ABSTRACT
In the case of Mozart's opere buffe the task is made far easier by what can be learned from the operas of his time. These works, whether by Salieri, Paisiello, Martin y Soler or some lesser composer, depended at every level on dramatic and musical conventions for their focus and logic. Mozart's Viennese audience would have understood something more: that Alfonso was displaying and parodying a stereotypical agitation, one they would have recognized from its non-ironic use in other operas. To ignore or rework a set of conventions in a particular instance obviously represents an important compositional choice, whether conscious or not. And in Mozart's operas this choice seems to be made consistently for dramatic rather than musical reasons. Mozart frequently wrote magnificent music in his operas without having to break free of convention; his rejections of conventional approaches instead serve the goal of greater dramatic or psychological realism.
