Lo sposo deluso

Lo sposo deluso, ossia La rivalità di tre donne per un solo amante (The Deluded Bridegroom, or The Rivalry of Three Women for One Lover) is a two-act opera buffa, K. 430, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart between 1783 and 1784. However, the opera was never completed and only a 20-minute fragment from act 1 exists.

Performance history

Mozart had originally planned to have the opera performed by a seven-member Italian troupe in Vienna. Although it was once thought that Lorenzo Da Ponte might have been the author of the libretto, scholarship by Alessandra Campana has established that the libretto was written by an unknown Italian poet for Domenico Cimarosa's opera Le donne rivali, which he composed for the Rome carnival season of 1780. According to Neal Zaslaw, Cimarosa's librettist may have been Giuseppe Petrosellini, the house poet of the Teatro Valle where Le donne rivali premiered. (Petrosellini was also the probable librettist of Mozart's earlier opera La finta giardiniera). For Lo sposo deluso, Mozart had the characters in Le donne rivali expanded from five to seven, renamed the original five, and established the cast of singers for whom he would be writing. It is unclear why he abandoned the work, although Zaslaw has proposed that it was a combination of the difficulties presented by re-writing and adapting the libretto for the Viennese audience and the fact that in 1785, Da Ponte had finally come through with the libretto for Le nozze di Figaro.

In 1991, the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death, Opera North premièred The Jewel Box, a pasticcio opera devised by Paul Griffiths. This used the existing pieces from Lo sposo deluso and L'oca del Cairo as well as arias written by Mozart for insertion into operas by Anfossi, Piccini and Cimarosa, among others. (The programme was an imagined reconstruction of a 1783 pantomime in which Mozart and Aloysia Weber are said to have taken part.)

In 2006, the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, the fragment of Lo sposo deluso received several performances, including:

• Bampton Classical Opera's revival of The Jewel Box.
• The Salzburg Festival's double bill of Lo sposo deluso and L'oca del Cairo, and other arias written by Mozart in a programme titled Rex tremendus, conceived and staged by Joachim Schlöme with the Camerata Salzburg conducted by de. (This performance is preserved on DVD, see Recordings)

Roles

Note that the opera was unfinished and never premiered as such. The singers' names given in the table below are those for whom Mozart wrote the roles and who were to have sung in its premiere.

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast (Conductor: – )
Bocconio Papparelli, a rich but stupid man, betrothed to Eugenia	bass	Francesco Benucci
Eugenia, a young Roman noblewoman, betrothed to Papparelli but in love with Don Asdrubale	soprano	Nancy Storace
Don Asdrubale, a Tuscan army officer	tenor	Stefano Mandini
Bettina, Papparelli's vain young niece, also in love with Don Asdrubale	soprano	Katherina Cavalieri
Pulcherio, the misogynist friend of Papparelli	tenor	Francesco Bussani
Gervasio, Eugenia's tutor, in love with Metilde	bass	Signore Pugnetti
Metilde, a virtuoso singer and dancer and friend of Bettina, also in love with Don Asdrubale	soprano	Theresia Teyber

The setting is a seaside villa near Livorno.

The cast is nearly identical to that of the first Le nozze di Figaro. Benucci was the first Figaro. Storace the first Susanna. Mandini the first Count Almaviva, and Bussani the first Bartolo. Both Mandini and Bussani started as tenors but by this time they were a baritone and a bass respectively.

Existing pieces from the opera

• Overtura – an upbeat, presto instrumental piece which develops into a more lethargic pensive mood
• Quartetto – "Ah, ah che ridere" (Pulcherio, Papparelli, Bettina, Don Asdrubale)
• Aria (fragment) – "Nacqui all'aria trionfale" (Eugenia)
• Aria (fragment) – "Dove mai trovar quel ciglio?" (Pulcherio)
• Terzetto – "Che accidenti" (Papparelli, Don Asdrubale, Eugenia)

A *completion (complete reconstruction) of the whole opera had been ultimated by Italian musicologist Mario G. Genesi: never officially edited, it was intended as a "private" manuscript version for didactic purpose and in fact used by the pupils of an Italian local musical institute. This version consists in 62 numbers, 2 acts, 23 instrumental orchestral single parts (violin I, violin II, viola, cello, double bass; bassoon I, bassoon II, horn I, horn II, horn III, horn IV; flute I, flute II, clarinet I, clarinet II, hautbois I, hautbois II; cello with cembalo; percussions; trumpet I, trumpet II, trumpet III,"Alla Spagnola" guitar), 7 vocal solo parts (Pulcherio-T; Gervasio-T; Don Asdrubale-T; Don Bocconio- Bass-baritone; Donna Eugenia-S; Metilde-S;Bettina-S) and a single 4-voice male choir in act 2 which can be omitted.

Recordings

• Rex Tremendus (Lo sposo deluso, L'oca del Cairo and other fragments by W. A. Mozart) with Ann Murray, Marianne Hamre, Graham Smith, Josef Wagner, Marisa Martins, Jeremy Ovenden, Matthias Klink, Silvia Moi, Miljenko Turk, Malin Hartelius and the Camerata Salzburg conducted by Michael Hofstetter. DVD of the live performance at the 2006 Salzburg Festival (Deutsche Grammophon 0734250)
• L'oca del Cairo / Lo sposo deluso, Felicity Palmer, Ileana Cotrubaș, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Robert Tear, Clifford Grant; London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davies, studio recording from 1991, volume 39 of The Complete Mozart Edition (Philips 028942253926)

References

Notes

Sources

• Anderson, Emily, "An Unpublished Letter of Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart", Music & Letters (Vol. 18, No. 2, April 1937), pp. 128–133
• Bampton Classical Opera's November 2006 performance of Mozart – The Jewel Box – Press reviews
• Campana, Alessandra, "Il libretto de Lo sposo deluso", Mozart-Jahrbuch (1988–89), pp. 573–88.
• Dell Antonio, Andrew, "Il Compositore Deluso: The Fragments of Mozart's Comic Opera Lo sposo deluso (K424a/430)" in Stanley Sadie, (ed.) Wolfgang Amadé Mozart: Essays on His Life and Work, (1996) London: Oxford University Press.
• Zaslaw, Neal, "Waiting for Figaro" in Stanley Sadie, (ed.) Wolfgang Amadé Mozart: Essays on His Life and Work, (1996) London: Oxford University Press.

Further reading

• W. A. Mozart, Lo sposo deluso, K. 430 – Complete reconstruction by Mario-Giuseppe Genesi in three volumes – I: piano vocal, II: conductor's score, III: 23 orchestral single instrumental parts; Piacenza, P. M. Ed., 2009, (score held by Salzburg Mozarteum and the New York Sibley Music Library). This extensive reconstruction includes 62 numbers equally subdivided in recitatives, a quartet, two finali d' atto, single arias, some terzetti and only one duetto. Genesi's not yet staged reconstruction includes also a couple of basset horns introduced in the Mozart style, whilst most of the music is Mozart's original drawn one from the less-known vocal production.

External links

• Lo sposo deluso: Score and critical report (German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
• Lo sposo deluso: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Libretto
• Lo sposo deluso on YouTube