Arias

When Leopold Mozart hoped in vain to stage Wolfgang’s opera La finta semplice, KV 51 in Vienna in 1768, father and son were confronted with the claim that the music was actually written by the father, not the son. To prove the extraordinary skills of his son, Leopold had Wolfgang compose arias on the spot—in the presence of influential people who were able to choose the texts from Pietro Metastasio’s libretti themselves. Leopold reports on July 30, 1768 of at least five such occasions. These lost Arias were assigned a number, KV 644, only in 2024.