The success of the opera led the Emperor to order a new opera butra of Mozart, who, in connection with its composition, was brought together with Lorenzo da Ponte. The result was Le nozze di Figaro. Beaumarchais's work on which the libretto is based had been forbidden in Vienna on the ground of its immorality. Mo zart, however, went to work on the score, and when part of it had been composed, Da Ponte found oppo•tmrity to have the Emperor hear it, with the result that he ordered its completion and performance. Besides, this he gave the composer an order for a musical comedy, Der elurr.spieldirecto•, for a garden fete at Schi.in brunt]. Throughout the preparations for the production of Figaro Salieri and his adherents were active in opposition, and the first perform ance, in Nay, 1786. near being a failure. In January, 1787, however, it was received with immense enthusiasm at Prague, where Mozart be came a popular idol. The concerts which he gave there were immensely successful, and he was engaged to write another opera. Pa Ponte sug gested Dan Giovanni to him. and in April placed the libretto of the work in his hands. By Sep tember Mozart and his wife and Pa Ponte were in Prague, rehearsals were taken in hand, and late in October Don was produced, and was even more sut•r'essfu1 than Pirntro had been.
During a tour undertaken in 1789 with Prince Can Lichnowski, the destination being Berlin, Mozart stopped en route at Leipzig, where he played in the Thomaskirche and was deeply im pressed with Ilaeh's motets. In Berlin his suc cess w•as such that Frederick William Ti. offered him a position as kapellmeister with a salary of 3000 Dialers. But a few words of reassuranee from the Austrian Emperor, accompanied with an artier for a new opera, coupled with his own strong feeling of loyalty, unfortunately induced him to decline the King's offer, the best he had had. The opera was Cosi fan turtle, which was produced in Vienna in •January, 1790. After a visit to Frankfort to attend the coronation of tire new Emperor, Leopold IL, he returned to Vienna. Meanwhile his old acquaintance Schikancder was managing a theatre in Vienna. The affairs of the house being precarious, he thought to better them by producing an opera by Mozart, and so applied to him in the spring of 1791 to Write a 'fairy' opera—'a piece that would at tract.' Sehikaneder himself furnished for Mozart the libretto to the Zauber/late (The Magic Flute). The work was interrupted by an order to compose an opera for the coronation of Leo pold as King of Bohemia at Prague, in 1791. It was La clemenza di 'Tito, written in a few weeks by a man already much overworked. It did not make much impression. The llagie Flute was brought out in September. 1791, under the com poser's own direction, and with distinguished success.
But Mozart's constant struggle with intrigue and pecuniary necessities, and the strain to which he had subjected himself in order to meet. these by constant work, had begun to tell upon him, and when, even before he bad finished The Magic Flute, he received a mysterious commissio» to compose a requiem. he felt that he was writing his own swan song. It is now known that the commission came from a Count Walsegg, whose intention was to have the work performed as his own, and who therefore kept his identity from Mozart. So fixed became Mozart's idea that he must complete his Requiem before death overtook him that even when his wife drove out with him, so that lie might he in the open air, he insisted on taking his portfolio of music paper along. It was on one of these drives that his melancholy led him to express the belief that he had been poisoned at the instigation of his Italian rivals, a suspicion which does not, however, seem to have been borne out. Feeling that he would not live long enough to finish the Requiem himself, he sketched out the principal features of the un completed part, leaving them for his pupil Stiss mayor to fill out. The night before his death he gathered some of his favorite singers about him, had the score of the Bequirm brought to his bed. and the work was sung until the "Lacrimosa” was reached, when Mozart burst into tears and closed the score. His death came at one o'clock in the morning of Decenbe• 5th. and an eye witness says that his last motion was an en deavor to imitate the kettledrutns in the Requiem.
Although much of Mozart's music has been forgotten. he remains to the public one of the most fascinating figures in musical history. llis buoyant nature, which seemed to override rids fortune and intrigue and to laugh at poverty, has made him a type of the musical bohemian. Mozart is of greatest importance as an operatic composer, and as such he still ranks among the masters of music. His admirable handling of the human voice and his keen appreciation of dramatic effect have kept Flynn), Don Gioranni. and The Magic Flute in the repertory from the day they were produced. Ilis vocal numbers not only are fine as music, but, being written with a knowledge of the voice, can 1m sung with tell ing effect by accomplished singers. With Cluck, Mozart lies at the foundation of German opera. He also was a prodigious worker in other de partments of music. lle produced no less than forty-one symphonies, the best known of which are those in I•; flat Ilajor (the first symphony to employ clarinets). the Jupiter and the 0 Minor, church music, many works of chamber music, pianoforte compositions, and songs.