The Fandango Scene in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro
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Abstract |
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This article concerns the use of dance in the Act 3 finale of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, starting from the problem articulated by Alan Tyson in his Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores. Tyson points out that the absence of the fandango from the Viennese musical sources is at odds with Da Ponte's statement that the dance scene was restored at the emperor's command. New evidence shows that the fandango was performed for the three performances that constituted a première at this time in Vienna and was then removed from the score. However, before its removal, the score with the fandango intact was copied for at least one other theatre, hence accounting for the two versions that circulated through Europe. The article goes on to consider the dramatic function of the fandango by exploring the nature of the dance itself and examining the stage directions in the autograph in combination with those in Beaumarchais's play, several early librettos and editions, and the original first-desk first-violin part.
An early version of the first part of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Antonio Salieri e il teatro musicale a Vienna’ in Legnago, Italy, 18–19 April 2000, and in the Mozart Society Study Session at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Toronto, 1–5 November 2000. The complete paper was read at the University of Georgia, 6 October 2005. A condensed version of the second part was read at the autumn general meeting of the American Philosophical Society, San Francisco, 9–11 November 2006. Michael Malkiewicz read the complete version in January 2005. Parts of it and our subsequent discussion fed into his article ‘"Frames and Fringes": Zur Lektüre von Balletquellen’, Kongressbericht Leipzig 2006, ed. Malkiewicz and Jörg Rothkamm (Berlin, 2007), 69–84.