Leopold and Wolfgang visit Cignaroli (Verona 1770); Constanze’s benefit concert in the Burgtheater (23 Dec 1791); and 5 other new documents

On 8 Jan 1770, the celebrated Veronese painter Giambettino Cignaroli recorded in his diary a visit by Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart. Cignaroli is one of the painters to whom the famous “Verona portrait” of young Wolfgang has sometimes been attributed; another oft-named candidate is Cignaroli’s student Saverio Dalla Rosa. Guest contributor Matteo Magarotto summarizes the evidence for these attributions in light of Cignaroli’s diary entry and other evidence, concluding that there is not a strong case for either candidate, and that the attribution is still an open question.

An anonymous musical almanac from 1782, probably by Carl Friedrich Junker, contains two references to Mozart. One of these was already noted in NMD and Neue Folge, but the other was not: Mozart’s name also appears in the monthly calendar at the front of the almanac, associated (apparently arbitrarily) with the date 14 Jun.

This item in the Venetian newspaper Notizie del mondo is one of five known news reports on the performance of Le nozze di Figaro in Prague on 14 Oct 1787 to mark the visit of Archduchess Maria Theresia, who was on her way to Dresden to complete her marriage to Prince Anton of Saxony. An examination of the five reports shows that they are based on common sources, but (except in one case) are not direct copies of one another.

In a previously overlooked reference to Mozart in the published travel diary of the Danish actor Joachim Daniel Preisler, Preisler and his colleague Michael Rosing visit the prominent actor Johann Heinrich Friedrich Müller at home in Vienna, where they hear his daughter Josepha Hortensia play piano sonatas by Mozart and her teacher Josepha Auernhammer. This item was discovered by Richard Mackey.

A reference to Mozart’s works for piano four-hands in a review in the Gothaische gelehrte Zeitungen of three sonatas in that genre by Baron August Diedrich Friedrich Wilhelm von Münchhausen.

A short favorable review of the premiere of the first Viennese revival of Le nozze di Figaro, a production for which Mozart made substantive changes. The review shows that the role of Figaro was sung by Giovanni Battista Brocchi, who had created the role of Figaro in Paisiello’s Il barbieri di Siviglia in St. Petersburg in 1782, but whose participation in the Viennese revival of Figaro was previously unknown. The commentary takes the opportunity to reexamine the reception of Figaro in Vienna in the seasons 1789–90 and 1790–91.

On 31 Dec 1791 the Preßburger Zeitung published a brief report of a benefit concert for Constanze Mozart in the Burgtheater in Vienna on Fri, 23 Dec. This report is transcribed in Dokumente, but Deutsch knew of no other evidence to confirm that the concert took place and was clearly skeptical. We now know that there are at least five published reports of the concert: in the Brünner Zeitung, the Münchner Zeitung (transcribed here for the first time), the Oberdeutsche Staatszeitung, and the Journal des Luxus und der Moden, in addition to the Preßburger Zeitung. It seems certain, then, that Constanze’s benefit concert did take place. Our commentary re-examines the context of the concert, which may have been organized at the instigation of Emperor Leopold II, who also made a generous contribution to the event.