Our 200th document: Mozart’s receipt for his performance in Mainz in 1790

This one-sentence report in the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten is the earliest known reference in the press to the opera that became Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Our commentary sheds new light on why Mozart and Stephanie d. J. initially believed that Grand Duke Paul and his wife (the “Count and Countess of the North”) would arrive in Vienna in mid September 1781, and why those plans changed.

Another one-sentence report on Mozart in the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung. Although this document tells us nothing new about Mozart’s trip, it does show that his activities were of sufficient public interest to be published in far-away Hamburg.

Mozart’s autograph receipt for his honorarium for performing in Mainz on 20 Oct 1790, discovered by Franz Stephan Pelgen. We are tremendously grateful to Dr. Pelgen for informing us of his discovery, sending an image of the receipt, and sharing with us his article on the archival documents in Wrocław among which the receipt was found.

The section on “Joseph’s plan for a ‘dynastic’ marriage” has been revised to reflect the content of our new commentary for 15 Sep 1781. We have also added Lampi’s striking portrait of Princess Elisabeth of Württemberg.

The primary document has been changed to the version of the report on Mozart’s academy that appeared in the Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung on 4 Apr 1783. The commentary has been substantially revised, and we argue that this version was almost certainly Cramer’s source for the version published in Magazin der Musik over a month later (Dokumente, 190–91).

We have added a link to the new page on Mozart’s receipt for this concert.

We have added another report on Constanze’s benefit concert, this one from the Augspurgische Ordinari Postzeitung