Lichnowsky Versus Mozart Lawsuit Discovered

A Lawsuit Discovered - Lichnowsky Versus Mozart  

(c) By Agnes Selby, Guest Writer-Friend

(This article is posted with the kind permission of "Quadrant", first published in January 1992. It is re-printed here in its entirety.)

In 1991 new information surfaced regarding hitherto unknown debt Mozart owed Prince Karl Lichnowsky, which provides another puzzling link with Mozart's elusive past. There is no doubt that a whole new generation of scholars will spend researching and writing about it, changing once again our concept of the great master. Quite recently W. Brauneis came across significant information in a Logbook of the special Court of Aristocrats in Vienna. This entry reminded the Imperial Court Chamber of Vienna on 9th November 1791 to enforce an Order of Attachment of Mozart's possessions and half his salary as Court composer to the amount of 1,435 gulden and 32 kreutzer. Included also were court costs of 24 gulden. The debt was owed to Prince Karl Lichnowsky and was found uncollectable. The research into this new discovery at the time of writing [1992], is still in its infancy. Most of the "Lichnowsky Archives" had been destroyed during the Second World War but an article by Jaroslav Celeda, "Mozart, Beethoven and Lichnowsky" published in Prague in 1967 may reveal some information regarding this matter. Unfortunately this article has so far not been made available to Western scholars by the Czech Music Foundation.

Gioachino Rossini

Classical Music / Composers Datebook: 29 February

Italian Composer, Creator of the Early 19^th-Century Italian Romantic Style of Opera.

Gioachino Rossini's brief biography – his life, operas, other works. Master of the Italian Opera, famous for The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia.)     

Gioachino (Antonio) Rossini (b. 29 February, Pesaro - d. 13 November 1868), Passy), was an Italian composer famous for opera The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia), together with countrymen Donizetti and Bellini, created the Romantic style of Italian opera in the early 19^th century. Rossini, nicknamed ‘Signor Crescendo’, was the most successful opera composer of his time, producing 20 operas in the span of 8 years, from 1815.  Rossini's parents were both musicians, his father a horn player and his mother, a singer. He was born in Pesaro on the 29^th of February 1792, a year after Mozart died.

He married his mistress of long-standing, the singer Isabella Colbran and re-married to Olympe Pelissier after Isabella’s death.

Rossini's first success was the opera Tancredi based on a play by Voltaire. Tancredi  was followed by a string of hugely popular works, including L’Italiana in Algeri (An Italian in Algiers), Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra (Elizabeth, Queen of England, 1815), and what is considered to be his masterpiece, opera buffa Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) produced in Rome.  

Le siège de Corinthe (The Siege of Corinth) was Rossini's first French opera (known also in its Italian version as L'assedio di Corinto). It was first performed at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on October 9, 1826.

Rossini's Stabat Mater is based on the traditional structure of the Stabat Mater sequence for chorus and soloists. Initially he used his own librettos and compositions for a portion of the work and, eventually, the remainder by Giovanni Tadolini, who composed six additional movements. Rossini presented the completed work to Varela as his own. It was composed late in his career after retiring from the composition of opera. He began the work in 1831 but did not complete it until 1841.

His other operas include La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie), Mosé in Egitto, Semiramide, Il viaggio a Reims (The Voyage of Rheims , and Le comte Ory and Guillaume Tell (William Tell).