It’s nearly a necessity. Only nearly, but I really enjoy it and it’s my classroom, so I do it.
At the heart of Mozart’s most well-known opera, The Magic Flute, lies a little aria (solo) that defies expectation. It’s the soprano’s big solo and, boy, do we get vocal fireworks. In fact, when the opera was premiered in 1791, these were the highest notes anyone had ever heard from the stage!
Well, they were the highest notes anyone never heard from the stage.
Nowadays, the bar is set and most sopranos train to be able to sing this work. Mozart wrote the piece for his niece, who was cast to sing the soprano role. She was on her way to a successful career at the fledgling age of 20 or so. A leading role in a Mozart premier would have catapulted her to fame.
If Mozart weren’t egotistical, that is. The story goes that he did not want her fame to eclipse his, so he wrote an impossibly high solo for her. She bombed it and the rest (along with her career) is history.
Nearly 200 years later, the now-famous New York Socialite (not that one) Florence Foster-Jenkins made her way into concert halls with this famous song! Flo-Fo (as she is sometimes called) was a lover of all things opera and when her husband passed away, she wanted nothing more than to record and share her favorite vocal selections. She even performed at Carnegie Hall. Until her world was shattered by the first review she was ever allowed to read. Despite the name of her album, “The Glory of the Human Voice,” Foster-Jenkins couldn’t sing.
I present this to my students in the middle of teaching on Mozart, because I believe these two things present a cautionary tale. Here at Seven Oaks, our virtue of the month is Friendship, which we define as “seeking virtue together.” It’s a lovely definition and a reminder that it’s not just about friends “being there for you,” but about honesty in hard times. It’s about the fact that sometimes, you have to be there for someone else to prevent something bad from happening.
If Mozart were a true friend, he would never have forced his niece to fail. If Florence had true friends, they would have told her the truth before her reputation was shattered before thousands.
But then again, if these were true friends, we wouldn’t have this cautionary tale, would we? So, teach it, I must.
