North York Central Library Blog

La clemenza di Tito is one of the last works Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed before his untimely death in 1791 at the age of 35, when the curtains closed on a blaze of creativity from the musical genius; in the same year he completed La clemenza di Tito, he worked on The Magic Flute and Requiem. Though it fell out of fashion for a time, La clemenza di Tito, which was written for the coronation of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, as King of Bohemia, is now considered to be a masterpiece of Mozart’s later period. It is interesting that the commission to write the piece was first offered to the composer Antonio Salieri, a prominent figure in Italian opera in Vienna, in light of the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Salieri — a rivalry dramatized in the 1984 Oscar winning film Amadeus.

Please join us at North York Central Library on Tuesday, January 15, at 7:00 p.m. for a talk on Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito by Ian Kyer. Ian is a lawyer, historian, a seasoned public speaker and an author, who has written a historical novel about Antonio Salieri and his relationship with Mozart. He will be using audio/video examples to illustrate his talk, which will focus on the Canadian Opera Company's upcoming production of La clemenza di Tito and the relationship between Mozart and Salieri. Ian will also discuss the theory that Salieri, driven by envy, fatally poisoned Mozart.

Mozart's final illness began when he was in Prague, for the premiere of La clemenza di Tito. Over the next few weeks his health deteriorated. After he returned to Vienna, while taking some fresh air with his wife, Constanze, he began to speak of his own death and said he was composing Requiem for himself. (In fact, Franz von Walsegg commissioned the Requiem mass in memory of his late wife.) According to Constanze's account, Mozart declared, "I am sure I have been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea." ("Salieri and the 'Murder' of Mozart" p. 264)

Over the years, there has been much speculation that Mozart was murdered, and Salieri is not the only imagined culprit. Some of the stranger motivations proposed include the theory that Mozart was murdered by the Freemasons as a sacrifice to Masonic deities, or that he was being punished for revealing Freemason secrets in his opera The Magic Flute. (Mozart joined the Freemasons in the last few years of his life.)

If you would like to listen to La Clemenza di Tito before Ian's talk, the Toronto Public Library has both DVD and CD versions of the opera. If these are being used by another person, never fear. With your library card, you have access to Naxos Music Library, our streaming music service, anytime of day or night. Naxos Music Library has the following version of La Clemenza di Tito available:

To get to Naxos Music Library from the Toronto Public Library website, just type "Naxos" into the search bar and click on the orange box that says "access online"; enter your library card number and your fourdigit pin number and you will be taken to Naxos Music Library. Type "La clemenza di Tito" into the search box to find the versions shown above. If you don't want to listen to the whole opera, scan'through the list of results for highlights. Happy listening!

Short video preview of the Canadian Opera Company's La clemenza di Tito.

For a fascinating article on Mozart's death, you may enjoy reading Salieri and the "Murder" of Mozart by Albert I. Borowitz, published in Musical Quarterly. In this excerpt, Borowitz gives some insight into the lengths those who believed Salieri murdered Mozart were willing to go to convince others that the rumors were true: "At a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Vienna on May 23, 1824, concertgoers were distributed a leaflet containing a poem which pictured Salieri as Mozart's rival, 'standing by his side with a poisoned cup'." (Salieri and the "Murder" of Mozart, page 274).

The talk will be held in the auditorium of North York Central Library, on Tuesday January 15 at 7:00 Call to register: 416-395-5639.