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Mozart
From 20 June to 19 September 2017
The ties between Mozart and France were forged during the composer’s lifetime, as is evidenced first of all by his three stays in Paris in his youth as well as by his choice of setting Beaumarchais’ famous play Le Mariage de Figaro to music. These close ties continued after his death, with French adaptations of his operas played on the nation’s leading stages and the great opera singer Pauline Viardot’s acquisition of the manuscript of Don Giovanni in 1855, a manuscript now kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
In 1887, on the occasion of the centenary of the creation of Don Giovanni, the Palais Garnier opera house staged eight performances of the work and mounted an exhibition organised around Mozart’s manuscript. In 2017, alongside the new Mozart/Da Ponte cycle inaugurated by the Paris Opera, the exhibition organized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Opera national de Paris is designed to highlight the Salzburg composer’s presence in French musical life, from his first visits to France to his posthumous glory on the stages of the nation’s opera houses. Through a selection of a hundred and forty items, some of them on display for the first time, the exhibition provides an overview of Mozart’s progressive recognition by the French public: first of all fascination at the precocity of the child prodigy; then adaptation of his works to suit French taste; and finally celebration of an unequalled musical genius.
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I. Mozart’s three stays in France
Mozart was only seven years old when his father Leopold decided to take his family on travels that were to last three years, ...
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II. Mozart adapted to French taste (1793-1830)
France largely continued to ignore Mozart after the composer’s death in 1791. Up until the end of the 18th century,...
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III. Acclamation on opera-house stages
Musical controversies on how Mozart’s operas should be staged began to die down after 1830. No longer simply “fashionable”, he rose to the rank of “classical” composer. His works were performed...
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IV. Mozart today
A cardinal point in the opera galaxy, Mozart has had his works staged by some of the leading stage directors on the contemporary operatic scene: Luc Bondy, Patrice Chéreau, Michael Haneke,...
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Pratical informations and booking
Exhibition curators
- Laurence Decobert
- Simon Hatab
- Jean-Michel Vinciguerra
Scenography
- Flavio Bonuccelli
© OnP/BNF
Mozart, une passion française
Des premiers voyages de Mozart en France jusqu’à sa gloire posthume sur les diverses scènes lyriques, ce catalogue dévoile la richesse et la variété des collections conservées à la Bibliothèque nationale de France et à l’Opéra national de Paris.
Editeur: Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Auteur(s): Laurence Decobert
