Mozart the Dramatist: A New View of Mozart, His Operas and His Age

"In this stimulating study, Miss Brophy suggests that Mozart reached the heights of genius in equal measure as musician and dramatist. His operas, merging these two demanding forms, express his most intimate artistic ambitions. Although Mozart did not write his own libretti, he was so careful about selecting his librettists and then adapting their work to his own requirements that the plots of his operas must be considered as much his as the music. Miss Brophy approaches the operas as something more than masterpieces in their own right; they are, taken together with his letters, our prime clue to Mozart's personal psychology. Miss Brophy places opera in relation to eighteenth-century society and then Mozart's operas in relation to that era's thought. In the course of this examination a new solution to the puzzle of The Magic Flute is presented; Don Giovanni is seen in the light of the century's, as well as Mozart's, sexual dilemmas; literary influences, including Voltaire and Shakespeare, are analyzed; and, most important, the mind of Mozart emerges in fresh and striking perspective."--Dust jacket.