Mozart renewed his ties with the Webers once more. Aloysia, indeed, was
now out of his reach, but there were three other daughters, the youngest
still a child, to be sure. The oldest, Josepha, had a good voice but she
left Wolfgang cold. He was more attracted to Aloysia’s sister,
Constanze, a fact that was not lost on the scheming Mother Weber, now a
widow, content to rent rooms and take in boarders. In May 1781, he
settled in the Weber house, _Zum Auge Gottes_, just off the Graben.
Needless to say, Leopold was greatly upset, for he had as low an opinion
of the Webers as ever. But Wolfgang was no longer disposed to let his
father’s tastes sway him and, when he felt that he really loved
Constanze, he determined to make her his wife regardless of parental
wishes. The unscrupulous Madame Weber, pleased at the turn of affairs,
took care that gossip should spread, and people began to talk about the
probability of the marriage. Mozart, yielding to Mother Weber’s
“advice,” left the _Auge Gottes_ in September 1781, though returning for
daily visits. Constanze’s mother played her cards cleverly so as to
compromise her daughter and enjoyed the satisfaction of having Mozart
ask his father for his “approval.” A Weber for a daughter-in-law was the
last thing Leopold wanted. Finally on August 4, 1782, the couple
married, the elder Mozart’s reluctant consent not arriving in Vienna
until August 5. He never forgave his son, however, for this step. No
more did Nannerl, who had quite as little use for her brother’s wife.
Later, after the composer’s death, Schlichtegroll’s necrology said of
Constanze: “Mozart found in her a good mother for the two children she
bore him, who sought to restrain him from many follies and
dissipations...”—the rest of which passage Constanze was subsequently
moved to make illegible. Be all of which as it may, there is no use
pretending that Mozart was, earlier or later, in the least indifferent
to feminine allurements. Sometimes it was the women who plagued him with
attentions, a capital instance of which was his pupil, the pianist
Josephine Aurnhammer, a talented but exceedingly repulsive person, of
whom he left us a gruesome picture in a letter dated August 22, 1781:
“She is as fat as a farm wench, perspires so that you feel inclined to
vomit, and goes about so scantily clad that you really can read as plain
as print: ‘Pray, do look here.’” It was for this same Aurnhammer,
nonetheless, that he wrote the adorable clavier concerto, K. 453.
Alfred Einstein maintains that Constanze owes her fame “to the fact that
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart loved her, and in so doing preserved her name
for eternity, as a fly is preserved in amber. But this does not mean
that she deserved either his love or the fame it brought her.”
Certainly, she could not follow his flights of genius; neither was she
always above reproach in her private conduct. Before their marriage her
“honest and devoted” lover was writing to point out her thoughtless
behavior in allowing some man “to measure her leg” in a game of
forfeits; and nearly a decade later he was begging her “to consider
appearances,” to be “careful of her honor,” and to keep away from the
Baden casino because “the company is ... you understand what I mean!”
Einstein believed that the only woman of whom Constanze had a right to
be jealous “was Nancy Storace, his first Susanna.... Between Mozart and
her there must have been a deep and sympathetic understanding. She was
beautiful, an artist and a finished singer....”
_Die Entführung aus dem Serail_
The composer was probably delighted to have the chance to place on the
stage a character named Constanze; and in the summer and autumn of 1781
he began the music of his next major opera, _Belmonte und Constanze_ or
_Die Entführung aus dem Serail_ (“The Abduction from the Seraglio”).
This _Singspiel_, the book of which was originally the work of Christian
Friedrich Bretzner, had been presented a year earlier in Germany with a
score by Johann André. Under Wolfgang’s careful supervision the
three-act piece underwent dramatic and textual modifications by
Christian Gottlob Stephanie the Younger. Mozart had written his father:
“The book is good; the subject is Turkish and is called ‘The Abduction
from the Seraglio.’” Rehearsals did not start till June 1782, and on
July 16 of that year the work was produced in Vienna with extraordinary
success. The stimulus back of Stephanie’s revisions was unquestionably
the penetrating theater sense of the composer himself. Into the love
songs of the tenor, Belmonte, Mozart poured all his tender feelings for
Constanze Weber, whom he was shortly to lead to the altar. The
characterizations throughout have a life, a diversity, and a
psychological truth that had not been met with in any previous Mozartean
operatic effort.
The Emperor, though he recognized the genius in the work, thought it
necessary to warn Mozart that the music seemed to him “too good for the
Viennese” and contained “a powerful quantity of notes”—whereupon the
ready-witted Mozart retorted, “Just as many as are necessary, Your
Majesty!” His older contemporary, Gluck, was himself stirred to
enthusiasm by the work (in which he unquestionably detected the
influence of his own exotic _Les Pèlerins de la Mecque_) and invited the
composer to dinner. _Die Entführung_—which Carl Maria von Weber was to
say was such a work as Mozart could have written only once in his
lifetime—quickly spread through most other theaters of Central Europe,
where, after close to two hundred years, it still leads a lusty
existence. The more amusing, therefore, is a notice the disgruntled
Bretzner inserted in a Leipzig newspaper: “A certain person in Vienna
named Mozart has had the effrontery to misuse my drama ‘Belmonte und
Constanze’ for an opera libretto. I herewith protest most solemnly that
I reserve the right to take further steps against this outrage.”
On the surface the newly married couple were happy. Yet it might be
inquiring too closely to ask whether Wolfgang did not, as time passed,
suffer from that deep-seated loneliness and lack of understanding that
are sooner or later the lot of a genius of this caliber. Under today’s
conditions we have reason to assume that a triumph like _Die
Entführung_, and the numberless other treasures he was giving the world,
would lift him above material cares. Instead, financial troubles began
to thicken about him and grew continually more burdensome. They were,
indeed, to beset him to his end.
For all the stir it created, the opera did not bring its composer the
appointment he expected. And money was becoming a pressing necessity.
Constanze’s pregnancies were frequent during her married life and,
though only two children survived infancy (to become, it is ironic to
reflect, wretched but fairly long-lived mediocrities), her various
confinements and her slow recovery from them did not help to further her
housewifely qualities. It is not wholly surprising that Mozart’s
religious conviction, which had earlier been a sort of childlike faith,
weakened little by little—the more so because he was brought into
growing contact with men who were profound thinkers and of whom many
belonged to the secret society of Freemasons. Freemasonry had political
implications and was frowned upon by the Church. Frederick the Great had
been a Freemason, Goethe was one, likewise Joseph II, Gluck, and Joseph
Haydn. Eventually Mozart persuaded his father to join the society. Who
shall say that its principles and philosophies did not serve Wolfgang as
a protective armor, enabling him the more bravely to endure his social
and material tribulations?