"Mozart Opera Arrangements: When the Music Was New"

Featuring Washington University String Quartet students: Ken Zheng, Gracie Aeschbacher, Madeleine Coutré, Leora Sherman.

From Gaylord Library’s rich collection of early Mozart and Beethoven prints, the quartet will be playing some extracts from Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte from parts printed in 1796, six years after its first performance. In Mozart’s time music circulated in manuscript copies and in print, and an opera, if it enjoyed any success, would be published in a variety of playable arrangements, in this case for string quartet without the voices. Hearing these arrangements now, we get an insight into the way operatic music was circulated and enjoyed in a domestic setting, when the music was new.  Introductory remarks by Professor Emeritus Hugh Macdonald.

Free Admission.