{"id":4619,"date":"2016-04-12T18:25:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T08:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emotemuse.com\/g\/?p=4619"},"modified":"2016-04-12T18:25:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T08:25:27","slug":"mozarts-pranks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/?p=4619","title":{"rendered":"Mozart’s Pranks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mozart’s sense of mischief is evident in his behaviour at a performance of The Magic Flute<\/span>.\u00a0 Thisis from a letter to his wife Oct 8 & 9 1791:<\/p>\n

… (1)<\/a> had a box [in the theatre] this evening and applauded everything<\/span> vigorously; but He, that Know-it-all, proved to be a real Bavarian<\/span>; I couldn’t stay with them or I would have been tempted to call him an ass; – unfortunately, I just happened to be in their box when the 2nd act started, and it begins with a solemn scene. – He laughed at everything; at first I was patient enough to draw his attention to some of the lines, but – he just laughed; – well, it was too much for me – I called him a real Papageno <\/span>and left the box – but I don’t think this Nitwit understood what I meant – so I went to another loge, occupied by Herr Flamm and his wife, and there I could enjoy the opera fully, and I stayed till the end; – except when Papageno’s aria with the Glockenspiel came on, at that moment I went backstage because today I had a kind of urge to play the Glockenspiel myself. – So I played this joke: just when Shickaneder [playing Papageno] came to a pause, I played an arpeggio – he was startled – looked into the scenery and saw me – the 2nd time he came to that spot, I didn’t play – and this time he stopped as well and did not go on singing – I guessed what he was thinking and played another chord – at that he gave his Glockenspiel a slap and shouted “shut up” <\/span>– everybody laughed. – I think through this joke many in the audience became aware for the first time that Papageno doesn’t play the Glockenspiel himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(1) A name was crossed out.<\/p>\n

Cited in: Spaethling, Robert (2000) Mozart’s Letters; Mozart’s Life<\/span>.\u00a0 London: Faber and Faber, p.441.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mozart’s sense of mischief is evident in his behaviour at a performance of The Magic Flute.\u00a0 Thisis from a letter to his wife Oct 8 & 9 1791: … (1) had a box [in the theatre] this evening and applauded everything vigorously; but He, that Know-it-all, proved to be a real Bavarian; I couldn’t stay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[551],"tags":[572,1130],"class_list":["post-4619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personalities-of-the-musicians","tag-mozart","tag-the-magic-flute"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4620,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4619\/revisions\/4620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}