ABSTRACT
The privileged status of Mozart's operas is reflected not only in their prominence in the repertory and in the unceasing flood of publications devoted to them, but even more in their composer's iconic role as arguably our greatest culture-hero. Stefan Kunze asserts that Mozart was 'interested in operatic "reform" to the extent that it did not endanger musical autonomy; that is, the possibility of allowing musical theatre to emerge from the technical construction' of the music. The strength of Andrew Steptoe's The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas is his focus on the particular social-cultural milieu of each work. Motivic development within a number is unquestionably one of Mozart's most important techniques for generating coherence, precisely in the supple, unremarkable ways that dramatic music requires. The notion of 'unity' in Mozart's operas is doubly suspect: it originated in the historically-culturally delimited and un-Mozartean context of German interwar Wagnerian aesthetics; and it leads to absurd results.
