Aloysia Weber
Encyclopedia
Maria Aloysia Louise Antonia Weber (c. 1760 – 8 June 1839) was a German
soprano
, remembered primarily for her association with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
.
or Mannheim
, Aloysia Weber was one of the four daughters of the musical Weber family. Her three sisters were soprano Josepha Weber
(1758–1819), who premiered the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute
; Constanze Weber the wife of Mozart; and Sophie Weber
. Her first cousin was the composer Carl Maria von Weber
.
Aloysia grew up in Mannheim and later moved to Munich
in 1778, where she made her operatic debut. Her salary at the Court Theater was 1000 florins per year; her father made 600. The following year she was engaged to sing in the National Singspiel in Vienna, a project of the Emperor Joseph II
; the family moved together to Vienna in September, where the father worked briefly as a ticket-taker, but he died suddenly only a month after their arrival.
Aloysia continued in a fairly successful singing career in Vienna over the next two decades.
On October 31, 1780, she married Joseph Lange
, an actor at the Court Theater who was also an amateur painter (he later produced a well-known portrait of Mozart). Since she was the main support of her family at the time, Lange agreed to pay her mother an advance of 900 florins and the sum of 700 florins per year on a continuing basis.
She moved to the Burgtheater
in 1782, singing Italian opera. This position lasted only eight months, as she soon became "persona non grata owing to disagreements over salary and role distribution as well as missed performances." She continued to sing, however, at the Kärntnertortheater as well as in occasional roles at the Burgtheater. In 1795, she went on concert tour with her widowed sister Constanze. As of that year, she ceased to live with her husband Lange.
She spent her old age in Salzburg
, in order to be near her surviving sisters Constanze and Sophie, who had moved there.
. This was around 1777, when Mozart spent some time in Mannheim, where he had hoped (in vain, it turned out) to find employment. Mozart expressed a desire to marry Aloysia, though it is not clear exactly how serious his intentions were, or whether they were reciprocated.
Mozart left Mannheim for several months for Paris on an unsuccessful job search. On his way back to Salzburg, he passed through Munich, where Aloysia was by now employed. According to the tale told in Georg Nikolaus von Nissen
's draft biography of Mozart written in collaboration with Constanze, who married Nissen after Mozart's death, Mozart and Aloysia had a rather unpleasant encounter:
The vulgar phrase in Mozart's song corresponds to the English idiom "kiss my ass", and occurs frequently in Mozart's letters; see Mozart and scatology
.
Mozart himself moved to Vienna in 1781, and later that year was for a time a lodger in the Weber home. The father Fridolin had died in 1779, Aloysia had not left home at the time of her marriage, and the mother Cäcilia and the remaining three sisters were taking in boarders to make ends meet. Mozart fell in love with the third daughter, Constanze. When the two married in 1782, Mozart became Aloysia's brother-in-law. Apparently there were no long-term hard feelings, as Mozart wrote a fair amount of music for Aloysia to sing, listed below.
From the Vienna years:
Preisler's testimony also indicates that Aloysia was not just a fine singer, but an outstanding general musician:
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
, remembered primarily for her association with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
.
Biography
Born in either Zell im WiesentalZell im Wiesental
Zell im Wiesental is a town in the district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated in the Black Forest, on the river Wiese, 26 km northeast of Basel, and 32 km south of Freiburg....
or Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
, Aloysia Weber was one of the four daughters of the musical Weber family. Her three sisters were soprano Josepha Weber
Josepha Weber
Josepha Weber was a German soprano of the classical era...
(1758–1819), who premiered the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
; Constanze Weber the wife of Mozart; and Sophie Weber
Sophie Weber
Maria Sophie Weber was a singer of the 18th and 19th centuries. She was the younger sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's wife Constanze, and is remembered primarily for the testimony she left concerning the life and death of her brother-in-law....
. Her first cousin was the composer Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
.
Aloysia grew up in Mannheim and later moved to Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
in 1778, where she made her operatic debut. Her salary at the Court Theater was 1000 florins per year; her father made 600. The following year she was engaged to sing in the National Singspiel in Vienna, a project of the Emperor Joseph II
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
; the family moved together to Vienna in September, where the father worked briefly as a ticket-taker, but he died suddenly only a month after their arrival.
Aloysia continued in a fairly successful singing career in Vienna over the next two decades.
On October 31, 1780, she married Joseph Lange
Joseph Lange
Joseph Lange was an actor and amateur painter of the 18th century. Through his marriage to Aloysia Weber, he was the brother-in-law of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.-Life:...
, an actor at the Court Theater who was also an amateur painter (he later produced a well-known portrait of Mozart). Since she was the main support of her family at the time, Lange agreed to pay her mother an advance of 900 florins and the sum of 700 florins per year on a continuing basis.
She moved to the Burgtheater
Burgtheater
The Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...
in 1782, singing Italian opera. This position lasted only eight months, as she soon became "persona non grata owing to disagreements over salary and role distribution as well as missed performances." She continued to sing, however, at the Kärntnertortheater as well as in occasional roles at the Burgtheater. In 1795, she went on concert tour with her widowed sister Constanze. As of that year, she ceased to live with her husband Lange.
She spent her old age in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, in order to be near her surviving sisters Constanze and Sophie, who had moved there.
Her relationship with Mozart
She was for some time a love interest of Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
. This was around 1777, when Mozart spent some time in Mannheim, where he had hoped (in vain, it turned out) to find employment. Mozart expressed a desire to marry Aloysia, though it is not clear exactly how serious his intentions were, or whether they were reciprocated.
Mozart left Mannheim for several months for Paris on an unsuccessful job search. On his way back to Salzburg, he passed through Munich, where Aloysia was by now employed. According to the tale told in Georg Nikolaus von Nissen
Georg Nikolaus von Nissen
Georg Nikolaus von Nissen was a Danish diplomat and music historian...
's draft biography of Mozart written in collaboration with Constanze, who married Nissen after Mozart's death, Mozart and Aloysia had a rather unpleasant encounter:
- "When he entered, she appeared no longer to know him, for whom she previously had wept. Accordingly, he sat down at the piano and sang in a loud voice, 'Leck mir das Mensch im Arsch, das mich nicht will,' — 'The one who doesn't want me can lick my ass.'"
The vulgar phrase in Mozart's song corresponds to the English idiom "kiss my ass", and occurs frequently in Mozart's letters; see Mozart and scatology
Mozart and scatology
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart displayed scatological humor in his letters and a few recreational compositions. This material has long been a puzzle for Mozart scholarship...
.
Mozart himself moved to Vienna in 1781, and later that year was for a time a lodger in the Weber home. The father Fridolin had died in 1779, Aloysia had not left home at the time of her marriage, and the mother Cäcilia and the remaining three sisters were taking in boarders to make ends meet. Mozart fell in love with the third daughter, Constanze. When the two married in 1782, Mozart became Aloysia's brother-in-law. Apparently there were no long-term hard feelings, as Mozart wrote a fair amount of music for Aloysia to sing, listed below.
Music written by Mozart for Aloysia Weber
From the Mannheim visit:- Recitative and Aria for Soprano, "Alcandro, lo confesso", K. 294
- Recitative and Aria for Soprano, "Popoli di Tessaglia", K. 316/300b. This has a range up to G6, which earned it a listing by Guinness lists as the highest demanded note in the classical repertoire.
From the Vienna years:
- Aria for Soprano, "Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner!", K. 383
- Scena and rondo "Mia speranza adorata — Ah, non sai, qual pena", K. 416, completed in Vienna 8 January 1783 and premiered by Aloysia on the 11th at a concert in the Mehlgrube, site of the later premiere of many of Mozart's piano concertos.
- Mozart wrote two "substitution arias" for Aloysia, inserted into a revival production (June 1783) at the BurgtheaterBurgtheaterThe Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...
of Pasquale AnfossiPasquale AnfossiBonifacio Domenico Pasquale Anfossi was an Italian opera composer. Born in Taggia, Liguria, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome....
's opera Il curioso indiscreto. These were "Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!" K. 418 and "No, no, che non sei capace" K. 419. - Aria for Soprano, "Ah se in ciel", K. 538 (1788)
Mozart opera roles sung by Aloysia Weber
- Donna Anna, in Mozart's Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
at the Vienna premiere of the work, May 7, 1788. - Constanze, in a revival production of Die Entführung aus dem SerailDie Entführung aus dem SerailDie Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...
(1785–1788).
Assessment
Joachim Daniel Preisler, a Danish actor and musician, was sent on tour by his employer, the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, to study opera production in other European countries. While in Vienna he was invited into the Lange home, where he heard the pregnant (and thus not performing) Aloysia sing. In his diary, he wrote:- The voice is something exceptional! but ... not by a long way as good as our Müller; yet her high range and her delicacy, her execution, taste and theoretical knowledge cannot fail to be admired by any impartial critic. ... She can sing the longest and most difficult parts incomparably better than the [Italian] songstresses who are here pamperd by the Viennese nobility.
Preisler's testimony also indicates that Aloysia was not just a fine singer, but an outstanding general musician:
- The well-known Mozardt is her brother-in-law, and has taught her so well that she accompanies from a score and plays interludes like a KapellmeisterKapellmeisterKapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...
.