Three documents from Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart’s first trip to Italy

This letter of recommendation for the Mozarts was written by Count Johann Georg Anton Felix von Arco in Salzburg to his second cousin Count Francesco Eugenio d’Arco in Mantua. The letter, written two days before Leopold and Wolfgang’s departure from Salzburg, was first published by Emilio Fario in 1956; it is published here in facsimile for the first time with a new, complete, and corrected transcription based on the original. Our commentary places the letter in the context of the Mozarts’ visit to Mantua from 10 to 19 Jan 1770, and re-examines the role of the Arco family in Wolfgang’s biography.

This letter of recommendation from Count Domenico Lodron in Rovereto to Count Gian Luca Pallavicini in Bologna was first published by Anelide Nascimbene in 1994, but it is not in Dokumente or Neue Folge. It is published in facsimile here for the first time, with a new and corrected transcription by Bruce Alan Brown. Domenico Lodron was a younger brother of Count Nicola Sebastiano Lodron (Nikolaus Sebastian), head of the secundogenital line of the Lodron family, and at that time Obersthofmarschall in Salzburg.

This letter from Ottaviano Dionisi in Verona to his brother Giovanni Francesco in Padua describes the concert appearance in Verona on 5 Jan 1770 of a musical “portento di natura” (Wolfgang Mozart). Although Mozart’s concert at the Accademia filarmonica in Verona has long been known from a report in the Gazzetta di Mantova and a letter of Leopold Mozart, Ottaviano Dionisi’s letter adds new details. The extract on Mozart was first published by Carlo Bologna in 1991, but it is not in Dokumente or Neue Folge. Our commentary also includes another description of Mozart’s Verona concert from the Venetian chronicle of Pietro Gradenigo.