggetto dell’ira degli Dei; che la mia sorte non ho più forza a tollerar; ch’io stesso traditor mi confesso, empio mi chiamo; ch’io merito la morte, e ch’io la bramo. Affretta almeno, affretta il mio morir. Toglimi presto questa vita infedel: lascia, ch’io versi, se pietoso esser vuoi, questo perfido sangue ai piedi tuoi. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 90. Rice, W. A. Mozart, 90. Already Exodus 33:11 notes that God “used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” Note that Tito acts in correspondence with how Aquinas understands the “love of friendship” (amor amicitiae), namely, that a friend “seeks the friend’s good” and is “moved against everything that opposes the friend’s good” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II q. 28 a. 4, available at: https://a quinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I-II.Q28.A4). By contrast, Sesto does not honor the rules of friendship and thereby causes his own demise. In a Catholic context, a suicide would have been possible only for an irredeemable character, which Sesto clearly is not. Quel sacro volto, la tua voce, la tua clemenza istessa diventò mio supplicio. See, for example, the hymns Summae Parens Clementiae, Audi, benigne Conditor, Summae Deus Clementiae, and Jesus dulcis memoria of the Catholic breviary of the time. The hymn Summae Parens Clementiae (and several other hymns in the breviary) ends in the doxology: “Grant it, most gracious Father” (Praesta, Pater piisime). In the first stanza of Audi, benigne Conditor, God is addressed as “gracious Creator” (benigne Conditor) and in the second stanza as “Propitious Scrutinizer of hearts” (Scrutator alme cordium). In the first stanza of Summae Deus Clementiae, God is addressed as “God of greatest mercy” (Summae Deus Clementiae). The beginning line of the hymn is quoted in Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, Canto XXV, 121. See Dante; Purgatorio, trans. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander (New York: Anchor Books, 2004). The third stanza of Jesus dulcis memoria addresses Jesus as “Jesus, hope of the penitents / how gracious you are to penitents, / how good you are to those who seek you, / but what to those who find you?” (Iesu, spes poenitentibus / quam pius es petentibus! / quam bonus te

106 107 108

109

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

120 121 122

Sesto

123 124 125 126

127

128 129 130

131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138

155

quarentibus! / sed quid invenientibus?) See Die Hymnen des Breviers nebst den Sequenzen des Missale, trans. and with short explanations by Adalbert Schulte (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1920), 56 (with reference to p. 23), 134, 287, 143. See also Psalms 6; 32; 51; 102; 130; and 143. [S]offrir non posso, nè l’idea di mi stesso, nè la presenza tua. See Fidel Rädle, “Dies irae,” in Im Angesicht des Todes. Ein interdisziplinäres Kompendium, ed. Hansjakob Becker (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1987), 331–340. The same ambiguity is found in Luther’s famous distinction in De servo arbitrio of 1525 between the Deus absconditus (hidden God) and the Deus revelatus (revealed God). In this famous diatribe against Erasmus of Rotterdam, Luther suggests that sinners who cannot know the eternal predestining will of the hidden God cling desperately to the God who revealed God’s self in Christ as One who is merciful. See Volker Leppin, The Bondage of the Will, 1525: The Annotated Luther Study Edition, ed. Kirsi I. Sternja (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016). According to the eighteenth-century Missale, the full confession of sin read: “Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae, semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro, et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et vobis, fratres: quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam, semper Virginem, beatum Michaelem Archangelum, beatum Ioannem Baptistam, sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum, omnes Sanctos, et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum, Deum nostrum.” See Missale Novum Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum S. Pii V Pontifecis Maximi editum; et Clementis VIII et Urbani P.P. VIII auctoritate recognitum (Campidonum [Kempten im Allgäu]: Johannes Mayr, 1734), 196. Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 379 (Dieser Ton enthält Erklärungen unschuldiger Liebe, Zufriedenheit über seinen Zustand; Hoffnung des Wiedersehens beym Scheiden des Geliebten; jugendliche Heiterkeit, und Gottvertrauen). See Andrew Steptoe, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 237. Deh per questo istante solo ti ricorda il primo amor. One may wonder whether audiences interpreted Mozart’s use of A major in Sesto’s Rondo as a subtle indication that the relationship between Tito and Sesto had homoerotic aspects to it. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 219. See also Tito’s prior comment (II, 6, Recitative) that “I have seen him not only loyal and friendly to me, but also tender” (Io l’ho veduto non sol fido ed amico, ma tenero per me). On this rondo and the significance of the tonality, see Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239, and Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 227–229. Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239. Hocquard is reminded of the Countess’s second solo aria Dove sono in Le nozze di Figaro. See Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 933. Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 933 (Une chevauchée crescendo à l’orchestre … Ce qui est exprimé, c’est … la décision virile d’aller sans crainte à la morte). Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 933 (une cordialite et une bonhomie qui l’apparentent au lied). Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1239–1240. Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 933 (par le refrain écourté qui ramène la résignation calme … Le tout se termine rapidement sur une cadence forte qui accompagne le brusque départ de Sextus). For the notion of friendship in eighteenth-century literature and its relationship to that of love between men and women, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 145–153. Il suo rigore non temo già, la sua clemenza io temo; questa ti vincerà. Note that the crucial role of clemency in Sesto’s conversion is more pronounced in Mazzolà’s version

156

139

140 141 142

143

144 145

146 147 148 149

Sesto than in Metastasio’s original one, because in the reworking of the libretto, the dialogue between Sesto and Vitellia ends right after Vitellia’s crucial comment. In Mazzolà’s version of the libretto, the scene abruptly breaks off after this comment, which puts all the emphasis on this remark. See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 218–219. In Metastasio’s libretto, Tito also forgives Sesto as a friend. Yet, here the aspect of friendship—even though it is rooted in the emerging age of sensibility—functions largely in the context of a legal argument drawn from the natural law tradition. In Mazzolà’s version of the libretto, by contrast, the legal context recedes into the background. Metastasio’s erstwhile legal-philosophical reasoning for Tito’s clemenza is no longer of interest to Mozart and his librettist. Ah, non lasci il solito cammin … (lacera il foglio) Viva l’amico! benchè infedele. (Dunque Sesto ha taciuto! oh amore! oh fede!) The expression fides caritate formata stems from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II q. 4 a. 3, available at: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.Q4.A3, and it is based on a reading of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians 5:6. The Thomistic teaching was affirmed by the Council of Trent, Decretum de iustificatione, Ch. 7 (DH 1531): “Nam fides, nisi ad eam spes accedat et caritas, neque unit perfecte com Christo, neque corporis eius vivum membrum efficit” (For faith, unless hope and charity be added to it, neither unites one perfectly with Christ, nor makes him a living member of his body). For Aquinas, see Otto Hermann Pesch, Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin: Versuch eines systematisch-theologischen Dialogs (Mainz: Matthias-GrünewaldVerlag, 1967); and Miriam Rose, Fides caritate formata: Das Verhältnis von Glaube und Liebe in der Summa Theologiae des Thomas von Aquin, Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie, vol. 112 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007). Avrai valor che basti a rimirar esangue il tuo Sesto fedel? Sesto, che t’ama più della vita sua? Che per tua colpa divenne reo? Che t’ubbidì crudele? Che ingiusta t’adorò? Che in faccia a morte sì gran fede ti serba, e tu frattanto non ignota a te stessa, andrai tranquilla al talamo d’Augusto? Si scemi il delitto di Sesto, se scusar non si può, col fallo mio. For the role of the angels and the martyrs’ intercession, see Saint Ambrose, The Book Concerning Widows (Savage, MN: Lighthouse Publishing, 2014), Ch. 9, no. 55. For the role of intercessors in the Roman Mass, see Josef Andreas Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia: Eine genetische Erklärung der Römischen Messe, vol. 2 (Vienna: Herder, 1949), 207–219. Roma sconvolta, l’offesa Maestà, le leggi offese, l’amicizia tradita. [I]l mondo, il cielo voglion la morte tua. Io la più rea di ciascuno! Io meditai la trama; il più fedele amico io ti sedussi; io del suo cieco amore a tuo danno abusai. Tu, è ver, m’assolvi Augusto; ma non m’assolve il core, che piangerà l’errore, finchè memoria avrà.

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Hofius, Otfried. “Der Mensch im Schatten Adams. Römer 7,7–25a.” In Paulusstudien II, 104–154. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Hollerweger, Hans. Die Reform des Gottesdienstes zur Zeit des Josephinismus in Österreich. Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1976. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani. “Fatalità: Sinonimi e Contrari (2003).” Treccani.it. http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/fatalita_(Sinonimi-eContrari). Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani. “Pentiménto.” Treccani.it. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/pentimento. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani. “Rimòrso.” Treccani. it. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/rimorso2. Janowski, Bernd, and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds. The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources. Translated by Daniel P. Bailey. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. Jungmann, Josef Andreas. Missarum Sollemnia: Eine genetische Erklärung der Römischen Messe. Vol. 2. Vienna: Herder, 1949. Kuss, Otto. Der Römerbrief. Translated by Otto Kuss. Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1957. Leppin, Volker. The Annotated Luther Study Edition: The Bondage of the Will, 1525. Edited by Kirsi I. Sternja. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016. Menke, Karl-Heinz. Stellvertretung: Schlüsselbegriff christlichen Lebens und theologische Grundkategorie. Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1997. Metastasio, Pietro. La clemenza di Tito, Dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nella cesarea corte per il nome gloriosissimo della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Carlo VI, imperadore de’ Romani sempre augusto, per comando della sacra cesarea e cattolica real maestà di Elisabetta Cristina, imperadrice regnante, l’anno MDCCXXXIV, a poesia è del signor abbate Pietro Metastasio, poeta di sua maestà cesarea e cattolica. La musica è del signor Antonio Caldara, vicemaestro di capella di sua maestà cesarea e Cattolica. Vienna: Giovanni Pietro van Ghelen, Stampatore di Corte di Sua Maestà Cesarea e Cattolica, 1734. http://www.progettometastasio.it/public/testo/testo/codice/ CLEMENZA|P|002. Missale Novum Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum S. Pii V Pontifecis Maximi editum; et Clementis VIII et Urbani P.P. VIII auctoritate recognitum. Campidonum [Kempten im Allgäu]: Johannes Mayr, 1734. Mozart, W[olfgang] A[madeus]. La Clemenza di Tito KV 621. Edited by Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition. Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997. O’Malley, John W. Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. Oulibicheff, Alexandre. Nouvelle biographie de Mozart suivie d’un aperçu sur l’histoire générale de la musique et de l’analyse des principales œuvres de Mozart. Moscow: Auguste Semen, 1843. Pesch, Otto Hermann. Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther und Thomas von Aquin: Versuch eines systematisch-theologischen Dialogs. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1967. Rädle, Fidel. “Dies irae.” In Im Angesicht des Todes: Ein interdisziplinäres Kompendium, edited by Hansjakob Becker, 331–340. St. Ottilien: EOS, 1987. Rice, Albert R. The Clarinet in the Classical Period. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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Rice, John A. W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Rose, Miriam. Fides caritate formata: Das Verhältnis von Glaube und Liebe in der Summa Theologiae des Thomas von Aquin. Vol. 112 of Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Schelkle, Karl Hermann. Paulus, Lehrer der Väter: Die altkirchliche Auslegung von Römer 1–11. Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1956. Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel. Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Edited by Ludwig Schubart. Vienna: J. V. Degen, 1806. Schulte, Adalbert, trans. Die Hymnen des Breviers nebst den Sequenzen des Missale. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1920. Steptoe, Andrew. The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Wilckens, Ulrich. Der Brief an die Römer (Röm 6–11). Vol. VI, Part 2 of EvangelischKatholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament. Zürich: Benzinger Verlag, and Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993.

5

Vitellia Lust for Power

In this final chapter, we turn to look at how Tito’s mildness causes not only Sesto’s repentance but also Vitellia’s own moral change of heart. As in the previous chapters, I offer an audience-oriented reading, asking how a theologically educated and biblically literate Catholic, for example an enlightened prelate or bishop, might have interpreted the role of Vitellia.

Act One Self-love, pride, desire for domination In the opening scene, Vitellia shows the audience the primary emotion that drives her actions throughout that momentous day: her desire for revenge (vendetta) caused by jealousy, insulted pride, and a frustrated desire for power.1 At first glance, Vitellia is jealous. She feels deprived of Tito’s love because he wants to marry the foreign princess Berenice rather than her. Yet what seems to motivate Vitellia’s jealousy is less spurned love than insulted pride. The princess is furious that Tito has chosen a rival (una rivale) whom she deems unworthy. The idea that Tito prefers “a barbarian” and “an exile” (una barbara … un’esule) to her, a queen (una regina), is an insufferable insult for her: “I do not tolerate an insult” (non soffro un disprezzo). “At least,” she avers (I, 1, Recitative), “he could have chosen a rival worthy of me from the beauties of Rome.”2 At a yet deeper level Vitellia resents the fact that Tito’s planned marriage to Berenice robs her of the power that comes from sharing his throne. Vitellia believes that both Tito’s love and the power as empress are hers by birthright because Tito’s father usurped her father’s throne (I, 1, No. 1 Duet): “You know that he usurps a realm / that by fate heaven gave to me.”3 For the audience, the opening scene quickly establishes Vitellia as the opera’s villain, not least through her expressions of anger and uncontrolled fury. In the age of sensibility, with its ideal of the meek and obediently suffering woman (in this opera personified by Servilia, in Die Zauberflöte by Pamina), Vitellia’s musically audible fury and anger clearly mark her as out of bounds.4 Moreover, Vitellia’s reproaches against Tito reinforce the initial negative impression that the audience has of the princess. Using strong negative words, she claims that DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452-6

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he seduced (sedusse) and deceived her (m’ingannò). She charges him with a crime (il fallo) and calls him both her enemy (nemico) and an evil or perfidious man (perfido, il perfido). Moreover, she acknowledges her desire for “revenge” (la mia vendetta) and her “hatred” (odio) for him. Similarly, Sesto recognizes her “fury” (furor). Although these words are intended to shed a negative light on Tito, they have the opposite effect not only because the audience would have known of Tito’s fame as a clement emperor to begin with, but also because Vitellia’s words contrast starkly with Sesto’s long account of the emperor’s virtuous character (I, 1, Recitative): “its delight to the world, the father to Rome, the friend to us.”5 When Vitellia reveals (I, 1, No. 1 Duet) that “I want the unworthy one extinguished” (estinto io vò l’indegno), she leaves no doubt in the audience’s mind that she is motivated by inordinate self-love, pride, hatred, and desire for revenge. Vitellia’s sinful character also manifests itself in this opening scene when she proves herself a calculating emotional manipulator who uses Sesto for her own purposes as if he were nothing but a tool.6 She spurs his jealousy by revealing to him that she loves Tito, knowing quite well of Sesto’s own love for her (I, 1, Recitative): “Still, you do not have the heart to obtain me.”7 Similarly, she pretends to release him from his promises to her, accompanied by the provocative comment that “I do not lack for worthier instruments of my hate.”8 Not surprisingly, Vitellia quickly achieves the desired effect. Sesto himself confirms that she has turned him into an almost mechanical tool of her whim (I, 1, No. 1 Duet): As you wish command me; control my actions. You are my destiny; anything I shall do for you.

Come ti piace imponi, regola i moti miei. Il mio destin tu sei; tutto farò per te.

Vitellia’s opening recitative with Sesto and their subsequent duet would have made her appear as a paradigmatic sinner. Theologically educated members of the audience could have remembered that Saint Augustine excludes revenge as a legitimate motivation for Christian action.9 In so doing, he translates Jesus’s commandment to love one’s enemies into Christian ethics: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43–44). Even more importantly, Augustine describes sin as inordinate self-love (amor sui), pride (superbia), avarice (avaritia), desire for domination (libido dominandi), and contempt of God (contemptum Dei).10 Vitellia perfectly exemplifies this Augustinian definition of a sinner. Because Tito functions in the opera as a quasi-divine figure, Vitellia’s hatred of him could have looked like a form of what Augustine calls the sinner’s hatred of God. For a theologically educated audience, Vitellia could also have appeared as an operatic instantiation of Augustine’s understanding of sin by using Sesto’s love

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for her own devious ends. According to the church father, sinners do precisely what Vitellia does: they use others to achieve their own ends and even evil purposes. Underlying this definition is Augustine’s distinction between the use (uti) of the things of this world and the enjoyment (frui) of that which is the greatest good, namely the triune God.11 Humans must use things, Augustine contends, but only enjoy God. In sin, human beings do the opposite: they enjoy the things of this world and use God. Even worse, they use God as a means for the enjoyment of worldly things, thus turning their priorities on their head. How, then, should one relate to other human beings? Should one use them or enjoy them? Neither alternative is fully satisfying for Augustine. Considering the double commandment of love, clearly one should not use other human beings. On the other hand, one should enjoy only the highest good, which is God. Augustine solves the dilemma by suggesting that one should love others for God’s sake. This implies, on the one hand, that one should not enjoy them for their own sake (for Augustine, we should only enjoy God), but, on the other hand, that one must also not use human beings as one uses things. In light of this distinction, Vitellia’s obvious use of Sesto for her own political gains could have appeared as an example of Augustine’s notion of sin. Rather than loving Sesto—as Christians are commanded to do with their neighbor—Vitellia uses him for her selfish and evil purposes, namely, in order to kill Tito and to usurp power. Although the first scene firmly establishes a negative image of Vitellia in the audience’s mind, her closing lines in the first duet with Sesto leave the door slightly ajar for the audience to recognize that she may be more than a onedimensional character and perhaps even that she will ultimately be redeemable. With words identical to Sesto’s, Vitellia confesses (I, 1, No. 1 Duet): A thousand emotions wage a pitiless battle within me. There isn’t a soul more deeply wounded than mine.

Fan mille affetti insieme battaglia in me spietata. Un’alma lacerata più della mia non v’è.

Over against all her sinful motivations (inordinate self-love, jealousy, pride, hatred, desire for revenge), Vitellia here reveals herself as a hurt and emotionally conflicted character to be pitied. While it will take until the end of the opera for this weak side of her character to come to the fore, Vitellia’s first duet with Sesto establishes it from the beginning. In the next scene (I, 2), Annio joins Vitellia and Sesto. The scene puts into sharp relief Vitellia’s inability to control her emotions. When Annio beckons his friend Sesto to hurry and join Tito, Vitellia remarks dismissively on Tito’s relationship with Berenice. Annio, however, informs Vitellia (I, 2, Recitative) that Tito had Berenice leave Rome, noting that “Tito has the mastery both of the world and of himself.”12 The comment accentuates the fact that Vitellia is lacking exactly this mastery of herself. And indeed, as if to confirm this

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impression, the same Vitellia who just a moment ago had demanded Tito’s death now expresses to herself new “hopes” (speranze), all the while mocking Berenice’s character: “Oh, how gladly I would have liked to hear that arrogant woman railing against Tito.”13 Again, the comment falls back upon herself, since Vitellia had just railed against Tito, and indeed, Annio insists that Berenice was far from behaving in such a way: “On the contrary, she never was more loving. She departed, but she saw that adored she was leaving, and that the parting was no less bitter a blow to her beloved than to herself.”14 In response, Vitellia charges Berenice with flattery, but again nolens volens she describes only her own behavior: “Anyone can flatter themselves.”15 And yet, she develops new hope and asks Sesto to postpone the plan to kill Tito. Sesto is painfully aware of Vitellia’s newly emerging hopes to marry Tito. To his expression of suffering, she responds with her first aria Deh se piacer mi vuoi (I, 2, No. 2, text by Metastasio), which closes the scene and further deepens the audience’s perception that she uses Sesto as a mere pawn in her selfserving game. Bluntly, she declares: Ah, if you wish to please me, cast aside your suspicions do not weary me with these irksome doubts.

Deh, se piacer mi vuoi, lascia i sospetti tuoi: non mi stancar con questo molesto dubitar.

He who blindly believes obliges one to keep faith; he who always expects to be betrayed invites betrayal.

Chi ciecamente crede, impegna a serbar fede; chi sempre inganni aspetta, alletta ad ingannar.

A Catholic in the audience may well have heard Vitellia’s aria in more than one sense. Prima facie, Vitellia’s emphasis on doubt and fidelity/faith refers to the supposed sincerity of her love for Sesto. When Vitellia here demands blind belief without doubts, though, an enlightened Catholic in the audience might also have understood her mandate as an allusion to unenlightened religion and baroque Catholicism. The Catholic Enlightenment— just like other enlightened groups in Austrian society—rejected what they saw as religion’s erstwhile demand of blind faith, which they likened to superstition. The topic appears quite explicitly in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, which in so many ways is a sibling to La clemenza di Tito. It is possible that some in the audience might have been reminded of this old religion by Vitellia’s advocacy of blind belief. The religious allusion would have been even stronger considering that Tito, in his already discussed aria, Se all’impero (II, 12, No. 20), later picks up on the issue of fidelity/faith as well. As we saw, the emperor there announces:

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Vitellia If the faith of my realms I cannot assure by love, I care not for a faith that is born of fear.

Se la fé de’ regni miei coll’amor non assicuro: d’una fede non mi curo che sia frutto del timor.

Vitellia seeks blind faith, faith without irksome doubts. Tito, by contrast, seeks a faith without fear, a faith birthed out of love. Two concepts of faith, two approaches to religion: An enlightened Catholic in the audience might well have interpreted this contrast as one between the baroque religion of an age gone by and an enlightened form of Catholicism in line with the reforms of Josephinism.16 Vainglory Vitellia returns in the short eighth scene with Servilia (I, 8, Recitative). In an act of perfect dissimulation, Vitellia congratulates Servilia for becoming the new empress, not knowing that Servilia told Tito about her love for Annio. Servilia, however, indicates that there might still be reason for Vitellia to hope, which Vitellia, in the following scene with Sesto (I, 9, Recitative), interprets as mockery (mi schernisce), “shameless scorn” (vergognoso disprezzo), and “ostentation” (fasto). As before regarding Berenice, the charges that Vitellia levels against Servilia reflect negatively on herself. Once more showing her personal fickleness, Vitellia also reproaches Sesto for not having initiated the rebellion, which she herself had him stop when a little earlier she garnered new hope of becoming empress. In this new bout of temper, then, Vitellia’s true self reappears. Her fury is an expression of her renewed jealousy and scorned pride. Once again, a theologically educated Catholic in the audience could have interpreted Vitellia’s behavior in this scene as an expression of the Christian understanding of sin as vain glory (vana gloria) or pride (superbia).17 To Sesto, Vitellia complains that Tito offered her offense (I, 9, Recitative): “Ah, tremble, you ingrate, tremble at having offended me. Today, your blood ….”18 If an offense is a violation of a person’s dignity, honor, and pride, Vitellia’s comment reveals her inflated sense of self, for Tito has no reason or obligation to choose Vitellia as his bride. In fact, his choice of Servilia has nothing to do with Vitellia in the first place. When Vitellia interprets it as a personal offense to her, she reveals exactly the kind of self-centeredness which Augustine identifies as pride—a capital sin that the theological tradition included among the seven deadly sins. The catechism approved by the archbishop of Prague in 1778 defines pride in this way: “Pride is an all too great deep respect for oneself, and a disordered desire for advantages.”19 As the consequences of pride, the 1778 catechism lists “exaggerated love of self, thirst for glory and honor, boasting, contempt of God, of religion, of the church, and of the neighbor, discord, dispute, quarrel, obstinacy, disobedience, hypocrisy, heresy.”20 Vitellia offers the audience a near-perfect example: Her love of self is exaggerated; she thirsts for

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glory and honor; she boasts; she demonstrates her contempt for Tito (who represents God) and for the precepts of religion (for example, not to kill); she spreads discord, dispute, and quarrel in Rome; she is obstinate, disobedient to Tito, and hypocritical both in her dealings with Sesto and with Tito. Vitellia’s pride is also apparent in the catalogue of possible reasons she offers Sesto for killing Tito (I, 9, Recitative): fame as the liberator of the fatherland (“I propose to you to liberate the fatherland” [Io ti propongo la patria liberar]), a “noble ambition” (un illustre ambizion) to rule, winning her love, jealousy that her love for Tito could easily be rekindled, fear that he appears as a weakling: Now leave, if you are not moved by the desire for glory, ambition, love; if you tolerate a rival who wrongfully takes possession, who confronts, who could steal from you my feelings, I will say that you are the most cowardly among men.21 Vitellia’s emphasis on glory is particularly reminiscent of Augustine’s verdict on the Romans’ pursuit of glory and their desire for mastery (libido dominandi) in The City of God.22 Vitellia herself perfectly exemplifies the desire for both glory and mastery. The fact that she suggests the pursuit of glory as a reason for Sesto to murder Tito only underlines this perception. “He who loves glory,” Augustine writes, “will either ascend to it by the true way, or strive for it by treachery and deceit, wishing to seem good even though he is not.”23 In the opera, Tito and Vitellia represent these two distinct ways of achieving glory. If Tito offered the audience the true Christian way to glory, Vitellia served as an exemplar of someone who seeks glory through treachery and deceit. And yet for Augustine the truly virtuous person rejects the pursuit of glory altogether: “To one who possesses the virtues, then, it is a great virtue to despise glory, and his contempt for it is known to the vision of God even though it is not revealed to human judgment.”24 Again, although glorious in the eyes of the world, Tito also exemplifies this contempt of glory. In the fourth scene (I, 4, No. 5 Chorus), the Roman people call him “the just” (il giusto), “the strong” (il forte), and “the honor of our age” (l’onor di nostra età). As Publio reports, the Senate names him “the father of our fatherland” (della patria il Padre) and divinizes him (I, 4, Recitative). In fact, Annio addresses Tito as Rome’s “divinity tutelary” (suo Nume tutelar) and reports that the Senate has ordered a temple to be erected for the worship of Tito.25 Tito, however, answers in a perfect Augustinian way: “Romans, your love is the only object of Tito’s wishes, but let your love not overflow its bounds, so that Tito and you may not be ashamed of it.”26 By contrast, Vitellia presents herself as the perfect example of Augustine’s perspective on the Roman vice when she suggests the pursuit of glory to Sesto as an admirable goal and, even more, when she insinuates that such a pursuit justifies Tito’s murder.27

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Vitellia further demonstrates her obsession with glory when she tries to get Sesto to submit to her evil wishes (I, 9, Recitative) by calling him cowardly (degli uomini ’l più vil)—a character trait diametrically opposed to the Roman pursuit of honor, glory, and power. As before, Vitellia also attempts to crush Sesto’s remorse (tu pentito già sei) at the thought of murdering Tito by claiming that Sesto clearly does not love her (amor non hai per me) if he resists her wishes. She pretends to develop feelings of love for him (già mi piacevi, e quasi cominciavo ad amarti), only to angrily send him away a moment later.28 This repeated vacillation between seduction and rejection quickly achieves its goal, as Sesto immediately gives in: “Stop, I concede. I already want to serve you.”29 Incurvature While Vitellia only simulates feelings for Sesto in the ninth scene, in the tenth scene (I, 10, Recitative) she expresses her true intensions, namely to “seduce” (sedurti) Tito’s friends if she cannot “attract” (invaghirti) his love. But her emotions take a sudden turn when Publio and Annio report to her that Tito has chosen her as his new empress. Fearing that it is already too late to stop the course of events, Vitellia expresses her horror with herself in the trio with Publio and Annio (I, 10, No. 10 Trio): Oh, my dire anger! Oh, my insane fury! What anguish! What torment! I freeze, oh God, with horror.

Oh sdegno mio funesto! oh insano mio furor! Che angustia, che tormento! Io gelo, oh Dio! d’orror.

As Hocquard notes, “this is not a true trio” when compared to the trios of Mozart’s comedies, but rather “an aria sung by Vitellia, who is simply accompanied at certain moments by two secondary characters.”30 The music draws the listener’s attention to Vitellia, who is beset by the realization of what she has done. “Her brief clamor is cut by a stormy motif in the orchestra (strings, then successive addition of flutes, bassoons, and oboes),” as the forte turns quickly into a piano.31 What the audience witnesses is not the first moment of her conversion from self-centeredness, but rather the realization that her evil machinations are now coming home to roost. A parte, Vitellia expresses her disgust with herself yet more starkly in the thirteenth scene (I, 13, No. 12 Quintet with Chorus): “(I hate myself and I am terrified at myself).”32 But again, the reason for her self-hatred is her frustration that the revolt is under way at the very moment that her ascent to the throne finally seems possible. When she finds Sesto, who reports to her that he believes Tito to be dead, Vitellia immediately worries only about herself. Realizing that Sesto might divulge not only his own guilt but also her complicity in Tito’s presumed murder, she tries to silence him (I, 14, Recitative): “Hush, madman, ah, do not reveal yourself.”33

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Act Two Vitellia’s preoccupation with herself continues to drive her actions at the beginning of Act II (II, 2, Recitative). She urges Sesto to flee Rome (fuggi) in order “to protect your life and my honor.”34 And again: “You are lost if someone exposes you, and if indeed you are exposed, then my secret will become public knowledge.”35 As we have seen already, Vitellia’s advice directly contradicts (even though unwittingly) what Annio suggested to Sesto in the previous scene, namely, to “turn around” (torna) to Tito’s side, to make up for his fault by “repeated proofs of fidelity” (con replicate … prove di fedeltà), and to hope that his complicity in the murder attempt will not be discovered. By worrying about her honor rather than about her guilt, Vitellia reveals (to put it in Augustinian terms) how much she is incurvata in seipsam (turned in upon herself) and thus a sinner.36 She also realizes what she is up against when she remarks on the power of Sesto’s affection for Tito (II, 2, Recitative): “I would trust you if less tenderness for Tito I saw in you. I do not fear his severity any longer. His clemency I fear. It will win you over.”37 It is too late, however. As the audience finds out in the third scene of the second act, Sesto’s guilt has been discovered through his co-conspirator Lentulo, whom Sesto had stabbed at night mistaking him for Tito. Lentulo survived, however, and Publio now arrests Sesto. In the next scene, Sesto bids a dramatic farewell to Vitellia (II, 4, No. 14 Trio), once more expressing his love as he is going to his death: Remember the one who loves you still, even in this plight. Let your pity at least be solace for my pain.

Rammenta chi t’adora in questo stato ancora. Mercede al mio dolore sia almen la tua pietà.

The trio with Sesto and Publio is crucial for Vitellia’s character development, as Sesto’s emotional farewell prompts the first signs of her metanoia. Vitellia shows herself to be touched by Sesto’s increasingly self-sacrificial love, even if she reveals this only to herself (a parte): Because of me he is dragged to death. Ah, where ever can I hide? Soon the world will learn of my transgression.

Per me vien tratto a morte: ah dove mai m’ascondo! – fra poco noto al mondo il fallo mio sarà.

And a moment later: Remorse, horror, and fear rend my heart! What I feel in my soul will make me die of grief.

Mi laceran il core rimorso, orror, spavento! quel che nell’alma io sento, di duol morir mi fa.

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The libretto offers only a brief indication of Vitellia’s change of mind. Mozart, however, turns this fleeting notice into a dramatic trio. He thereby adds musical emphasis.38 For the first time, Vitellia expresses feelings that are not self-centered: remorse at her wrongdoing and grief for Sesto. Perhaps she even realizes that she has committed a sin. The term fallo can be translated either as “error” or as “transgression,” in which case Vitellia’s statement could imply a moment of remorse. For a Catholic audience, it might also have conjured up several religious connotations. Vitellia’s observation that “because of me he is dragged to death” (per me vien tratto a morte), for example, could have evoked Isaiah 53:5: “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.” Similarly, it could have reminded the audience of the medieval hymn Salve Caput Cruentatum, which says of Jesus that he was “so impaired, so disdained, / because of me so destroyed (sic affectus, sic dispectus / propter me sic interfectus).39 The biblically literate in the audience could furthermore have taken Vitellia’s question where she can “hide” as an allusion to Genesis 3:8: After eating from the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve hide “among the trees of the garden” from “the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.” In biblical perspective, hiding is a sign of recognizing one’s sin. Thus, for a Catholic audience, Vitellia would have expressed at least an awareness of her wrongdoing, even though she is still far from confession, contrition, or even remorse. What could also have been noteworthy in the initial signs of a change of attitude on Vitellia’s part is what causes her metanoia. Vitellia comments that Sesto is being “dragged to his death.” A moment later, Sesto himself asks for her pity as she sees him suffering. Hence, it seems that, because she witnesses Sesto’s suffering, she embarks on a course that eventually leads to full contrition and confession. For the audience, Publio’s reaction (voiced again a parte) to Vitellia’s tears may well have indicated that a redemptive development was taking place (II, 4, No. 14 Trio): The harsh, bitter tears that flow from her eyes, move my soul, but pity is in vain.

L’acerbo amaro pianto, che da’ suoi lumi piove, l’anima mi commove, ma vana è la pieta.

Although Publio does not know the real reasons for Vitellia’s tears, his sympathy for her would have engendered in the audience a first moment of sympathy. Conscience Vitellia does not reappear until Scene 13, when she tries to find out from Publio what happened in Sesto’s interrogation (II, 13). While Publio tells her that Sesto was condemned to die in the arena, he cannot tell her any details about Sesto’s

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conversation with Tito. Thus, Vitellia remains in the dark about the allimportant question of whether her complicity has been revealed. This ignorance is a major factor contributing to the authenticity of her later moral conversion. If she were to confess only what had been discovered already, her confession would always have been open to the suspicion that it was motivated exclusively by her desire for self-preservation. In the following fourteenth scene (II, 14, Recitative), Vitellia muses about this very question. She assumes that Sesto has revealed her guilt and now feels remorse for not having confessed before her guilt was revealed: “Ah! Had I followed the impulses of my heart. For some time I should have revealed myself to Tito and confessed my mistake.”40 Remarkably enough, Vitellia here refers for the first time to the “impulses of my heart” as a motivating force—a force that the theological listener easily could have identified with the conscience the apostle Paul writes about in his Letter to the Romans (2:15), in which he claims that the Gentiles “show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness.” Vitellia here indirectly admits that she still hears the voice of her conscience. A Catholic audience would have known that listening to one’s conscience and feeling true contrition of the heart (contritio cordis) are indispensable preconditions for true Christian confession and forgiveness. In this scene, then, Vitellia lays the foundation for the believability of her later conversion and the possibility that she can be pardoned. Vitellia herself hastens to offer a short theological explanation for why confession is necessary: “The horror of a sin is always lessened when heard from the mouth of a sinner who detests it.”41 Vitellia assumes that it is already too late for such a true confession. She knows that her sin, because she did not reveal it herself, is all the worse: “Tito found out about the crime and not from me. This reason itself makes more serious ….”42 Amid her desperation, Annio and Servilia join Vitellia to inform her about Sesto’s fate, hoping that she as the newly chosen empress will intercede on his behalf (II, 14, Recitative). When Vitellia expresses doubts, Annio assures her that Tito has already given orders to prepare the imperial wedding. Vitellia thus finally knows that Sesto did not reveal her guilt, and again she is able to recognize (a parte) Sesto’s sacrifice for her: “(Sesto then said nothing! Oh what love, what loyalty [also: faith]!)”43 For the audience, this information would have served as a test of the sincerity of Vitellia’s contrition. Will she persevere in her determination to come forward and confess her sin? Or will she change her mind, as she has so many times before, and take advantage of the situation to ascend the throne while Sesto takes the blame for the rebellion? Without this short exchange between Vitellia, Annio, and Servilia, for the audience Vitellia’s eventual conversion would ultimately have remained questionable. With it, however, her moral turn-around becomes credible. Practical Piety For the moment, Vitellia is disoriented by this new turn of events. She needs to have a moment to herself to realize the implications of this selfless act on

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Sesto’s part. Prima facie, she does not know what to do. From a dramaturgical point of view, her momentary hesitation allows her to show the audience the authenticity of her moral conversion. When Annio and Servilia beg her to ask Tito swiftly for mercy on Sesto’s behalf, she bids them go ahead instead. This gives her the needed moment by herself to complete the process of conversion already begun. Without it the audience could hardly have been convinced of its sincerity. Servilia, however, misunderstands Vitellia’s hesitancy as passivity, which risks saving Sesto’s life. She addresses Vitellia with her delicate aria, S’altro che lacrime (II, 14, No. 21), in which she assumes the same exhortative pastoral role towards Vitellia that Annio took toward Sesto at the beginning of Act Two in his aria, Torna di Tito a lato (II, 1, No. 13). If you do nothing for him But shed tears, all your weeping will be of no help.

S’altro che lacrime per lui non tenti, tutto il tuo piangere non gioverà.

Oh, that useless compassion [also: piety] that you feel, oh, how much is it like cruelty.

A questa inutile pietà che senti, oh quanto è simile la crudeltà.

Mozart set the aria in A major, the tonality he regularly used for love-duets and which for him expresses utter truthfulness.44 The aria’s tonality underscores Servilia’s point to Vitellia: Your crying is only truthful if you act on it.45 Of course, Servilia does not know of Vitellia’s guilt. The audience, however, does know. And so, for them Servilia’s exhortation would have translated into a theological message: Contrition without works of satisfaction is futile. Words need to be followed by deeds. Commentators have observed that Mozart composed the music to S’altro che lacrime against the meaning of the text, which consists of a scathing critique of Vitellia’s lack of action to save Sesto despite her verbal show of sympathy.46 Indeed, Mozart’s music does not reveal the contentious content of the aria’s lyrics. Stefan Kunze suggests that the composer simply wanted to emphasize the “pure, conciliatory accord of a ‘beautiful soul’ with itself and with the world.”47 This aria (and again Servilia’s duet with her lover Annio) is said to redeem “the possibility of the golden age, which is a promise concealed in Tito’s mildness for which forgiveness functions as a principle.”48 Perhaps, I want to suggest, an eighteenth-century Catholic audience understood the “ethereal harmony”49 of Servilia’s music as expressive less of an eschatological golden age to come than of Servilia’s saintly character. Indeed, Servilia appears throughout the opera as a saint-like figure: her unconditional love for the truth vis-à-vis Tito is just as much a mark of saintliness as her courage to speak truth to power.50 Mozart’s ethereal musical rendering of

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S’altro che lacrime in tension with the aria’s text fits well with Servilia’s overall character in the opera, then. The text is yet another expression of Servilia’s unconditional commitment to the truth, even to the point of potential selfsacrifice. At the same time, the music bespeaks her inner accord with self, world, and God—an almost mystical union with the divine. Just like the court jester of yesteryear, the saint had license to speak the truth unadorned. And indeed, it might have appeared to a Catholic audience that Servilia spoke the truth from a different plane of existence, mystically removed from all worldly strife. Textually, the aria could also have offered a Catholic audience a theological message, especially when one considers that the term pietà can mean both compassion and piety. If Catholics heard the aria with the latter meaning in mind, they might have found in it an expression of the enlightened Catholicism of Italian priest, theologian, reformer, and historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750). Muratori was an influential example of the Catholic Enlightenment in ecclesial circles who influenced not only Mozart’s father Leopold, but also Austrian Empress Maria Theresia and her son Emperor Joseph II.51 Muratori maintained a critical stance toward the institutional church, proposed rational devotion as well as a largely ethical understanding of religion, and sought to limit the role of ritual, liturgy, and non-practical spirituality in Catholic worship. In line with Muratori’s suggestions, Joseph II abolished contemplative orders and monasteries in Austria and used their funds to support practical measures at ameliorating the plight of the population, such as general primary education.52 And indeed, the lyrics of Servilia’s aria seem to advocate for the measures of the Catholic Enlightenment: “If you do nothing … but shed tears, all your weeping will be of no help. Oh, that useless piety that you feel, oh, how much is it like cruelty.” Just as Joseph II had endorsed and put into practice Muratori’s ethical understanding of religion, in the opera Tito endorses Servilia’s uncompromising stance towards the truth in Act One. A Catholic audience, then, could easily have perceived her aria as a theological manifesto of sorts. Atonement, Conversion, and Confession In the fifteenth scene, Vitellia stays by herself (II, 15). In an accompanied recitative and the following rondo, Non più di fiori (II, 15, No. 23), the audience finally witnesses the completion of the princess’s moral conversion. In good Christian fashion, Vitellia’s change of mind is caused by feeling the burden of Sesto’s suffering on her behalf (II, 15, Recitative): Here is the moment, oh Vitellia, to examine your steadfastness. Will you have the courage to look upon … your faithful Sesto [bereft of blood]? Sesto who loves you more than his life? Who through your sin [colpa] became a sinner [reo]? Who obeyed you, you cruel one? Who loved you, you unfair one? Who in the face of death such great faith keeps in you?

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Vitellia And you meanwhile, not unaware yourself, shall go tranquil to the nuptial bed of Augustus? Ah, I shall always see Sesto around me.53

Hocquard suggests that Vitellia’s “vocal line is grippingly punctuated by jerky, or, more seldomly, stretched chords,”54 while Abert notes the recitative’s declamatory and harmonic writing, with the tension building over a single powerful line and culminating in the wild outburst at the words “Ah! Mi vedrei sempre Sesto d’intorno” (“Ah, I should always see Sesto near me”), at which point Vitellia’s despair rises to the highest pitch of intensity, before gradually growing calmer as she heroically renounces all her proud dreams.55 The passage is replete with Christian terminology. Vitellia speaks of the need to examine (esaminar) herself, just as Catholics are required to regularly examine their consciences. The term steadfastness (costanza) evokes Christian perseverance in suffering, even though Vitellia, ironically, speaks of perseverance in deception. Vitellia’s vision of the dead Sesto bereft of blood (esangue) could have called to mind both the dead Christ and Christian martyrs. In fact, Vitellia depicts Sesto with language more typically used of Christian martyrs (II, 15, Accompanied Recitative), when she describes him as one “Who in the face of death such great faith keeps in you.”56 The audience might also have interpreted the notion that Sesto dies because of Vitellia’s sin as a soteriological reference, since Sesto’s agony seems to constitute for Vitellia a form of substitutionary suffering. Such an interpretation would have been encouraged by her adding that he “became a sinner because of your sin” (per tua colpa divenne reo)—a phrase reminiscent of 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” To Catholic eyes, it would have been the specter of Sesto’s substitutionary suffering on Vitellia’s behalf that appears to prompt her metanoia. The notion of substitutionary atonement harkens back to the Fourth Suffering Servant Song in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 53:1–12, see especially vv. 4–7), a passage that features prominently in the Catholic Good Friday Liturgy. The writers of the New Testament interpreted the passage as a reference to Christ. The similarity between Paul’s claim about Jesus and Vitellia’s claim about Sesto suggests that, for a Catholic audience, Sesto’s self-sacrificial love at the opera’s end could have acquired atoning significance. If Sesto “loved you, you unrighteous one” (Che ingiusta t’adorò), he would have appeared Christ-like, for, according to the New Testament, Christ loved sinners even though they are unrighteous. This does not imply that Catholics in the audience would suddenly have recognized Sesto as a parable for Christ (that role would clearly have gone to Tito, as we saw above). He is simply a repentant sinner. In Catholic understanding, though, Christians can and shall participate in Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Catholic theology has understood the apostle Paul’s reference to his own

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affliction in Colossians 1:24 in this way: “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” The faithful are called to participate in Christ’s suffering. Thus, to a Catholic audience, Sesto’s selfsacrificial love for the unrighteous Vitellia could well have suggested that his impending martyrdom on her behalf prompts her own repentance. In view of Sesto’s suffering on Vitellia’s behalf, the specter of her guilt starts haunting her. She imagines how both Sesto’s death and her own conscience may affect her for the rest of her life. The thought becomes unbearable, and she finally decides to reveal herself to Tito. What is most remarkable about her decision, and what for the audience would have confirmed the veracity of Vitellia’s conversion, is the fact that she is no longer concerned only about herself, but rather also about Sesto. Her self-love gives way to concern for him (II, 15, Recitative): “Let me go and reveal everything at [Tito’s] feet. Let me lessen Sesto’s crime, even though it cannot be excused, with my guilt.”57 Vitellia’s verses gain in importance through her subsequent pastoral F major Rondo, Non più di fiori (II, 15, No. 23).58 It is one of the key musical pieces of the entire opera and gains special prominence as the last solo number: No more of flowers lovely chains will Hymen descend to entwine.59

Non più di fiori vaghe catene discenda Imene ad intrecciar.

Bound in barbarous, harsh chains, I see death drawing near.

Stretta fra barbare aspre ritorte veggo la morte ver me avanzar.

Unhappy me! What horror! Ah, what will they say about me? Whoever could see my suffering would take pity on me.

Infelice! qual orrore! Ah di me che si dirà? Chi vedesse il mio dolore, pur avria di me pietà.

In this Rondo, Vitellia completes her moral turnaround from “raging woman”60 to repentant sinner. Her final conversion has often been described as unprepared for, unlikely, and ultimately unbelievable—despite the genre-typical need in opera seria for a final reconciliation caused by an act of grace or divine intervention.61 For a Catholic eighteenth-century audience, however, Vitellia’s conversion would not have been quite as surprising. As Abert notes, the figures of intrigue in opera seria cannot be judged by the standards of strict psychological development, being generally depicted at the outset as

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Vitellia impassioned, black-hued villains. Once they have performed their duty within the course of the piece and at the end—as is only fitting—succumbed to the principle of good, they retire from the scene of action as figures of despair fired by the same impassioned rhetoric as before.62

Vitellia’s conversion is certainly quick, especially when compared to Sesto’s, but it is not unprepared for and therefore would not have been any less believable. The Rondo with its opulent instrumentation presents an extended inner dialogue between the voice and a solo instrument—a basset-horn, which according to Stefan Kunze, here functions as a “sounding symbol for the beyond”63—and thus offers the audience a view of Vitellia’s inner emotional world.64 It consists of two parts, a short ternary larghetto and an extended allegro section (which includes a repetition of the larghetto, thus integrating both parts of the Rondo into a harmonious whole). Abert describes the larghetto as “a tender idyll … [with] a typically Mozartian, warm-hearted, songlike tone.”65 Appropriately, Mozart set this Rondo in F major, a key which music theorist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart describes as expressing “complaisance and calm.”66 The pain and suffering thematized in the allegro are only hinted at in the larghetto’s middle section at Vitellia’s remark, “I see death drawing near.”67 In the allegro, beginning with the second verse, text and music—for example, through chromaticisms—draw attention to Vitellia’s vision of death that she is prepared to accept once she confesses her guilt.68 As Abert notes, The melody of the larghetto is used for the first episode, but as a result of the common-time signature it is now significantly intensified (note the syncopation at the beginning), while also being robbed of its idyllic character. Above all, the menacing picture of death, previously merely hinted at, is now being depicted in broad detail, with the vocal line doubling the unison strings, which now take the bass line.69 Mozart makes Vitellia’s preoccupation with death audible, as Kunze adds, by replacing a “well-rounded melody, which always stands for something whole and unbroken” with “a quasi-broken melodic line of the voice, a brittle up and down, which consists almost entirely out of jumps.”70 In this aria, Vitellia completes her metanoia just before she confesses her guilt to Tito in the final scene. She “gains distance from her fate,” just like Sesto in his own farewell Rondo to Tito, Deh per queste istante solo (II, 10, No. 19), which sports purposeful structural similarities to the melody of the allegro section of Vitellia’s Rondo.71 Vitellia bids farewell to her hopes of becoming empress and embraces the prospect of death. It is again with vocabulary common in Catholic piety that Vitellia paints her fate when she suggests that “[w]hoever could see my pain, / would have pity of me.”72 For a Catholic audience, Vitellia’s prose, which Mozart emphasizes by having her repeat the words dolore and especially pietà far more than any other

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word or phrase, could have conjured up various religious associations. Visually, it could have evoked the traditional (though biblically unsupported) image of Mary Magdalene as repentant sinner (see Luke 7:36–49). Textually, Vitellia’s prose is reminiscent of the medieval poem, Stabat mater dolorosa, attributed to the Franciscan friar, Jacopone da Todi (ca. 1230–1306): Quis non posset contristari, Christi Matrem contemplari, dolentem cum Filio?

Is there one who would not weep, whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ’s dear Mother to behold?73

Again, Vitellia’s words might have called to mind the aria no. 39 (Erbarme dich, mein Gott) from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Matthäuspassion BWV 244 (Passion according to Saint Matthew), which Mozart and the circle of his patron, Gottfried van Swieten, knew:74 Erbarme dich, mein Gott, Um meiner Zähren willen! Schaue hier, Herz und Auge Weint vor dir bitterlich. Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears. See here, heart and eye weep bitterly before you. Have mercy, my God!

Through these religious associations, Vitellia’s otherwise incredible lastminute turnaround would have become more believable. Those associations help to appeal to the audience’s compassion. Indeed, the Rondo plays an important role in the audience’s ability to sympathize with her. Modern commentators tend to interpret Vitellia’s metanoia in psychological, rather than moral or theological, categories. Thus, Hocquard speaks of “a radical conversion,” not “in the sense of morality, but in the sense of being healed of a psychological aberration.”75 Similarly, James Parakilas substitutes the theological category of conversion with the psychological one of madness when he suggests that Mozart and Mazzolà have substituted what in Metastasio’s libretto appears as “the conversion experience of a Christian” with a “mad-scene” avant la lettre, that is, before Gaetano Donizetti’s classic madscene in Lucia di Lammermoor (1835).76 An eighteenth-century Catholic prelate in the audience, however, might well have understood Vitellia’s vision of death as a religious experience akin to a mystical vision and her turnaround as a moral conversion, granted that a Catholic understanding of conversion would traditionally have entailed what the nineteenth century understood as psychological liberation (see, for example, Romans 7:14–25; 8:21; 1 Corinthians 7:21; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:1). Hocquard himself describes Vitellia’s liberation in theological terms when he suggests that at the end of her Rondo she experiences “a profound feeling of solitude [which] … is no longer that of a soul which proudly closes itself in upon itself.”77 Hocquard here picks up on the traditional theological description of sin as pride (superbia) and

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self-enclosure (being incurvatus in seipsum).78 Hocquard suggests that Vitellia now “orients herself towards others in insistent, almost frightening calls for pity.”79 This new-found orientation towards others matches the expectation that the faithful love God and neighbor as themselves. An eighteenth-century Catholic audience might well have interpreted Vitellia’s conversion in the sense of a Christian metanoia. Vitellia reappears in the last scene (II, 17), just as Tito is about to announce his clemency toward Sesto and his conspirators. She throws herself at the emperor’s feet and openly confesses her role in the rebellion and the attempted murder. That she does so before Tito announces his clemency is crucial, not just dramaturgically but also morally. Throughout the first act, Vitellia engaged in so many acts of dissimulatio that the audience needs final proof of her sincerity to believe her conversion. A true change of heart requires not just a confession but also contrition and satisfaction. Vitellia already showed her contrition in Scene 15. Now, she shows her willingness to show satisfaction by embracing the consequences of her confession. Because she does not know of Tito’s intent to pardon the conspirators, for the audience her confession becomes a true confession untouched by any possible motives of self-interest. Here, at the opera’s end, Vitellia finally gives a comprehensive account of her guilt (II, 17, Recitative). She admits to being the source of the conspiracy and to having abused Sesto’s love for her in order to harm Tito. When asked for the reason why, Vitellia curiously points to Tito’s goodness, which—as she admits—she mistook for love: “Your goodness. I believed that it was love. Your hand and the throne from you I hoped as a gift. And then I was passed over several times and I sought revenge.”80 Goodness is easily misinterpreted, and the resulting disappointment can turn humans towards sin. Vitellia admits that when she realized that she had misunderstood Tito, she turned towards evil. Lust for power (libido dominandi) and pride caused her desire for revenge. With this admission, she finally closes the circle to the opera’s beginning, where she had identified revenge as her driving motivation. With her confession accomplished, Vitellia recedes into the background. The focus is now fully on Tito, who decides to stay true to his principles and announces, as he had planned, his clemency for all, now including Vitellia, the true source of the entire conspiracy. In the closing sextet with chorus, Tito receives Vitellia, Annio, and Servilia’s praise. It is only Sesto who does not join in with the others. He alone addresses Tito directly as he focuses on his own lifelong contrition and on the forgiveness that he received from Tito. The fact that Sesto is set apart here surely indicates the deeper emotional relationship that he has with Tito as compared to Vitellia. For the audience, perhaps, it would also have set his contrition apart from Vitellia’s, lending it deeper emotional intensity.

Findings In this final chapter, I analyzed how a theologically educated Catholic in the Prague audience might have interpreted the role of the opera’s villain, Vitellia. I

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argued that Vitellia’s anger and unconcealed desire for revenge could have been reminded such a person of traditional Christian theological descriptions of sin as incurvature upon oneself through inordinate self-love, pride, the desire for domination, and hatred of God. These traits would have made Vitellia appear as a paradigmatic sinner (differently from Sesto), as would her use of Sesto’s love to achieve her own political machinations. Even though Vitellia is a hurt and emotionally conflicted character, her main character trait is her libido dominandi. Over the course of the first and much of the second act, Vitellia’s repeated bouts of jealousy, anger, and self-absorption provide ample evidence for the audience that she offers a perfect example for an Augustinian understanding of sin. For example, a Catholic audience could have understood Vitellia’s obsession with glory, ambition, and being loved as an allusion to Augustine’s negative characterization of the Romans’ pursuit of glory and their desire for mastery (libido dominandi) in The City of God. Just as many Romans did on Augustine’s reading, Vitellia seeks to achieve glory through treachery, deceit, and even murder. By contrast, Tito renounces the pursuit of glory. Concern for her own honor and prideful self-love still drives Vitellia’s actions at the beginning of the second act. It is only in Vitellia’s trio with Sesto and Publio that the audience sees the first moments of Vitellia’s eventual metanoia. Here, she shows grief and even signs of remorse regarding her own machinations when she witnesses Sesto’s willingness to sacrifice his life for her. A Catholic audience, I suggested, might have recognized such substitutionary suffering as a classical Christian trope. They might also have understood Vitellia’s desperate attempt to hide as an indication that she was beginning to recognize her guilt. Finally, the audience might have heard Vitellia’s reference to the “impulses of my heart” (II, 14) as an indication that she was starting to listen to her conscience—a voice that, according to the apostle Paul, “bears witness” to God’s Law (Romans 2:15). If listening to one’s conscience and true contrition of the heart (contritio cordis) are indispensable preconditions for Christian repentance and forgiveness, here Vitellia likely would have been seen as preparing the way for her later redemption. When Vitellia learns that Sesto steadfastly did not reveal her complicity in the revolt, the audience is prepared for the credibility of her later moral conversion. However, it is Servilia’s aria, S’altro che lacrime, that sets the moral bar for evaluating her conversion. For a Catholic prelate in the audience, Servilia formulates the criteria for credible repentance: acts of practical charity. An enlightened Catholic, I argued, could have found this insistence on practical action over fruitless displays of emotion to be an expression of Muratori’s ethical conception of religion, which emphasized practical charity over ecclesial dogmatism, liturgical performance, and contemplative monasticism. When Vitellia finally completes her moral conversion (II, 15), her metanoia is caused by the experience of Sesto’s suffering on her behalf. For a Catholic prelate in the audience, I argued, the scene could have been reminiscent of several Christian themes: the need to examine one’s conscience, perseverance in faith

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amidst adversity, Christian martyrdom, and substitutionary atonement. Vitellia’s comment that Sesto “became a sinner because of your sin” might have recalled for a prelate the apostle Paul’s statement that “he made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Catholics might have interpreted both this possible allusion and Vitellia’s comment that Sesto “loved you, though you were unrighteous” as suggesting that his self-sacrificial love has atoning significance in analogy to the redemptive suffering expected of Christians according to the traditional Catholic interpretation of Colossians 1:24 (“in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”). Through her use of pious terminology, Vitellia herself could have conjured up for a prelate in the audience the traditional image of Mary Magdalene as repentant sinner, the suffering of Mary under the cross, and even the contrition of the pious soul in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Such allusions would have engendered the audience’s compassion and would have helped to make Vitellia’s relatively quick conversion more probable. I argued that an eighteenth-century prelate might have understood Vitellia’s vision of death as a mystical experience and her turnaround as a moral conversion. Indeed, in the last scene, Vitellia embraces death as the consequence of her contrition and confession. And yet, Vitellia’s end would have taught a Catholic audience that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

Notes 1 See W[olfgang] A[madeus] Mozart, La clemenza di Tito KV 621, ed. Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition (Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997), Act I, 1, Recitative and No. 1 Duet. Henceforth, when quoting the libretto to Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, I will list only the numbers of the act and the scene in the text and indicate if the quotation comes from a recitative or from a musical number (for example, I, 9, No. 9 Aria). In my translations from Mozart’s operas, I often (but not always) follow the translation of Nico Castel, The Libretti of Mozart’s Completed Operas, in two Volumes, with International Phonetic Alphabet Transcriptions, Word for Word Translations, Including a Guide to the I.P.A. and Notes on the Italian and German Transcriptions, Foreword by Julius Rudel, Illustrations by Eugene Green (Mt. Morris, NY: Leyerle Publications, 1997). The paradigmatic function of Vitellia’s use of the term vendetta becomes clear in the last scene, where Vitellia returns to this theme in her last utterance on stage before the concluding sextet with chorus. Revenge, then, frames Vitellia’s appearances in the opera. 2 [U]na rivale avesse scelta almeno degna di me fra le beltà di Roma. 3 Sai ch’egli usurpa un regno, / che in sorte il ciel mi diè. 4 See Dieter Borchmeyer, “Mozarts rasende Weiber im Gegenlicht der Empfindsamkeit: Idomeneo—Titus—Zauberflöte,” in Mozart oder Die Entdeckung der Liebe (Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 2005), 90–141, for Vitellia especially 120–128. 5 [L]a sua delizia al mondo, il Padre a Roma, l’amico a noi. 6 As we saw above, in Metastasio’s libretto Vitellia functions as the representative of the amorality of Machiavellian power politics and perfectly exemplifies the Tacitean dissimulation expected at baroque courts. Vitellia even quotes the codex of behavior from Machiavelli’s Il Principe. See Hans-Joachim Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di

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Tito: Die Geschichte einer Oper (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2013), 127, and Wolfgang Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition und Aufklärung in Mazzolà/ Mozarts ‘La Clemenza di Tito,’” in Die Österreichische Literatur: Ihr Profil an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert (1750–1830), vol. 2/1 of Die Österreichische Literatur: Eine Dokumentation ihrer literarhistorischen Entwicklung, ed. Herbert Zeman (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1979), 379–401, at 387. Wolfgang Proß maintains that Mozart and Mazzolà reduced “the political-juridical substratum” (Reduktion des politisch-juristischen Substrats) and turned the opera into a “character-drama” (Charakterdrama), in which Vitellia is dominated by one affect, namely that of her “alluring subtlety” (das verführerische Raffinement). Proß, “Neulateinische Tradition,” 397. Eppure non hai cor d’acquistarmi. A me non manca più degno esecutor dell’odio mio. Augustine, Political Writings, ed. E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 36 (Letter 138). See also Augustine, Political Writings, 7 (Letter 91); 15–16 (Letter 104); 61–62 (Letter 133); 76 (Letter 139); 135 (Letter 100). For the notions of “self-love” and “contempt of God,” see Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Book XIV, Ch. 28. For the notions of “pride” and “avarice,” see Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 45, (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), Book XII, Ch. 9, no. 14. For the term “lust to dominate,” see Augustine, The City of God, Book I, Preface. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II q. 34 a. 2, available at: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.Q34.A2. Aquinas uses the term “hatred of God” (odium Dei). For the notion of pride, see also John Cassian, Conferences, trans. and annotated by Boniface Ramsey (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997), Conf. V, Chs. 2, 6, 7, 10, 12. On the distinction between using and enjoying things, see Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. with an introduction by D. W. Robertson (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, and London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1958), Book I, Chs. 3–5 and esp. Chs. 22–27; and Augustine, The Trinity, Book IX, Ch. 8. See also Anthony Dupont, “To use or enjoy humans: uti and frui in Augustine,” in Papers presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2003, ed. Frances Young, Mark J. Edwards, and Paul M. Parvis, International Conference on Patristic Studies, Studia Patristica (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 89–93; Dupont, “Using or Enjoying Humans: Uti and frui in Augustine,” Journal Augustiniana 54 (2004): 1–4, 475–506. Tito ha l’impero e del mondo, e di se. Quella superba, oh come volontieri udita avrei esclamar contro Tito. Anzi giammai più tenera non fu. Partì; ma vide, che adorata partiva, e che al suo caro men che a lei non costava il colpo amaro. Ognun può lusingarsi. For the religious reforms under Joseph II, see my Introduction above. See, for example, Cassian, Conferences, Conf. V, Ch. 2. Ah, trema ingrato, trema d’avermi offesa. Oggi il tuo sangue. Der große Katechismus mit Fragen, und Antworten zu dem öffentlichen und privat Unterrichte der Jugend, in den kaiserl. königl. Staaten (Prague: Verlag der k. k. Normalschulbuchdruckerey, 1778), 113 (Die Hoffart ist eine allzugroße Hochachtung seiner selbst, und eine unordentliche Begierde nach Vorzügen). Der große Katechismus mit Fragen, und Antworten, 113–114 (übertriebene Eigenliebe, Ruhm- und Ehrsucht, Pralerey, Verachtung Gottes, der Religion, der Kirche und des Nächsten, Zwitracht, Streit, und Zank, Hartnäckigkeit, Ungehorsam, Gleißnerey, Ketzerey).

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21 Or va, se non ti muove desio di gloria, ambizione, amore; se tolleri un rivale, che usurpò, che contrasta, che involarti potrai gli affetti miei, degli uomini ‘l più vil dirò che sei. 22 See, for example, Augustine, The City of God, Book I, Preface; Book V, Ch. 12, 18, 19; Book XIV, Ch. 13. See also Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book I, Ch. 23. 23 Augustine, The City of God, Book V, Ch. 19, 224. 24 Augustine, The City of God, Book V, Ch. 19, 224. 25 [S]i vuole, che fra divini onori anche il Nume di Tito il Tebro adori. 26 Romani, unico oggetto è de’ voti di Tito il vostro amore; ma il vostro amor non passi tanto i confini suoi, che debbano arrossirne e Tito e voi. For Augustine’s view on why the “love of praise” is a “vice,” see Augustine, The City of God, Book V, Ch. 13, 212–213. 27 In The City of God Augustine discusses that for Romans even killing oneself or one’s own children can be a legitimate action in the pursuit of glory. See Augustine, The City of God, Book V, Ch. 18, 219, referring to Brutus, who killed his sons when he found them planning new wars, and Torquatus, who killed his son because he violated a command given by his father, the general of the Roman army for which he fought. 28 Agli occhi miei involati per sempre, e scordati di me. 29 Fermati; io cedo, io già volo a servirti. 30 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 908 (ce n’est pas un véritable trio – une aria chantée par Vitellia, qui est simplement accompagnée à certains moment par deux personnages secondaires). 31 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 909 (Ses clameurs brèves sont coupées par un motif orageux à l’orchestre [cordes, puis adjonction successive des flûtes, des bassons et des hautbois]). 32 (In odio a me son’ io ed ho di me terror.) 33 Taci forsennato, deh non ti palesar. 34 [C]onserva la tua vita, e’l mio onor. 35 Tu sei perduto, se alcun ti scopre, e se scoperto sei, pubblico è il mio segreto. 36 The term incurvatus in seipsum stems from Martin Luther’s Lectures on Romans of 1515–1516. In his scholion on Romans 5:4, Luther describes human nature as “tam profunda est in seipsam incurve” (Martin Luther, Schriften: Römervorlesung (Hs.) 1515/16, vol. 56 of D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe [Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1938], 304, lines 25–29); and Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia, trans. Walter G. Tillmanns and Jacob A. O. Preus, Luther’s Works, vol. 25, ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1972). The notion of incurvature already appears in Augustine’s exposition of the psalms and one of his sermons, however. See Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther, and Barth on homo incurvatus in se (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 7 n. 6 with reference to Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 485 n. 3. For Augustine, see also Augustine, The Trinity, Book XII, Ch. 11, no. 16. 37 Mi fiderei, se minor tenerezza per Tito in te vedessi. Il suo rigore non temo già, la sua clemenza io temo; questa ti vincerà. 38 See Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 222. 39 See Alex Stock, ed., Lateinische Hymnen (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen im Insel Verlag, 2012), 129–145. 40 Ah secondato avessi gl’impulsi del mio cor. Per tempo a Tito dovea svelarmi, e confessar l’errore. 41 Sempre in bocca d’un reo che la detesta, scema d’orror la colpa. 42 Seppe il delitto Augusto, e non da me. Questa ragione istessa fa più grave … 43 (Dunque Sesto ha taciuto! oh amore! oh fede!)

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44 See Andrew Steptoe, The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 237. 45 For the three requirements of true repentance, namely, contrition of the heart, confession of the mouth, satisfaction of the work (contritio cordis, confessio oris, satisfactio operis), see Council of Trent, “Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist,” Chs. 4, 5, and 8, in Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, improved, extended, translated into German, and edited with the cooperation of Helmut Hoping by Peter Hünermann, 37th ed. (Freiburg im Breisgau, Basel, Rome, and Vienna: Herder, 1991), Nos. 1676–1677, 1679–1683, and 1689–1692, respectively. 46 See, for example, Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 230; and Stefan Kunze, Mozarts Opern (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1984), 552. 47 Kunze, Mozarts Opern, 552 (reinen, versöhnenden Einklang einer ‘schönen Seele’ mit sich selbst und mit der Welt). 48 Kunze, Mozarts Opern, 552 ([wurde] die Möglichkeit des goldenen Zeitalters, das als Verheißung in der aus Prinzip verzeihenden Milde des Titus verborgen ist, eingelöst). For Fritz’s criticism of Kunze’s reasoning and his own (political) reading of the aria, see Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 232–233. 49 Fritz, Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito, 233 (ätherischer Wohlklang). 50 Scholastic theology sees truth as a transcendental mark of being and, as such, as a divine attribute. Already in the biblical tradition, truth is a central theological motive. It features prominently in the Gospel traditions and the Pauline literature. Especially in the Gospel of John, truth functions as an important Christological concept. Here, Jesus famously identifies himself with the truth: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6). 51 For the Catholic reformers of the eighteenth century, including Muratori and Joseph II, see Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 391–444. For Muratori, see Paolo Vismara, “Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750): Enlightenment in a Tridentine Mode,” in Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, ed. Jeffrey D. Burton and Ulrich L. Lehner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 249–268. 52 See Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution, 411–417; and Ernst Wangermann, “Josephinismus und katholischer Glaube,” in Katholische Aufklärung und Josephinismus, ed. Elisabeth Kovács (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1979), 332–348. 53 (Ecco il punto, oh Vitellia, d’esaminar la tua costanza: avrai valor che basti a rimirar esangue il tuo Sesto fedel? Sesto, che t’ama più della vita sua? Che per tua colpa divenne reo? Che t’ubbidì crudele? Che ingiusta t’adorò? Che in faccia a morte sì gran fede ti serba, e tu frattanto non ignota a te stessa, andrai tranquilla al talamo d’Augusto? Ah, mi vedrei sempre Sesto d’intorno.) Note that the term colpa can be translated both as fault and sin, and the term reo can mean both culprit and sinner. 54 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 938 (La ligne vocale est haletante ponctuée par des accords hachés, ou, plus rarement, étirés). 55 Hermann Abert, W. A. Mozart, trans. Stewart Spencer, ed. Cliff Eisen (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 1241. 56 Che in faccia a morte sì gran fede ti serba. 57 A’ piedi suoi vadasi il tutto a palesar. Si scemi il delitto di Sesto, se scusar non si può, col fallo mio. 58 For the role of rondos in late-eighteenth-century opera, see John A. Rice, W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 92 and 94. The author of the text of Vitellia’s Rondo is unknown, although it probably comes from Mazzolà. See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 99. For a detailed musical analysis of the aria, see Kunze, Mozarts Opern, 549–551; Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1240–1242; and Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 937–946, whom I follow in my musical comments.

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59 “Hymen will no longer descend to entwine lovely chains of flowers.” 60 See Borchmeyer, “Mozarts rasende Weiber im Gegenlicht der Empfindsamkeit: Idomeneo—Titus—Zauberflöte,” 120–128. 61 See, for example, Ivan Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas, trans. Marion Faber and Ivan Nagel (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1991), 6. 62 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1242. 63 Kunze, Mozarts Opern, 550 ([k]lingendes Symbol für die Welt des Jenseits). 64 Mozart uses the same technique in Sesto’s aria, Parto, ma tu ben mio, this time with a clarinet (Mozart/Mazzolà, La clemenza di Tito, I, 9, No. 9). 65 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1241. 66 Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, ed. Ludwig Schubart (Vienna: J. V. Degen, 1806), 377 (Gefälligkeit und Ruhe). 67 [V]eggo la morte ver me avanzar. 68 See Rice, W. A. Mozart, 100. 69 Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1241 (with an extended musical analysis of Vitellia’s Rondo). See also Rice, W. A. Mozart, 100. 70 Kunze, Mozarts Opern, 550 (der gerundeten Melodie, die immer für ein ganzes, Unversehrtes einsteht – eine gleichsam beschädigte Gesangslinie, ein sprödes Auf und Nieder, das fast nur aus Sprüngen besteht). The “tone of despair” emerges first in the basset horn and “appears as objectified in the contorted chromatic final phrase” (erscheint in der gewundenen chromatischen Schlußwendung objektiviert) (ibid.). 71 Kunze, Mozarts Opern, 550 (gewinnt nun den Abstand zu ihrem Schicksal). For the structural similarities of the two numbers, see James Parakilas, “Mozart’s mad scene,” Soundings: A Music Journal 10 (Summer 1983): 3–17, at 12. 72 Chi vedesse il mio dolore / pur avria di me pietà. 73 Translation by Edward Caswall, Lyra Catholica (London: James Burns, 1849). 74 Van Swieten’s musical collection contained works by Bach and Handel, including the Matthäuspassion. Mozart, Haydn, and later Beethoven had access to the collection and made extensive use of it. See Andreas Holschneider, “Die musikalische Bibliothek Gottfried van Swietens,” in Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Kassel 1962, ed. Georg Reichert und Martin Just (Kassel: Bärenreiter Verlag, 1963), 174–178, esp. 176–177. 75 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 944 (une conversion aussi radicale – au sens de la morale, mais au sens de la guérison d’une aberration psychique). 76 See Parakilas, “Mozart’s mad scene,” 9. 77 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 946 (un profond sentiment de solitude; cette solitude n’est plus celle d’une âme qui s’enferme orgueilleusement sur elle-même). 78 See my references to the theological literature above. 79 Hocquard, Les Opéras de Mozart, 946 (elle s’oriente vers autrui dans des appels insistants, presque effrayants, à la pitié). 80 La tua bontà. Credei che questa fosse amor. La destra e’l trono da te sperava in dono, e poi negletta restai più volte, e procurai vendetta.

Bibliography Abert, Hermann. W. A. Mozart. Translated by Stewart Spencer and edited by Cliff Eisen. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae: Part II–II, q. 1–91. Aquinas Institute Inc, 2020. https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.

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Augustine. On Christian Doctrine. Translated by D. W. Robinson Jr. New York and London: Macmillan, 1958. Augustine. Political Writings. Edited by E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Augustine. The City of God against the Pagans. Edited and translated by R. W. Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Augustine. The Trinity. Translated by Stephen McKenna. Vol. 45 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963. Borchmeyer, Dieter. “Mozarts rasende Weiber im Gegenlicht der Empfindsamkeit: Idomeneo—Titus—Zauberflöte.” In Mozart oder Die Entdeckung der Liebe, 90–141. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 2005. Cassian, John. Conferences. Translated and annotated by Boniface Ramsey. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997. Castel, Nico. The Libretti of Mozart’s Completed Operas. 2 vols. With International Phonetic Alphabet Transcriptions, Word for Word Translations, Including a Guide to the I.P.A. and Notes on the Italian and German Transcriptions, Foreword by Julius Rudel, Illustrations by Eugene Green. Mt. Morris, NY: Leyerle Publications, 1997. Caswall, Edward. Lyra Catholica. London: James Burns, 1849. Chadwick, Owen. The Popes and European Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Denzinger, Heinrich [abbreviated as DH]. Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum Et Declarationum De Rebus Fidei Et Morum. Improved, extended, translated into German, and edited with the cooperation of Helmut Hoping by Peter Hünermann. 37th edition. Freiburg im Breisgau, Basel, Rome, and Vienna: Herder, 1991. http:// www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/lt.htm#dz. Der große Katechismus mit Fragen, und Antworten zu dem öffentlichen und privat Unterrichte der Jugend, in den kaiserl. königl. Staaten. Prague: Verlag der k. k. Normalschulbuchdruckerey, 1778. Dupont, Anthony. “To use or enjoy humans: uti and frui in Augustine.” In Papers presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2003, edited by Frances Young, Mark J. Edwards, and Paul M. Parvis, 89–93. International Conference on Patristic Studies. Studia Patristica. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. Dupont, Anthony. “Using or Enjoying Humans: Uti and frui in Augustine.” In Journal Augustiniana 54 (2004): 1–4, 475–506. Fritz, Hans-Joachim. Mozarts La Clemenza di Tito: Die Geschichte einer Oper. Cologne Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2013. Hocquard, Jean-Victor. Les Opéras de Mozart. Paris: Les Belles Lettres – Archimbaud, 1995. Holschneider, Andreas. “Die musikalische Bibliothek Gottfried van Swietens.” In Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Kassel 1962, edited by Georg Reichert und Martin Just, 174–178. Kassel: Bärenreiter Verlag, 1963. Jenson, Matt. The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther, and Barth on homo incurvatus in se. London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006. Kunze, Stefan. Mozarts Opern. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1984. Luther, Martin. Schriften: Römervorlesung (Hs.) 1515/16. Vol. 56 of D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1938. Luther, Martin. Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia. Translated by Walter G. Tillmanns and Jacob A. O. Preus. Vol. 25 of Luther's Works, edited by Hilton C. Oswald. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1972.

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Mozart, W[olfgang] A[madeus]. La Clemenza di Tito KV 621. Edited by Franz Giegling, Urtext of the New Mozart Edition. Kassel, Basel, London, New York, and Prague: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG, 1997. Nagel, Ivan. Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas. Translated by Marion Fabel and Ivan Nagel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Nygren, Anders. Agape and Eros. Translated by Philip S. Watson. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Parakilas, James. “Mozart’s mad scene.” In Soundings: A Music Journal 10 (Summer 1983): 3–17. Proß, Wolfgang. “Neulateinische Tradition und Aufklärung in Mazzolà/Mozarts ‘La Clemenza di Tito’.” In Die Österreichische Literatur: Ihr Profil an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert (1750–1830), 379–401. Vol. 2/1 of Die Österreichische Literatur: Eine Dokumentation ihrer literarhistorischen Entwicklung, edited by Herbert Zeman. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1979. Rice, John A. W. A. Mozart: La clemenza di Tito. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel. Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Edited by Ludwig Schubart. Vienna: J. V. Degen, 1806. Steptoe, Andrew. The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas: The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Stock, Alex, ed. Lateinische Hymnen. Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen im Insel Verlag, 2012. Vismara, Paolo. “Lodovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750): Enlightenment in a Tridentine Mode.” In Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, edited by Jeffrey D. Burton and Ulrich L. Lehner, 249–268. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. Wangermann, Ernst. “Josephinismus und katholischer Glaube.” In Katholische Aufklärung und Josephinismus, edited by Elisabeth Kovács, 332–348. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1979.

Epilogue

Surely, one would love to know what Mozart believed, what he confessed in his heart towards the end of his life, and which—if any—theological beliefs he might have wanted or intended to express through his operas. As much as we would love to know the answers to these questions, we do not. There is too little documentary evidence to allow us to construct a clear picture of Mozart’s faith commitments. Even the statements that we have in letters to his father do not give us a comprehensive picture. There, we see only how Mozart presents his faith to his father. Mozart’s letters are literary self-presentations, not unvarnished expressions of his faith. They leave open the question whether he inwardly embraced Catholic doctrines or whether his faith was limited to the more ethical beliefs of Josephinian Enlightenment and the practical side of religion. But, then again, the intention of the author is one thing; what a member of the audience takes from a work of art is quite another. Audiences receive a work of art, as the scholastics said, secundum modum recipientis (according to the intention of the recipient).1 Their cultural expectations play a role here, as does their larger philosophical and theological horizon of understanding regarding the world around them. What one person tries to say is not necessarily what another one hears. Regardless of Mozart’s own theological intentions (or lack thereof) when writing La clemenza di Tito, his audiences hear his opera through the perspective of their own faith. Some (if not all), I suggest, could indeed understand it through a theological framework. So, here are the questions that drove my rereading of Mozart’s last opera seria: What theological allusions, biblical overtones, and liturgical associations could have been evoked by the characters on stage and their dramatic interaction with each other? The member of the audience that I have had in mind was a theologically educated, biblically literate, late eighteenth-century Catholic— perhaps a diocesan bishop; a Benedictine, Premonstratensian, or Cistercian abbot; an Augustinian Canon; or even an erstwhile Jesuit. Through daily praying the breviary and celebrating mass, my imagined (yet plausible) cleric in the audience would have been deeply steeped in the biblical language of the Vulgate. He would also have received a significant amount of theological education, even if mostly in the scholastic tradition or according to the great teachers of his own religious order (if he belonged to the regular clergy). Still, if he DOI: 10.4324/9781003261452-7

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studied at a good seminary or at a university, he might also have had significant knowledge of the Bible and the theologians of the early church. He would have studied law (including authors such as Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf) and canon law, and he would have had a classical humanistic education. Finally, if he had Jansenist or enlightened leanings, as many had, he would have known some French Jansenist literature and other enlightened Catholic thinkers, such as Muratori. All this background, I proposed, would have formed his horizon of understanding for interpreting Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito.2 So, what message might this prelate have taken with him when he left the opera house after the performance of La clemenza di Tito? To answer this question, I first suggested that we look at Pietro Metastasio’s original 1734 libretto, which many in Mozart’s audience would have been familiar with, and which therefore would have formed part of my prelate’s horizon of understanding. Metastasio’s libretto presents his audience with a political philosophy in the tradition of the Roman Accademia degli Arcardi. In the exercise of political power, it attempts to balance the dual needs for severity and mildness. Considerations from natural law theory and an insistence on the absolute ruler’s free will (liberum arbitrium) feature prominently here. I argued that audiences might have already understood Metastasio’s version of the opera as a theological parable. Tito’s free will might have been perceived as an echo of God’s absolute freedom over the creature. In their revision of the libretto, I argued further, Mozart and Mazzolà renewed the genre of opera seria according to a different aesthetic. In the process, they also altered the opera’s political message. In line with the late Enlightenment’s understanding of humanité and the contrat social, they eliminated Tito’s ability to administer the law to its full extent and, in so doing, turned Tito’s final show of clemency into a predictable act. Law and constitution, rather than the monarch’s free will, guarantee peace and justice. If the ruler merely executes the will of the people, it seems that a lenient code of laws ought to replace the monarchical prerogative to exercise clemency. Also, Tito can now show himself as a human being in a world where sentimentality and love for the truth determine human relations. In this way, Mozart and Mazzolà’s opera appears as a product of the bourgeois age of sensibility, one in which Metastasio’s focus on political and legal considerations gives way to a character drama focused primarily on human emotions. A Bohemian prelate in the audience, I suggested in a further step, might have found in it a Christian theological anthropology, in which Tito, Sesto, and Vitellia appear as parables for God and sinful humanity. To begin with, my prelate might have found in the Emperor Tito a parable for Christ, the heavenly king, divine judge, and merciful savior: Tito is good, virtuous, generous, and noble; he pursues the common good, suffers betrayal and pain, is caught up in the tension between justice and mercy, appears as God’s representative on earth, and shows himself to be a benevolent and messianic ruler who protects the weak. Tito’s friendship with Sesto might have been evocative of Jesus’s relationship to his disciples and the effect of God’s grace on the faithful. In

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Tito, the biblical promise that Israel and its rulers will receive from God “a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26) might have appeared to be fulfilled. Finally, the emperor’s unchanging goodness and mercy at the end might have echoed God’s simple, self-same, and immutable oneness. I argued next that my assumed prelate might have interpreted the role of Sesto—in line with prima facie readings of the seventh chapter of the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans and Augustine’s influential theological analysis of sin—as a parable for human sin and salvation. Sesto is torn between his philia of Tito and his eros for Vitellia. Despite his recognition of the good and his desire to do it, concupiscence prevents him from doing what he ought. Instead, his emotional weakness and his carnal needs lead him to prefer evil over good. Sesto has disordered priorities. He lets his infatuation with Vitellia’s beauty get the better of him. His murder attempt against his benefactor Tito constitutes a rebellion against the one who, to a Catholic prelate, would have appeared as the political representative of God on earth. In Act One, Sesto thus represents the paradigmatic sinner who succumbs to his concupiscence, is unable to do good despite better knowledge, and revolts against God. In Act Two, however, the sinner repents and converts. Sesto overcomes his concupiscence and emotional enslavement to Vitellia. He is contrite, even though he struggles with confessing his guilt without thereby betraying the woman he still loves. My Catholic prelate in the audience, I suggested, could not have failed to notice the robust theological imagery with which Sesto’s turn-around is presented on stage, from the focus on conversion in Annio’s aria (No. 13) and that on suffering in Sesto’s trio with Publio and Vitellia (No. 14), the link between Sesto’s suffering and Vitellia’s own conversion, to the biblical allusions in Sesto’s final private encounter with the emperor. For our prelate, I contended, Sesto’s fate in the second act might have offered an operatic image of the repentant sinner. Finally, I argued that a Catholic prelate in the Prague audience might have interpreted the role of Vitellia as another paradigmatic example of how the Catholic tradition understands sin. Vitellia is curved in upon herself, engages in inordinate self-love, is prideful, wants to dominate (libido dominandi), uses Sesto for her own self-serving purposes (rather than enjoying him as an end in himself), and, finally, hates the representative of God on stage. Throughout much of both acts, Vitellia’s appearance is marked by ambition, jealousy, anger, exclusive self-concern, and an obsession with honor and glory, which she attempts to achieve through treachery, deceit, and even murder. A Catholic prelate might have found here the classical themes in an Augustinian discussion of sin. In Act Two, my prelate might also have noticed allusions to other Christian doctrines. Here, Vitellia shows the first signs of her eventual repentance and finally completes her moral conversion. Sesto’s willingness to give his life to protect her might have been reminiscent of the Christian understanding of substitutionary suffering. Sesto’s suffering on her behalf remains instrumental in Vitellia’s full metanoia. Again, other aspects might have reminded my cleric of

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the theological significance of one’s conscience. When Servilia insists that credible repentance requires acts of love rather than displays of emotion, any enlightened Catholic might have been reminded of Muratori’s emphasis on practical charity and concomitant de-emphasis of dogmatism, liturgy, and monasticism. In her conversion scene, Vitellia’s sudden show of determination could have alluded to the need for perseverance in faith amidst adversity, Christian martyrdom, and substitutionary atonement. Vitellia could thereby appear to be a parable for Mary Magdalene, traditionally presented in Catholic iconography as a repentant sinner. Vitellia’s vision of death, finally, could have emerged as an allusion to a mystical experience resulting from her contrition and confession. If these were, indeed, theological associations a Catholic prelate could have had in the opera house of Prague in 1791, it raises the further question of what other Catholics might have associated with the work. We might wonder about the conversations our assumed prelate had with other audience members when leaving the theater. In 1791, Abbot Wenzel Mayer was a member of the Bohemian Diet. Did he attend the initial performance of La clemenza di Tito? And, if he did, did he talk with other members of the Diet about what they saw and heard? What common ground, if any, would they have found? What disagreements would have arisen? Engaging in reception history raises fascinating interpretative possibilities. If we only knew.

Notes 1 The rule is usually given in this way: Quicquid recipitur, recipitur secundum modum recipientis (Whatever is received is received according to the intention of the recipient). See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, qu. 12 art. 4 resp., available at https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I.Q12.A4: “But the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower” (Cognitum autem est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis). 2 Note that even some laity—bourgeois, aristocratic, and noble—may have had some familiarity with liturgical texts, the ordinary of the mass, the daily lectionary, the psalms, the biblical readings of the Sunday liturgy and Vespers, and perhaps even with a few theological authors. Mozart’s father Leopold read Muratori’s writings, and others might have done so as well.

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Index

absolutism see baroque absolutism; enlightened absolutism Accademia degli Arcardi 51, 186 Adam and Eve 168 age of sensibility 56–57, 65–68, 160, 186; theological image of God in 108–109, 11 alien sins 124; see also sin Ambrose 124 Andromaque (Racine) 50 Annio (character) 60, 65–66, 148; begs for mercy for Sesto 92–93; friendship with Sesto 126, 133–134; as priestly confessor 135–136; on Tito’s emotional self-control 85 Aquinas, Thomas 97, 137 Arco, Karl Count von 14 Aristotle 54; on friendship 86 atonement see substitutionary suffering/ atonement Augustine of Hippo 51, 85, 99, 107; on glory 165; on love, 162; on nature of sin 133, 161–162, 187; on revenge, 160 Austria: abolition of death penalty in 29–30; Josephinian Enlightenment in 6–12, 16, 17, 171, 185; panegyric tradition in 50; see also Habsburg crown territories Autonomy and Mercy (Nagel) 32 Ave, verum corpus (Mozart) 17 Bach, Johann Sebastian 16, 175 baroque absolutism: Metastasio’s support of 51, 53–54; morality considered private during 65, 66; see also enlightened absolutism Beccaria, Cesare: criminal punishment reform of 29, 105–107, 112; Metastasio’s influence on 51; opposition to monarchical clemency by 54–55, 105, 106, 107

Berenice (character) 65, 85, 86, 160, 162–163 betrayal 92–93, 144 Bohemian Estates 1, 3, 26, 62; desire to win Leopold’s favor by 29 Breviarium Romanum 12 brotherly love 64, 70; see also love Bullinger, Abbé Franz Joseph Johann Nepomuk 15 Bylansky, Abbot Gottfried 9, 10, 11, 12 Caldara, Antonio 3, 27 Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia 28 Catholic audience, theologically educated 3, 5, 13, 185–186 Catholic clergy: biblical knowledge of 12–13, 186; in Habsburg lands 6–9; influence of 7; Josephinian reform of 6–9, 10, 11, 171; late 18th-century role of 5; theological education of 7, 12–13; see also Catholic audience, theologically educated Catholics: enlightenment of in Habsburg lands 6–12; rejection of blind faith by enlightened 163–164; see also Catholic audience, theologically educated Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor 27, 28 Christina, Queen of Sweden 51 Cicero 52 Cinna, ou la clémence d’Auguste (Corneille) 50 clemency: benefits of 106, 107; clementia Austriaca 5, 28; dangers of 55; discussed between Tito and Publio 59; function of 52, 54, 55; objections to 105–106, 107; replaced by rule of law, 63; Tito’s pardon of Sesto 102–105, 146; transformation of in Mazzolà’s libretto 64, 66–68, 186; see also criminal punishment reform

Index clergy see Catholic clergy Colloredo, Hieronymus Count von 14 common good 52, 61; through humanité, 64; through law over clemency 63; see also humanité concupiscence, 123–128, 137, 147 confession: of Sesto 111, 140–143, 187; of Vitellia 103, 146, 169, 176, 188 conscience, 169, 177 constitutional monarchy: French thinkers support of 63; Leopold II’s support of 61–62; Louis XVI’s aversion to 62 contrition 140, 146, 147, 169, 170 Corneille, Pierre, 50, 51 Così fan tutte (Mozart) 55 Council of Trent 50 criminal punishment reform 29, 105–107, 112; see also clemency da Ponte, Lorenzo 9 David, King 110; Tito/Sesto friendship vis-à-vis David/Jonathan 86–87 Davidde Penitente (Mozart) 16 De civitate Dei (Augustine) 51 De clementia (Seneca) 50, 52 De jure belli ac pacis (Grotius) 52 Della regolata divozione dei cristiani (Muratori) 14 Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Mozart) 63 Dies irae, 142 Die Zauberflöte (Mozart) 36, 63, 64, 90, 163 Don Giovanni (Mozart) 9, 32, 55 Elisabeth Christine, Holy Roman Empress 27 enlightened absolutism: critiqued by French thinkers 63; eroded by political morality 65; in Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito 4, 52, 53–54, 62, 110; replaced by humanité in La clemenza di Tito 64; see also baroque absolutism Enlightenment: early 63; Josephinian 6–12; late, 63–65; political philosophy 62–65; transition from early to late, 102–103 ensembles 57 equality 64, 86, 87 Ezekiel, prophet 101 face: as gateway to the heart 95–99; of God/Christ 96–98, 140 faith 102, 105, 145, 163–164 fear 98, 102, 111 Fourth Suffering Servant Song 172 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia 106

201

Freemasonry: and brotherly love, 64, 70; Mozart and 17, 29; musical instruments of 91; and new political order 61, 68; objection to clemency by 105; Tito’s mildness related to 117n96 French Revolution 27, 30, 61–62 Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia 62 friendship: Annio and Sesto 126, 133–134; Aristotle on 86; Sesto’s concupiscence transforms to 137; Tito and Sesto 86–87, 113n12, 139, 140, 142, 186; Tito’s generosity and, 89 generosity 88–89 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 27 God: image of in age of sensibility 108–109, 111; salvation through love of 145, 148; self-identification of in Exodus 104; sinners cannot stand in presence of 141–142 grace 87–89, 178; equalizing effect of 88; substituted by Mozart with human forgiveness 34, 37–38; versus justice 107–108 Gravina, Gian Vincenzo 51, 54 Greater Doxology 91 Grotius, Hugo 50, 51, 54, 186 Guardasoni, Domenico 26 Handel, George Frideric 16 Habsburg crown territories: 18th-century clergy in 6–9; effect of La clemenza di Tito on 28; see also Austria; La clemenza di Tito heart, theme of 100–102 “Heidelberg Disputation" (Luther) 88 Hobbes, Thomas 54 Hofmann, Leopold, 16 hope 92, 98, 108, 111, 135 Hospitallers 8 humanité, 64–65, 69–70, 90–92, 186; see also common good Idomeneo (Mozart) 35 Illuminati 17 Isaiah, prophet 142 Jacob and the Happy Life (Ambrose) 124 Jacopone da Todi 175 Jahn, Otto 35 Jansenism 10, 13, 186 jealousy 124, 160, 161, 164, 177, 187 Jesuits 8, 11, 136

202

Index

Jesus Christ: face of 97–98, 140; revenge opposed by 99; Sesto’s substitutionary suffering related to 138, 172–173, 178, 187; Tito as parable for 84–94, 102–111, 136, 140, 142, 186–187; Tito/Sesto friendship vis-à-vis Jesus/disciples 87, 186 Jonathan, Prince of Israel 86–87 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor 4, 26; clemency under 106; clergy reforms under 6–9, 10, 11, 171; harsh leadership of 28, 30; Josephinian Enlightenment 6–12, 171, 185; liturgical reforms under 16, 17; Muratori’s influence on 171; opera buffa preference of 35–36; unpopularity of 28 Judas Iscariot 92–93, 129, 135, 140, 144 justice: versus mercy 105–111; see also clemency justification 145 Kant, Immanuel 105, 107 Korah, Dathan, and Abiram 132 Kyrie in D minor (Mozart) 17 La clemenza di Tito (Metastasio and Caldara, 1734) libretto of 50–60, 61, 63, 66, 75n56, 110, 113n12, 186; origins of 3, 27 La clemenza di Tito (Mozart and Mazzolà, 1791): chorus in 58; critical response to 4, 18n6, 30–35, 37; enlightened absolutism in 4, 52, 53, 62; ensembles in 57; latent positive reception of 37; libretto of 55–60, 64, 66–68, 75n56, 76n62, 105, 106, 110, 170, 186; Mozart’s opinion of 1, 36; Mozart’s political philosophy expressed in 27, 34, 37, 91; origins of 1, 3, 26–27, 31; perception of by nobility 37, 61, 62; political context of 26–30; political message of 27, 28, 37, 57–60, 62, 68, 75n56, 76n62; rushed production of 35; selection of Mozart/ Mazzolà for 26–27; see also Catholic audience, theologically educated laws: monarchical clemency to offset severe 53–54; over monarchical clemency 63, 186; repentance through God’s love over severe 148 Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) 34, 37, 55, 57 Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor 1, 3; compared with Titus 28, 86; as competent and moderate leader 28–29, 30; coronation of 26; familiarity of La clemenza di Tito by 27; on French Revolution 30; as Grand Duke of

Tuscany 29, 30, 86; impact of enlightenment philosophy on 62; political self-understanding of 42n42, 60–62; preference for opera seria by 36; response to capture of French monarchs by 62; support for constitutional monarchy by 60–62 Löbl, Abbot Benno 10 Louis XVI, King of France 30, 61–62 love 87, 102, 145; brotherly 64, 70; friendship versus concupiscence 137; for God’s sake 162 Lucchesini, Marchese Girolamo 30 Luther, Martin 88 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 50, 51 Magnificat 112 Mannheim, Germany 14–15 Maria Ludovica, Empress 62 Maria Theresia, Holy Roman Empress 11, 61, 171 Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France 30, 61–62 martyrdom 172, 188 Mary, mother of Jesus 112, 138 Mary Magdalene 175, 178, 188 Mass in C minor 16 Matthäuspassion (Bach) 175 Mayer, Abbot Wenzel 9, 10, 12, 13, 188 Mazzolà, Caterino 1, 2, 26–27; as Freemason 29; Mozart’s esteem for 36, 55; see also La clemenza di Tito (Mozart and Mazzolà, 1791) Melanchthon, Philip 88 mercy 33, 34; tension between justice and, 105–111, 186; to uphold absolute rule 52, 54 metanoia 167–168, 172–177, 187; see also repentance Metastasio, Pietro 1; enlightened absolutism supported by 4, 52, 53–54, 62, 110; praise for 51; see also La clemenza di Tito (Metastasio and Caldara, 1734) Missale Romanum 12 monasteries: reform of under Joseph II 7–8, 10, 171 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de 51, 54–55, 106 "Most Sacred Heart of Jesus" 136 Mount Vesuvius eruption 38, 86 Mozart, Constanze 15, 16, 17, 31 Mozart, Leopold, 13–14, 15–16 Mozart, Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia 14 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: application as assistant Kapellmeister 16; declining

Index

203

health of 31, 35; development of opera buffa by 34; ethereal harmonies of 170–171; financial distress of 31, 35; as Freemason 17, 29, 39n8; monarchical loyalty of 63; opinion of La clemenza di Tito by 1, 36; out of favor with Leopold II 39n8; political philosophy of 27, 37, 41n34, 91; preference for church music 16–17; preference for opera seria 36; questionable theological intent of 1–2; reason for accepting La clemenza di Tito commission 31, 35; religiosity of 1, 5–6, 13–17, 34, 185; renewal of opera buffa by 34; renewal of opera seria by 3–4, 30–38, 54–55, 186; second choice for composer of La clemenza di Tito 26; on supremacy of music over libretto 55; theology evoked by xiii–xiv Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, works of: Ave, verum corpus 17; Così fan tutte 55; Davidde Penitente 16; Die Entführung aus dem Serail 63; Die Zauberflöte 31, 36, 63, 90; Don Giovanni 9, 32, 55, 123; Idomeneo 35; Kyrie in D minor 17; Le nozze di Figaro 34, 37, 55, 57, 123; Requiem 17; Solemn Mass in C minor 15 Muratori, Lodovico Antonio 14, 51, 171, 186, 188 Mysliveček, Josef 28

piety 64, 138, 148, 171, 174 Pillnitz Declaration 62 Pitr, Abbot Joseph Bonaventura 9–10, 12 power, lust for 160, 176, 177 Prague, Bohemia: Catholic enlightenment in 9–12; rumors of impending revolution in 61 pride 160, 164–165, 176, 177 The Prince (Machiavelli) 50 prodigal son parable 111 Przichowsky, Archbishop Anton Peter Count von 11, 124 psalter 13 Publio (character) 53, 59, 67; on Tito’s conflicting emotions about Sesto 96 Pufendorf, Samuel von 186

Nagel, Ivan 4, 32–35, 37, 104–105, 106 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 86 Niemetschek, Franz Xaver 16, 31 Nissen, Georg Nikolaus von 31 Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques 10 Novello, Vincent 17

Saint-Lambert, Jean-François de 64 St. Stephen’s Cathedral 16 Salieri, Antonio 26 salvation 107, 108, 147, 148; Sesto as parable for, 123–147, 187 Salve Caput Cruentatum 168 satisfaction 176, 177 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel 95, 129, 134, 137, 143 Seibt, Karl Heinrich 10, 11 seminaries 7, 12 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 50, 52, 54, 106 sentimentalism 65, 186 Servilia (character) 65–66, 86, 160, 164; saintliness of 170–171, 177; Tito admires truthfulness of 89–90 Sesto (character) 52, 59, 60, 67, 167; betrayal of 92–93, 129, 135, 140, 144; confession of 111, 187; contrition of 140, 146, 147, 176, 187; conversion of 148, 187; execution for 102; as good but weak 123, 126, 127, 138, 139; justice and mercy given to 108; liberated from concupiscence 137–138, 144, 187;

On Crimes and Punishments (Beccaria) 29 opera buffa 4, 33–34 opera seria: da capo arias in 56–57; meaning of 1, 33; Mozart’s renewal of 3–4, 30–38, 54–55, 186 Origines juris civilis (Gravina) 54 pastoral theology 11 Paul the Apostle 2, 92, 97, 108, 148, 187; on conscience 169; on salvation of God’s love over law, 145, 148; on sin 125, 145; on substitutionary atonement 178 penitential psalms 141 Peter the Apostle 140 Pezzl, Johann 6–9 Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Mendelssohn) 16

Qualtenberg, Baron Franz Karl Kressel von 10 Rautenstrauch, Abbot Franz Stephan 10, 11–12, 13 repentance: of Sesto 111, 128–136, 147, 148, 187; of Vitellia 167–168, 172–177, 187 Requiem (Mozart) 17, 35, 107 revenge 99, 103, 107, 160–161, 176, 177 Rosicrucians 17 Rottenhan, Heinrich Franz Count von 26, 37 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 51

204

Index

manipulation of by Vitellia 124, 126, 127, 161, 163, 187; as a martyr 172; as a parable for sin and salvation 123–147, 187; pardon of 102–105, 146; praise for Tito by 84–85; repentance of 111, 128–136, 147, 148, 187; as slave to concupiscence 123–128, 147; substitutionary suffering/atonement of 138, 172–173, 178, 187; on Tito’s changed face 95, 98, 99; Tito’s friendship with 86–88, 113n12, 139, 140, 142, 186 sin 178; alien sin 124; awareness of one’s 168; Sesto as a parable for 123–147, 187; vainglory as 164–166; Vitellia as exemplification of 161–162, 177, 187 Skizze von Wien 6 social contract theory 63, 64–65, 69, 70, 186 Solemn Mass in C minor (Mozart) 15 Stabat mater dolorosa (Todi) 175 Stoll, Anton 17 substitutionary suffering/atonement 138, 172–173, 178, 187, 188 Suetonius 39, 50 suffering see substitutionary suffering/ atonement Süssmayr, Franz Xaver 17 Tacitus 50, 51, 52 The City of God (Augustine) 165, 177 The Metaphysics of Morals (Kant) 105 Tite et Bérénice (Corneille) 50 Tito (character) 5, 52–53, 59, 60, 67; absolute goodness of 103, 134, 176; admires Servilia’s truthfulness 89–90; contempt for glory by 165; dilemma of between justice and mercy 105–111; emotional self-control of 85; equalizing grace of 88; face of 95–99; friendship with Sesto 86–88, 113n12, 139, 140, 142, 186; generosity of 88–89; grace of 87–89; mildness of in Mazzolà’s libretto 64–65, 105, 106, 117n96, 136, 170; as parable for Jesus 84–94, 102–111, 136, 140, 142, 186–187; as ruler guided by Catholic moral principles 99, 101–102; Sesto’s betrayal of 92–93; on Sesto’s changed face 95–96; as Sesto’s priestly

confessor 142–43; on Sesto’s repentance 111; suffers deception from others 92–95; and theme of the heart 100–102; transformation to humanist leader 90–92, 117n96; wishes for fidelity/faith born of love 102 Titus, Roman Emperor 1; anti-Jewish attitude of 39; brutal rule of 38–39; generous acts of 38–39; Leopold compared to 28; positive image of shaped by La clemenza di Tito 28 Tranquillus, Gaius Suetonius 38 truth 89–90, 95; love for 65, 186 vainglory 164–166, 177 Veil of Veronica 97, 140 Vienna, Austria 6–9 Vitellia (character) 60, 109; confession of 103, 146, 169, 176, 188; contrition of 176, 188; conversion of 145–146, 148, 170, 171–176, 178, 188; demand for blind faith as antiquated, 163–164; end as triumph of grace, 178; examines her conscience, 162, 172; exemplification of a sinner 161–162, 177, 187; fury of 160–161, 164, 166; incurvature of 166–167, 177, 187; insulted pride of 160, 164–165, 176; jealousy of 160, 164; justice and mercy given to 108; manipulation of Sesto by 124, 126, 127, 161, 163, 187; power sought by 160, 176, 177, 187; Sesto’s substitutionary atonement for 138, 172–173, 178, 187, 188; repentance/ metanoia of 167–168, 172–177, 187; revenge sought by 123, 160–161, 176, 177; salvation of 138; satisfaction shown by 176, 177; vainglory of 164–166, 177, 187; vis-à-vis Mary Magdalene, 175, 177, 188; see also characters Annio; Servilia; Sesto; Tito; Vitellia Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 51 Wagner, Richard, 32 Zahlheim, Franz Zaglauer von 30 Zinzendorf, Count Karl Johann Christian von 18n6, 37

Index of scriptures

Bible verses: Genesis 3:8 168; Genesis 3:12 143; Genesis 4:14 96; Genesis 6:6 100; Genesis 8:11 100; Exodus 3:6 96–97; Exodus 3:14 112; Exodus 7:3 101; Exodus 9:12 101; Exodus 33:11 97; Exodus 33:14 104, 112; Exodus 33:20 97; Exodus 34:29 97; Exodus 34:33 97; Numbers 16:1–35 132; Deuteronomy 11:18 100; Deuteronomy 26:16 101; Deuteronomy 30:6 101; Joshua 7:8 123; 1 Samuel 2:1–10 94; 1 Samuel 18:1, 3 86; 1 Samuel 19:1–17 86; 1 Samuel 20:32–33 86; 1 Kings 19:12–13 97; Job 1:21 15; Psalm 2 103; Psalm 2:1–6 75n52; Psalm 20 103; Psalm 32 145–146; Psalm 32:5 141; Psalm 38:2, 4, 13–14, 17–18 141; Psalm 44:15 96; Psalm 51 136; Psalm 51:1–5 141; Psalm 72 103, 110; Psalm 72:1–4, 12–14 110–111; Psalm 89:20–38 103; Psalm 95:8 101; Psalm 101 103, 110–111; Psalm 102:17 136; Psalm 110 103; Psalm 116:4 123; Psalm 119:153 136; Psalm 130:3 107, 142; Psalm 130:7 136; Psalm 132 103; Ecclesiastes 3:1 15; Isaiah 6:2 97; Isaiah 6:5 142; Isaiah 6:7 142; Isaiah 53 138; Isaiah 53:1–12 172; Jeremiah 1:6 123; Jeremiah 31:33 101; Lamentations 1:2 132; Ezekiel 36:26 101, 112, 187; Matthew 5:8 101; Matthew 5:39 99;

Matthew 5:43–44 161; Matthew 6:10 15; Matthew 11:29 101; Matthew 17:2 97 ; Matthew 18:10 97; Matthew 26:14–16 129; Matthew 26:47–56 129; Matthew 27:3–5 140; Matthew 27:3–10 129; Matthew 27:5 135; Mark 10:14 109; Mark 14:10 140; Mark 14:21 93; Mark 14:43–46 140; Mark 14:50 140; Mark 14:66–72 140; Mark 14:72 140; Mark 16:18–21 140; Mark 16:29–31 140; Luke 1:46–45 94; Luke 6: 20–21, 24–25 94–95; Luke 6:29 99; Luke 7:36–49 175; Luke 7:36–50 140; Luke 9:29 97; Luke 15:7 147; Luke 15:17–32 111; Luke 23:27–28 97; John 3:5 92; John 5:13 87; John 5:14 87; John 5:15 87, 140; John 19:34 136; Romans 2:15 169, 177; Romans 5:20 2, 108, 178; Romans 7 127, 132; Romans 7:8–21, 14–25 175; Romans 7:15–25 125; Romans 8:2–3 145; Romans 12:1 138; 1 Corinthians 7:21 175; 2 Corinthians 3:17 175; 2 Corinthians 4:6 97; 2 Corinthians 5:21 92, 172, 178; Galatians 1:1 92; Galatians 5:1 175; Colossians 1:24 138, 178; Colossians 3:8 102; Colossians 3:12 102; Hebrews 3:7–9 101; Hebrews 4:15 92; 1 Peter 2:22 92; 1 John 4:18 102; Revelation 22:4 97