Celebrating Mozart

Today is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. My favourite composer, bare none. For his operas mainly, I have to confess. I consider him the greatest opera composer ever, regardless of whatever else he wrote. I celebrate his anniversary every year, mainly by listening to the arias he composed. This year makes it very special, because I have been sharing my love of Mozart with my son. Little Wolfie started knowing Mozart from the cradle, if not the womb. Because the Mozart Effect might be pure urban legend, but why take a chance? So to mark the birthday on the blog, I will share tonight a bit of The Magic Flute, the duet between Papageno and Papagena, which happens to be Wolfie's favourite so far. The "Pa, pa, pa" makes him smile and laugh. A warning: Papagena looks a bit tarty in this one, but Papageno is sang by Simon Keenlyside and I like him.

Papageno

This is an image from an book (with disc I received on my birthday, Mozart raconté aux enfants. I blogged about it before. The images were absolutely beautiful. The book/disc was my very first introduction to Mozart and his work. This image was the very first look I had at Papageno, immortal character from The Magic Flute, the bird-catcher of the Queen of the Night. He became my favourite character of the whole opera. He is the most interesting one, as he has a proper story arch and a proper personality, with a good heart but not too virtuous. Papageno is flawed: he can get drunk, he can lie, he often lacks courage. But he is also not without qualities: he is certainly resourceful and he shows loyalty to his friends. And he is a baritone, which is just my voice. I did try myself as some of his arias when I was learning to sing, but I struggled far more with German than I ever did with Italian. So here is his introductory aria, sung by Simon Keenlyside. He captures very well the personality of Papageno, carefree, with a hint of melancholia, longing for a simple kind of happiness.

A birthday memory (about Mozart)

It is my birthday today, I have the venerable age of 35. I didn't know exactly how to blog about it, I mean blogging it differently than how I did it before. And then I just thought about some memories I have from my birthdays. As an adult, a birthday is just one extra day, you are one day older than before, unless you start thinking that you are getting old. But as a child, it is something magical.

So for some reason today, I had in mind a precise birthday gift I had: when I was 9 or 10 (or maybe younger), I received the life of Mozart on a disc, narrated by Gérard Philippe, from the collection Le Petit Ménestrel. They still sell it, but in CDs. My first Petit Ménestrel was the life of Beethoven, which turned me into a fan, but I think Mozart had a lasting impression on me, for one single reason: there was Finch'han dal vino, an aria from Don Giovanni, on it. It got me hooked on the opera, which I received at my next year's birthday. Since then, Don Giovanni is my favourite opera. My brothers and I used to play the last scene. And it all started with this single aria, which I have been listening to today. So I decided to upload it here, my birthday gift to my readership. It is sung by the baritone Simon Keenlyside. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it when I first heard it.