Talk:La finta semplice

message: "When the opera was finished, the performers apparently disliked it,[1]" 
This is a pretty wishy-washy description, and one that does not exactly correspond to the facts. It is too evasive, as is often the case on Wikipedia, to protect the lack of research and accurate knowledge by the editors. 
This is not how Hermann Abert describes the problems that arose in his big book "W.A. MOZART" (1919, transl. 2007). Cliff Eisen, who edited the translation in 2007, does not dispute Abert's description. 
It was the jealousy of other composers, who started circulating the story that the opera had not been written by a 12-year old, but by his father. Gluck was in town, and Leopold wondered whether he was also part of the intrigue against young Mozart.
The impresario, Affligio, an independent contractor, who made the final decisions, alone in charge of the theater and the performance, became influenced by the gossip and started worrying about a negative outcome. He found reasons to delay the performance. Things dragged on, and the artists started worrying about the bad feedback if the opera was a flop. Everybody's reputation was at stake, including that of the Salzburg archbishop, whose employees the Mozarts were. Affligio even threatened, if the work got to first night, to make sure the opening would be a fiasco. Leopold could not take the risk, and withdrew, but wrote a bitter letter of complaint to the Emperor. This may have alienated Maria Theresa even more.
It finally cost him the chance of getting a position in Milan after his successful performances of Mitridate, Ascanio, and Lucio Silla. Instead of a court-appointed opera composer, Mozart remained a free-lance opera writer all his life.
--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 21:51, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather than write all this out here, why not incorporate it into the article along with appropriate refs?  Note the date of last revision: nothing has been done for years... DO IT!!  Viva-Verdi (talk) 00:26, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Misrepresentation of the lack of performance in Vienna

message: The lead says: "Mozart composed the music using the model of comedy started by Philippe Destouches with La fausse Agnès, ou le Poète campagnard (1734)."
I could not trace any statement by the experts I have been reading about Mozart using a model after this Philippe Destouches"
Can the editor who stated this fact inform us of his source?
In Hermann Abert and Cliff Eisen's description of the facts, Mozart used no model whatsoever. 
Leopold wanted a libretto, he had the choice between seria and buffa. He noted that the seria singers available in Milan were mediocre, and that the buffa singers were excellent. He chose a buffa libretto. He never mentioned any influence from a Philippe Destouches. He simply went to the established librettist in Vienna, who happened to be Coltellini, who was in the process of replacing Metastasio as a source. 
Together they selected a libretto by Goldoni, the master of the commedia del'arte genre. Coltellini modified the libretto a bit, especially Act III. He abandoned some arias, replaced a few with his owns, and in some cases, kept the original Goldoni aria in the scene while adding a new one of his own, with the result that a few scenes ended up with two arias instead of one, as was the norm, usually coming at the end of the scene. In Coltellini's version, a few scenes start with an opening aria.
In all this nobody ever mentioned any Philippe Destouches.
Abert does mention in his book a French opera composer, André Cardinal Destouches, but no connection whatsoever with La Finta Semplice. So, please, where does this mention come from?
So far, I am letting the lead paragraph stand as is for the time being. So, please, editor who finalized the lead paragraph, speak up, and inform us.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 13:34, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: If you look at "View history" and scroll way down, you'll find that this is present from the beginning in 2006/07, so I doubt you'll find the original editor(s) around, if at all.  FYI: there is a brief entry in Grove, but no reference to Destouches. Viva-Verdi (talk) 17:51, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: What is the source for including Philippe Destouches in the lead paragraph?

message: This article strikes me as badly written, with POV issues, in its present state.  Would there be support for going back to a more modest version, that of 23 September 2013, and taking it from there?  We could selectively plug in various small improvements from the intervening edit history.   Opus33 (talk) 19:37, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: +1. The history section is mainly based on the work of Hermann Abert, which is now 100 years old. This in turn uses the correspondence of Mozart's father Leopold as source, which obviously is not neutral. The stated date of the first performance (1 may 1769) has already been identified as erroneous in the NMA (1983!). Large sections of the article are completely off-topic, namely the praise of Abert's work or the chapter about Maria Theresia. --Rodomonte (talk) 10:11, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: +2 I agree with you, Rodomonte. The section "Alienating Empress Maria Theresa" is completely off-topic and full of unattributed random speculation and commentary. The whole section should go, for a start. The rest is pretty bad too. Interestingly, the opera finally did get a performance in Vienna around 1925, albeit not in a famous opera house. It was staged to mark the promotion of the Vienna Music Academy to the Hochschule für Musik. The cast were all graduates of the Academy. There's a brief article about the event in The Musical Times of 1 April 1925, p. 364. It's on JSTOR here . Voceditenore (talk) 11:52, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  There have been several performances in the 1920's. The first was 1921 in Karlsruhe Die verstellte Einfalt, a german language adaptation by Anton Rudolph. You can find a list of these early productions (including Vienna) in :de:La finta semplice#Werkgeschichte. --Rodomonte (talk) 12:52, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you should just go ahead and re-write, trim, etc. You'd be doing a real opera di bene. Voceditenore (talk) 13:26, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree that article be rewritten. Rodomonte has obviously expertise doing that. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:31, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, english is not my native language. My main work is in the german wiki. I only make some smaller corrections here when absolutely necessary. But feel free to translate parts of the german article. --Rodomonte (talk) 13:35, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Might we step back a bit?

message: Just for information: it was performed in English as part of the 1985 Camden Festival at the Bloomsbury Theatre London. 2A04:4A43:415F:E36E:0:0:A69:EE8C (talk) 13:19, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Performance