Scene 10 (Mozart’s bedroom, Night, April 24)

Mozart and Constanze

Duettino di rivelazioni

 

“Merde! Kaka! I’m not having a good time at all! I just hate being patronized by those damn Italians! You’d think people would at least be grateful that I could learn the beastly role in 15 minutes, step in and sing the silly recitatives they can’t even remember after weeks of drill!”

“Chérie, du calme, quelle espèce de passion!”

“M’enfin, I know I’m a matron and I stopped looking like a little girl a while ago, but honestly, darling! And that fat Nancy Storace with the cow’s eyes you think so much of, well! The woman never misses a chance to remind me that she is the international diva and I am the dilettante, and that my voice is rather pretty but my stage manner lacks this or that, and why don’t I try this bit of staging and this pose and this gestique that she used with such great success while singing for the Helsinki Grand Opera … I could just kill the bitch!”

“She’s just jealous. Storace has ambitions to take over your role, sweetheart.”

“Go on! She wants to sing Barbarina?”

“No, loviekin doviekin, she wants to sleep with me.”

“Ah, ha. Und es war Licht.”

“But darlingdear, I’m otherwise occupied. You sound so girlishly lovely in the little air; you’re charming onstage; your eyes are black and comely; you’re smarter than all of them put together, which is not saying a whole lot, I suppose … and heaven be continually praised, you’re married to me. Forever. Not subject to revision, derision or division.”

“If you insist, dumpling, I shall abide by the terms of my contract, letter and spirit. You know, I’m not all that wild to be onstage as I once was; and I really don’t enjoy the life, the back-stabbing, the pettiness, the creeping anxiety. I’d rather stay home and keep the oven warm.”
“Ah. Are you pregnant then?”

“Yes, dearie, I am. Let’s pray hard for this one.”

“And – your operatic ambitions are once more deferred?”

“Per sempre. Let Ouisia and Josepha and Sophie be in show business; I hate everybody else in it! Except Benucci; he’s a lamb, and his mind is fixed firmly on his craft. So if you run off with Storace I’ll run off with him.”

“Let’s save the coach fares and let them run off with each other.”