Love and sex are talked about and practiced throughout Europe but especially in Paris and Venice, the only city that, despite the ongoing decline of its power, could compete for the "dolce vita" with the French capital.
The search for pleasure as an end to itself became, first in the aristocratic world, but soon also in the bourgeois sections of the population, a way of thinking and living that for some even became an obsession.
To love, even outside of marriage (with discretion but without false modesty) became normal, as well as leaving without too many sorrows in view of a new "game" that led to other conquests.
Sex became an experience, for men and women (despite the permanent situation of social minority with respect to man), an achievement to be enumerated and cataloged (think of Mozart's Don Giovanni and his catalog, the perfect representative of that world that was about to disappear end of the century).
The 18
century is the century of seducers and libertines: Casanova (who in his biography lists 147 conquests) and the Marquis de Sade are perhaps the champions, and such have remained in the collective imagination.
The nobles, however, had to begin to suffer from the competition of new "objects of desire": the artists. In a historical moment that, if it does not invent the star-system at least consolidates it, actors and actresses, singers and dancers represent the "forbidden fruit" that attracted the desires of husbands and wives, eager to try new thrills.
However, it was always a question of whims and desires that were exhausted in the time span of a strong but not lasting passion fire or in menage in which the rich party financed the lover by offering a standard of living that could be "respectable".
Artists were rarely considered worthy to officially enter the blue blood pedigree.
Sex, in the century of the Mozarts, could be pure pleasure or a means for the conquest of money, power and positions kindly favored by those who, man or woman, have pleasantly enjoyed the relationship.
Certainly neither Leopold nor Wolfgang belonged to the category of careerists between the sheets: the marriage of the former was happy but certainly did not give him wealth or social advancements, that of the latter then, with the insipid Constanze (imposed on him by the crafty Mrs. Weber, who had finally managed to place even the least attractive of the three daughters) it was an obligatory choice.
As for dissolute conduct, on the other hand, Amadeus was not one to hold back, at least from the moment he found himself at his disposal far from his father's control. The affair with his cousin and the Viennese adventures with students and actresses of his plays are part of the often obscured story of his life.
In the 18
century the rich and powerful enjoyed, even in a non-figurative sense, their position of power which allowed them to dispense money and offices to their lovers; the latter having no problem moving from bed to tax collector's office or royal official.
If you were male you made a career for yourself, if you were female you used the influence obtained between the sheets to consolidate your role and to help relatives and friends by supporting their requests.
A single example, which circulated in Parisian salons at the time of Louis XV, can be illuminating. A Countess, who had already given up her arms in a singular encounter with the King, wrote him a letter (found by the monarch's servant by chance and delivered to Madame de Pompadour, the official lover) in which she asked him for 50,000 crowns, the command of a regiment for a relative of his, a bishopric for another relative ... and the liquidation of the Pompadour (which he evidently aspired to replace).
The wealthy aristocrats, when they were an "unfulfilled desire" for some girls and did not want to waste time intervening directly in the seductive game, hired a trusted valet, acting as a pimp, who lent himself to act as an intermediary and organize meetings (sometimes personally exploiting that particular role of power towards the bridesmaids, who did not refuse for fear of missing the greatest opportunity).
The practice of having lovers, moreover, came from high above. Louis XIV, the Sun King, had a disproportionate number of lovers of which about thirty "officers"; his successor Philip d'Orleans (regent until the coming of age of the future Louis XV) had two official lovers who worked simultaneously and without jealousy or reciprocal inhibition or for the countless meteors that quickly passed between the curtains of the royal bridal bed; Louis XV could count on about fifteen recognized lovers, plus the passing ones. And don't think that the High Clergy did no less.
For Carnival in every corner of the city there were dances, often with just a couple of musicians playing, according to Leopold, old out-of-date minuets. Approaching the time of departure for London Leopold is also thinking of relieving part of the gifts and purchases made in the previous stages of the journey by sending them to Salzburg and at the same time avoiding possible thefts or breakages due to the next loads and unloadings from the carriage with relative move to the inns.
A novelty that caused a sensation on Leopold were the so-called "English toilets" which in Paris were present in every private aristocratic palace. These are actually the first bidet models, equipped with cold and hot water sprayed upwards, which Leopold describes very briefly, not wanting to use inelegant terms. Even the bathrooms of the noble palaces are luxurious, with walls and floors in majolica, marble or even alabaster, equipped with porcelain chamber pots with gilded rims and jars with scented water and fragrant herbs.
Personal hygiene and bodily needs
We have previously seen how the use of terms related to bodily functions and the parts of the body involved was common in the Mozart family, in particular in the habits of Wolfgang and his mother.
But it is nothing to be shocked by!
At the time in Salzburg, but also in the rest of Europe, if we exclude the aristocracy (who lingered a little longer in the language to respect the alleged superiority over the lower classes) the use of trivial language was common.
After all, the habit with the natural functions of the body was much more "public" than it is today.
The bathrooms were practically absent in the vast majority of houses, if we exclude the noble palaces, and the bodily functions were not hidden as today but quietly carried out wherever nature had made its needs felt.
How to consider defecation a vulgar activity to be hidden at the time of the Sun King (Louis XIV) when it was actually considered a privilege reserved for the highest degrees of the court nobility to attend the "lever du Roi", the awakening of the King, including him sitting on the "throne" (equipped with a majolica vase and a table for reading and writing) that the sovereign used every morning to carry out his bodily needs?
And so, cascading from the King down, the activities of the body were considered natural and were carried out, if one was at home, in the chamber pot which was then emptied by throwing its contents out of the window.
The result of all this, added to the animal manure and the habit of throwing all kinds of garbage or processing waste on the street (there were no sewers or sanitation systems, except for some rare washing of the main and central streets of the cities ) was filthy streets and putrid cities.
If, on the other hand, you were out of the house, things got more complicated, not so much for the men who, thanks to the more practical clothes and the favorable physiology were able to find a secluded corner to relieve themselves, as well as for the women.
The aristocrats wore complex and overabundant dresses, with skirts, petticoats, bodices with strings and buttons, not to mention the "panier", a frame with concentric circles in wicker or whalebone, tied together by ribbons and fixed directly on the corset . How then?
A solution to every problem: the Bourdaloue was invented, a portable chamber pot equipped with a handle and formed according to the female shape, which was placed under the skirts by the maid and which allowed the grand lady, thanks to the fact that it had a strategically placed opening, to free themselves in public while respecting the concept of decency considered acceptable at the time.
However, it seems that at the beginning of the 1700s only three aristocrats out of a hundred wore underpants, either for convenience or because they were still considered a sinful garment by the Church (in the previous century they were worn and flaunted above all by prostitutes, as in Venice, where they were called "braghesse" and were imposed as an obligation for girls who were "working girls"). In public, it is said.
Of course, bourdaloue was used without problems, in the 1700s, on every occasion: during walks, during carriage rides, in the middle of a dance and, yes, even in church.
The term bourdaloue derives from the surname of Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), a very famous preacher who, thanks to his extraordinary oratory art, was called to Versailles to give his sermons in the Royal Chapel, in front of the King and the courtiers.
The sermons, however, were very long and, in order not to miss a single word (and not to leave their place, which represented a precise hierarchical order within the courtiers), the ladies resorted to bourdaloue, which allowed them to solve the problems of incontinence. without abandoning their place in church.
Leopold then communicates to Hagenauer the hope of a collection of 75 Luigi d'oro for the first Parisian concert of the young Mozarts, scheduled for March 10 at the Teatro del Signor Felix, which actually yielded 112. During their stay in Paris the Mozarts have way to also attend "shows" that were very rare in Salzburg, while in Paris were almost daily event: the hangings of criminals in Place de GrГЁve (the current Place de Hotel de Ville, the Town Hall).
It is not known whether for having witnessed it or by hearsay, the story of the hanging of three servants (a cook, a coachman and a maid) who in the service of a rich widow to whom annuity payments were sent home every month, had stolen the astonishing sum of 30,000 Louis of gold. Such facts did not cause a sensation and it could happen that servants were hanged for even minimal thefts, even for only 15 sous. Leopold, a well-meaning bourgeois, thought it was right to make people feel safe.
On the other hand, it seems that it was not considered a theft to "skim money" at the expense of the masters: Leopold says that this is to be considered profit and not theft. Then as today, if the law was very hard on the poor, it was not so hard on the rich and powerful. Thus a notary, taking advantage of the sums of money entrusted to him and no longer able to repay them, went bankrupt and disappeared from circulation. They, therefore, had to be content with hanging his portrait.
In the last letter sent to Hagenauer from Paris on 1 April 1764, Leopold Mozart refers to an infrequent episode: an eclipse of the sun. For days the Parisian glassmakers had collected all the glass fragments left over from the work to prepare for the event, and had colored them blue or black for sale to those who wanted to observe the eclipse without having any damage to their eyesight. Those who were not satisfied with observing the eclipse from the road could go to the Observatory built by Louis XIV in 1667 and entrusted to the Italian astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Cassini (later naturalized French, as had happened, again under Louis XIV with the Florentine musician Giovan Battista Lulli who became Jean-Baptiste Lully). Unfortunately for the Parisians who had bought the colored glass, a heavy rain fell that day and the vision of the eclipse faded.
In compensation, however, the anticipation of the event had unleashed the superstition of those (and there were many since the churches that morning were stormed) who believed that the eclipse would poison the air or even cause plagues. Having scraped together a lot of money from the performances of the boys, Leopold writes to Hagenauer (who, remember, was his lender / administrator / banker) that he wanted to deposit 200 Luigi d'oro, at the Parisian branch of the Tourton and Baur bank, waiting to have them transferred to Salzburg. He also looks forward to collecting the proceeds of the next concert, scheduled for 9 April, with which he hopes to replenish the reserves with at least another 50 or 60 Luigi d'oro, without excluding the hope of obtaining more.
But how did the organization of public concerts work at that time? For private individuals, kings and aristocrats, they presented themselves, obtained an invitation, the performance was carried out and then waited (even for some time) for a gift in money or precious objects (if all went well). Public concerts with payment of an entrance ticket were not yet widespread at the time when the Mozarts were in Paris. The main organization dedicated to the proposal of musical concerts was the "Concert spirituel" which, since 1725, had the royal permission to have music performed in competition with the Parisian theatrical institutions. In particular, the concerts were organized during the period of Lent, when any profane entertainment was forbidden, and the programs included choral and instrumental music with interventions by the main virtuosos. These concerts were mainly frequented by the middle class and the lower aristocracy (the important aristocrats, as we have seen, organized them at home).
For paid public concerts, the organization provided for the presale of tickets through friends and acquaintances introduced in the Parisian salons who could circulate the news of the concert and sell the tickets to interested parties. Even the shops of the music publishers could be part of the booking and ticket sales points (in Vienna in the following years, this was the case for Wolfgang and also later, for Beethoven and others who became entrepreneurs themselves). The friends, therefore, contacted potential interested parties eight days before the concert and sold them concert tickets which, in this specific case, cost 1/4 of Luigi d'oro. If the price was the same as the one charged for the previous concert, which had collected 112 Luigi d'oro, then we can estimate the presence of 448 people at the Parisian exhibition on 10 March 1764!
A little selling trick, Leopold himself reveals, consisted in giving most of the tickets, in packets of 12 or 24, to ladies who, as such, would hardly have received any refusal to purchase from the courteous men who may have offered them. To prevent fake tickets from being printed Leopold Mozart had his seal put on the cards and the content was very concise: At the Teatro del Signor Felix, rue and Porte Saint HonorГ©, this Monday 9 April at 6 pm. This Mr. Felix's theater was actually a small private theater built inside his palace, where friends and noble guests delighted in acting in first person plays.
The two concerts given by the Mozarts were able to be organized thanks to the availability of the Theater, obtained thanks to the support of Madame Clermont, but above all thanks to a special authorization obtained from Mr. de Sartine, Lieutenant General of Police, on multiple interventions by Mozart supporters: the Duke of Chartres, the Duke of Duras, the Count of TessГ© and many other ladies. Why was authorization needed to organize concerts? The reason depends on the fact that the King had granted some Parisian institutions "privileges" which provided for the exclusivity in the organization of certain shows: L'Opera (L'AcadГ©mie Royale de Musique) had the exclusive right to organize theatrical performances, the Concerts spirituels enjoyed the privilege of organizing concerts, the ComГ©die francaise and the ComГ©die italienne were the only ones authorized to organize theatrical performances. What was the picturesque world of theater like in Paris?
The theatrical world in Paris at the time of the Mozarts
First of all it should be remembered that the profession of theatrics and the people who practiced it were at the time (and for centuries) considered immoral by the Church, so much so that the actors and dancers were subject to excommunication (for the musicians the speech was different because their art did not include excommunications and accusations of corruption of conscience).
If a noble had given himself up to the theatrical profession he would have lost the right to his title, while an aristocrat who had wanted to sing or play in the Opera team would not have suffered negative consequences.
While in Italy the situation of the actors was better, thanks to the greater tolerance that was generally practiced towards all forms of conduct at the limits of morality. In France the social condemnation was very much alive to the point that the deceased actors and dancers were denied the funeral ceremony and burial in consecrated ground.
We were buried at night and almost in secret, as was done for the most heinous criminals, and as happened for the poor Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known by his stage name of MoliГЁre, great actor / author.
His enormous popularity, the applause and support of the Sun King, Louis XIV, for whom he wrote and interpreted numerous plays at Versailles and in Parisian theaters, was worthless: the pressure of the Court only obtained that he was not buried in a mass grave . Not even his death on the stage, during the recitation of the "Imaginary Sick", softened the religious but the same fate was also destined for many other actors among the most admired and even idolized, such as the actress Adrienne Lecouvreur (celebrated by the melodrama namesake of Francesco Cilea of 1902) lover of Maurice of Saxony and many others, who were buried on the banks of the Seine only thanks to the interest of the Prefect of Paris.
The excommunication prevented the actors from receiving the sacraments and therefore also getting married was a problem. Since religious marriage was the only one officially recognized, anyone who had more common law relationships, living together as married couples, could have incurred the rigors of the law that punished public concubines.
Finally, the children of these couples were forcibly "de facto" and considered illegitimate, a condition that deprived them of many civil rights and exposed them to public mockery.
There was no way around the norm, not even for the most acclaimed stars of the stage, not even for friends and lovers of high ranks of the nobility.
The only way out consisted in solemnly declaring, in front of a priest and witnesses, one's irrevocable renunciation of the theater.
Some famous artists followed this procedure but, as they say: every law has a loophole.
Once he had renounced the theater, the King, either by decision of him or at the request of the courtiers who appreciated the artist, could order that the renouncer present himself in the theater and his career continued. Besides, could he have disobeyed the King?
The arrows of the Church, however, were not the only ones to strike the actors, even the civil laws excluded them: they could not enter the army or exercise public employment, they could not testify in the trials and, even, if some belonging to a noble profession were married to a theatrical player, he would have been struck out of the ranks.
Although many nobles and noblewomen vied to have the most famous actors / actresses and dancers at their tables, the common morality of some continued to think that having them at their receptions was scandalous, much more than having them between the sheets of their bed. .
However, there were not a few nobles who, challenging the family and risking disinheritance, became actors, perhaps hiding behind a stage name that would have at least contributed to not dishonoring the family coat of arms. However, it must be said that the actors did nothing to improve the social perception of the category, quite the opposite!
It had come to the point that an abbot, a clergyman but evidently broad-minded (like many religious of the time who imitated the womanizer Richelieu) came to argue that if a singer had only three lovers at the same time, it was acceptable as one. He kept one for pleasure, the second for honor, and the third for money.
Intrigues and rivalries were the order of the day, as were the excesses in the behavior of daily life, without counting the repeated sentimental events (often mercenary) that made the fortune of the most valid and aesthetically appreciable artists and artists, bringing their lovers of financial ruin due to the fabulous gifts that they demanded: carriages complete with horses, jewels, cash to pay their debts up to entire palaces obtained more on the fabrics of an alcove than among those of the curtains.
The litigation in the theater companies was extremely high and an assignment of a part to the rival was enough to unleash the wrath of the diva who believed herself cheated of her right to excel.
The clashes could result in simple bickering, in loud quarrels (even on stage, during shows, with exchanges of punches on the head and hair pulling), in intrigues and conspiracies to damage opponents, in jokes and teasing (such as defecating in the box where the actresses kept their false beauty marks and the necessities for tricks) but also in real duels, such as the sword fight between the famous actor Dazincourt and the younger Dangeville or the gun duel between the singer Beaumesnil and the dancer Theodore.
The numerous publications that circulated in Paris, sold by street vendors but also in theaters, threw themselves to death on all the events involving the most famous theatrical characters: the gossip about private lives and professional quarrels was certainly not invented by us today.
The public of "fans" of the most famous artists was not satisfied with attending their performances in the theater, they also wanted to "take them home" and those who could not do it by inviting them in person were content to buy the SГЁvres porcelain figurines or portraits. which were produced and marketed in abundance.
It was the practice that famous actresses and actors, singers and dancers had rich lovers, both noble and belonging to the big bourgeoisie, and it was not uncommon the case of multiple contemporary relationships, where lovers knew they were in close relations but generally did not they worried too much.
In this 18
century which reminds us of our times in so many aspects, it even went so far as to publish in the gazettes widespread in Paris, such as the Espion anglais (the English spy), lists of the most famous prostitutes in the city, which seems to counted from 40,000 to 60,000, according to some sources.
Among these, of a very different level from the tens of thousands of poor girls whose only way to make ends meet in the sale of their bodies for little money, there were famous actresses (such as M.lle Clairon, registered mail thanks to her extra-theatrical skills, which debuted in the theater thanks to a decree of the Duke of Gesvres who in 1743 ordered the ComГ©die-Francaise to "immediately make her debut ... in the role she will have chosen"), singers (such as M.lle Arnould, of the which we will see later on the qualities of the spirit) and dancers (such as M.lle Guimard), all enrolled in the roles of the ComГ©die Francaise or the AcadГ©mie Royale de Musique, better known as OpГ©ra.
Towards the end of the century, when the laws against social promiscuity in aristocratic marriages became more relaxed, some artists even managed to get married by aristocrats, thus obtaining a noble title to be placed before their name: the singer Levasseur became the Countess Mercy-Argenteau, D'Oligny became Marchesa Du Doyer, Saint-Huberty became Countess D'Entraigues.
Despite the negative moral vision, general but superficial in the upper classes, towards the theater and the theatricals, in the 18th century the love for that world was rampant: everywhere people acted, danced and sang, from Versailles to the great Parisian noble palaces, from the houses of the bourgeoisie to the convents.
Over the course of the century, those who could afford it did not deprive themselves, inside their palace or castle, of a private theater, often of extreme luxury and with hundreds of seats, where all the most illustrious coats of arms of France gathered together. to the high ecclesiastical offices and the most fashionable intellectuals who often, like Rousseau, Corneille and Voltaire, wrote texts for the theater.
In these private theaters, not excluding that of the Court in Versailles, the aristocrats also performed and, in some cases, demonstrating certainly remarkable vocal and recitative talents.
The three Royal Theaters
It all began with Louis XIV, the Sun King, who, inspired by the Italian Academies existing since the Renaissance, decided to establish in France, in 1661, the Royal Dance Academy (an art he practiced being himself the protagonist of several ballets that he staged in Versailles for the Court, with the music of his resident musician, the Florentine Giovan Battista Lulli, who with the well-known French chauvinism was immediately naturalized and renamed Jean-Baptiste Lully).
This was followed in 1669 by the Royal Academy of Music, later simply called OpГ©ra.
The third protagonist of the Maison du Roi, the House of the King, which was entrusted with the entertainment of His Majesty, dates back to 1680 with the foundation of the theater company of the ComГ©die-Francaise, the comedians of the King to whom the actors of the ComГ©die were counterbalanced. Italienne (and what battles arose to defend French privileges from the cravings of Italian comedians).
Authors and Actors
As also Wolfgang Mozart was able to verify through his own experience on the occasion of the composition and rehearsal of his melodramas, the actors (and above all the prima donna) could play the good and the bad ordeal by refusing to sing the arias that in their opinion did not enhance their voices or by asking to add new ones to better highlight their role in to the detriment of / the rival etc.
Even in France the situation was not dissimilar, at least until the time when Gluck, thanks to his artistic "weight" of European level and the times that were progressively changing in favor of composers and authors, was unable at least in part to contain and trim, not without difficulty, the claims of the stars.
The authors of the literary texts of tragedies or comedies represented in Parisian theaters were often not paid or, if they managed to agree on a small percentage on the proceeds of the plays, they were regularly cheated by the directors of the companies who falsified the revenue figures by inflating the expenses.
It is true that a Royal Decree of the end of the 17th century had established that the authors would have to pay a fee equal to one ninth of the collection for the texts in five acts and one twelfth for those in three acts, net of management costs of the theater.
This decree was never applied.
Even the directors of the theaters put up absurd clauses for which if a theatrical work did not reach a certain income in two or three consecutive performances, the rights of the text passed to the company, which could have staged it at will without paying a cent to the author.
The company of the Italian Theater, however, from 1775 decided to continue to pay for the work of the authors, which caused a flow of writers who, leaving the ComГ©die-Francaise, offered their works to Italians.
The earnings of the actors
The income of the most famous actors, singers and dancers underwent, during the eighteenth century, considerable increases: from the 2,000 annual livre (which in the mid 18
century allowed a dignified but certainly not brilliant life) soon reached figures 10/20/30 times more, not counting the gifts from admirers and lovers.
The great artists thus began to "keep a parlor" by hosting nobles and intellectuals at their tables, spending enormous sums to feed their guests every day and to sumptuously furnish the palaces, which began to compete for luxury with those of the great aristocracy.
One of the major items of expenditure, especially for the artists, were the stage costumes that for almost the whole of the 18
