Librettists of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
A librettist is a writer of a libretto, an Italian word meaning “little book.” In musical parlance, it is the text used for opera, operetta, oratorio, and other musical genres. Among the librettists of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the most popular are Lorenzo da Ponte and Emanuel Schikaneder. This is no surprise considering that the texts of Mozart’s four acclaimed operas were written by them. Schikaneder wrote the libretto for Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), while da Ponte wrote the texts for Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte.
Aside from Lorenzo da Ponte and Emanuel Schikaneder, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also availed of less known librettists who wrote the texts of his other operas.
Coltellini, Marco
- La Finta Semplice, (The Pretended Simpleton), K.51 (46a) – Comic opera (buffa) in three acts, based on an early work by Carlo Goldoni.
Da Ponte, Lorenzo
- Così fan tutte – Comic opera (buffa )in two acts by Mozart. It literally means “Thus do all [women],” and sung by the three men in Act II, Scene xiii, just before the finale.
- Don Giovanni- Text was based by Lorenzo da Ponte after Giovanni Bertati’s libretto for Giuseppe Gazzaniga’s ‘The Stone Guest’, the contemporary version of the Don Juan legends
- Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) – One of the most popular operas of Mozart, based on the French comedy by French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.
De Calzabigi, Ranieri
- La finta giardiniera (The Pretended Gardener or The Phony Gardener), K.196 – Opera buffa (Comic) in three acts. The first version in Italian was written by Giuseppe Petrosellini, and the second, in German Singspiel by Johann Franz Joseph Stierle. Basis is libretto by Ranieri de Calzabigi.
Di Gamerra, Giovanni
- Lucio Silla, K.135 – Italian Opera (seria) in three acts. It is often regarded as one of the finest comic opera that Mozart wrote in Italy.
Metastasio, Pietro
- La Betulia Liberata, K118 – Opera based on Somnium Scipionis by Cicero.
- Il Sogno di Scipione, (Scipio’s Dream), K.126 – Opera in one-act adapted by Gianbattista Varesco, Salzburg court chaplain, text by Pietro Metastasio.
- Il Rè Pastore (The Shepherd King), K.208 – Opera seria in two acts – libretto by Mazzola, after a play by Metastasio.
- La Clemenza di Tito, (The Clemency of Titus), K.621- opera seria written in two acts.
Parini, Giuseppe
- Ascanio in Alba, K.111 – Italian pastoral opera in two acts. It is based on the play by Count Claudio Nicolo Stampa.
Schachtner, Johann Andreas
- Zaide, K.344 – Opera in two acts. It is an unfinished German opera, after Franz Joseph Sebastiani’s Das Serail, written in 1780.
Schikaneder, Emanuel
- >Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, K. 620) – Opera in two acts composed by Mozart in 1791, the year of his death. The work is a Singspiel, with both singing and spoken dialogue.
Signa-Santi, Vittorio Amadeo
- Mitridate, Rè di Ponto, K.87 – Opera in three acts, based on the tragedy play by French playwright and poet Jean Baptiste Racine’s Mithridate.
Stephanie the Younger, Johann Gottlieb
- Der Schauspieldirektor, (The Impresario), K.486 – Opera in one act. It’s in the form of comedy/Singspiel.
- The Abduction from the Seraglio, (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), K.384 – German opera Singspiel in three acts. It was adapted from an original libretto by Friedrich Breitzner’s “Belmonte and Constanze” (1782,Vienna), the year Mozart married Constanze Weber.
Varesco (Giambattista, Gianbattista, Gerolamo Giovanni Battista)
- Idomeneo, Rè di Creta, K.366 – Italian opera drama (seria), based on Antoine Danchet’s libretto for “Idoménée” by André Campra.
- L’Oca del Cairo, K.422
Weiskern, Friedrich Wilhelm
- Bastien und Bastienne, (Bastien and Bastienne), K.50 – Comic opera (buffa) and one-act Singspiel. Libretto is in German. Weiskern based his text on Marie Justine Benoite Favert’s parody of ‘Le Devin du Village’ by philosopher and novelist Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote more than 20 operas. He is famous for Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte.
For an insight to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s significance in the opera development, readers may want to check out Mozart in the History of the Opera before he left for Vienna and during his Vienna years, 1781 to 1791.
Resource About the Librettists of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Compositions of Mozart: works by date, works by category
Mozart and His Operas; Edited by Stanley Sadie, 2000 and Synopses of Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart’s operas linked in this article were all written by Tel Asiado, from 2007
The Mozart Project of Steve Boerner, featuring Mozart’s Operas, Musical Plays and Dramatic Cantatas
Tel Asiado is a writer, author, and business consultant, previously, IT manager & consultant. Her articles reflect her interests, from small business, biographies & histories, to classical music especially Mozart, art & literature, biographies, and Christian writings. Tel has produced non-fictions, e-books and anthologies. Her education is MBA in Computer Management, BSc Chemistry, Diploma in Small Business & Internet Mktg, and Cert IV Training and Assessment (TAA). Her small office/home site is homebizideasnow.com, and numerous information of Mozart and classical music, mozartandclassicalmusic.com.
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