By the side of these many excellencies the too great length of most of the pieces, especially of the songs, is felt as a defect throughout; a defect due, no doubt, to the taste of the time and to the youth of the composer. The influence of the broader form of the opera seria, and the pleasure of the
public in the mere hearing of music, were combined with the fact that Mozart was not yet capable of that self-criticism which rejects all that is superfluous, even when it is good in itself.
It may well be conceived that the opera was performed with extraordinary success in Munich (1775), and that it soon attained pre-eminence among the most admired contemporary comic operas. Nissen informs us that it made little effect in Frankfort (1789); the clumsy German adaptation may have been in part to blame for this; but the chief cause was doubtless the altered taste of the public, brought about by the French operettas and Mozart's "Entführung."
[Footnote 1: Opitz's "Dafhe" (1627) follows Rinuccini's original in fidelity to the ancient style; a second adaptation, performed in 1672 and 1678, with music by Gius. Peranda and G. A. Bontempi (Fürstenau, Zur Gesch. d. Mus. in Dresden, I., pp. 234, 251, 254), is enlarged, chiefly by comic scenes of great coarseness between Jakels the piper, Käthe the peasant-girl, and her father Chremes. It was similarly treated in Hamburg. (Lindner, Die erste Deutsche Oper, p. 52).]
[Footnote 2: There are two thick volumes in the collection of the King of Saxony, containing comic scenes from nineteen operas by Al. Scarlatti, Gasparini, Giovanni Buononcini, Luigi Manci, Gius. Aldovrandini, and Severo de Luca.]
[Footnote 3: Grimm, Corresp. littM I., p. 203.]
[Footnote 4: Goethe, Werke, XIX., p. 421.]
[Footnote 5: Goethe's Scherz, List und Rache, is an intermezzo thus increased (Werke, XIX., p. 421.).]
[Footnote 6: Rousseau, Dictionn. de Mus., Intermidd. C£ Hiller, Wöch. Nachr., I., p. 145.]
[Footnote 7: The opera bnffa had no strict rule even as to its divisions. Either the two acts of the intermezzi were preserved, or the opera might be divided into three or four acts.]
[Footnote 8: Mattei (Riforma del Teatro vor Metastasio, Opp. III., p. xix.): Le com-medie (per musica) presso di noi son piene di caratteri caricati, e la lingua specialmente Napoletana non è altro che un ammasso di espressioni caricate; non ci è aria, in cui non si esprime o il cane, o la gatta, o gli uccelli, o la ruota che gira o il cannone che spara, e altre cose simili; qui troverete un ubbriaco, là un matto; qui un che parla e sconnetta, là un che balbuttisce ec. Quelle cose son facilissime ad esprimersi in musica (se ben gl' ignoranti le ammirano e restano attoniti) in quella maniera stessa, ch' è facile a un pittore esprimere un volto caricato: poichè comunque riesca il ritratto, basta, che vi si vegga quel lungo naso, o quel occhio Iosco del principale: ognuno lo conosce, ognuno giura chè desso.]