Vitellia hoped in vain to return to the Roman throne by marrying the emperor Tito, whose father had stolen power from hers. Now she plans revenge and urges Sesto to lead a plot against Tito. Sesto is in love with Vitellia and torn between devotion to her and friendship with Tito. In emotional turmoil, Sesto ultimately agrees to favour love and betray friendship. Tito, however, survives the assassination attempt, after which the Senate sentences Sesto to death. This sentence has to be confirmed by the emperor, whose humanitarian principles are now put to a severe test: ‘The stars conspire to compel me to become cruel, despite myself.’ He is aware of the gravity of the crimes Sesto has committed, and is faced with a choice between justice and clemency…
In July 1791, Domenico Guardasoni was assigned the task of organizing a festive opera to celebrate the coronation of the Austrian emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia. It was to take place in the Estates Theatre in Prague, for which Guardasoni worked as impresario, and he was instructed to entrust the commission to a ‘famous composer’. His first choice was the Viennese Court Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri, who turned it down. Only then was it offered to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The coronation was scheduled for the beginning of September that year, which left little time. So Guardasoni decided that Mozart should use a libretto that was already extant: Pietro Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito. It was one of the most popular opera seria texts of the 18th century, having already been set to music more than fifty times since its first incarnation back in 1734.
It was especially suitable for the celebrations surrounding Leopold II’s coronation, because it was seen as an exemplary libretto for paying homage to the court. Metastasio had taken anecdotal accounts of the emperor Titus from the Roman historians Suetonius and Aurelius Victor to create a libretto depicting him as a virtuous, benevolent figure, embodying an ideal, enlightened ruler. The virtues of the ‘clementia austriaca’ (Austrian clemency) propagated by the Habsburgs could here be interpreted as directly descended from the ancient world’s ‘clementia romana’, while princes such as Leopold II, who had abolished both torture and the death penalty, could profitably be associated with the pseudo-historical role model offered by Tito.
The strict dramaturgy of Metastasian opera seria envisaged a schematic succession of recitatives and arias that had long been regarded as old-fashioned by the year 1791, which would also be the year of Mozart’s death. So the librettist Caterino Mazzolà – actually a specialist in comic opera – was tasked with revising Metastasio’s text. He reduced the libretto from three acts to two and crafted ensemble scenes from the original dialogues. He also expanded the role of the chorus, enabling him to achieve a great dramatic effect, in particular in the finale of the first act, when the attempted assassination takes place and the Capitol is set on fire.
In his own list of his works, Mozart noted that Mazzolà had turned Metastasio’s original libretto into a ‘vera opera’, a true opera (perhaps he even meant ‘truthful’?). And it is indeed the case that he made the plot more dynamic, which when combined with Mozart’s art of musical characterization succeeds in making the individual figures, their motives and intentions, immensely vivid and credible. At the heart of what turned out to be Mozart’s last opera are timeless questions that revolve around the appropriate use of power, set against a political backdrop of intrigue, violence and terror. Can humanity triumph over inhumanity? Can every guilty action be forgiven? Can reasons of state and humanity be reconciled? Can there be justice when private and political interests are in conflict? The ethos of Mozart’s Tito is summed up in the realization that the ‘loyalty of subjects’ to their political leaders may not be ‘secured through fear’, but ought instead to be founded on love.
David Treffinger
Translation: Chris Walton
