Mozart’s Lost German Opera Project: *Der Diener zweier Herren* (K. 416a)
沃尔夫冈·阿马德乌斯·莫扎特
Der Diener zweier Herren (K. 416a) is a lost—or more accurately unrealised—German Singspiel project that Mozart began planning in Vienna in early 1783. Conceived when he was 27, it reflects his continuing ambition to write for the German stage after the success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
What Is Known
Mozart’s only clear contemporary reference to Der Diener zweier Herren (K. 416a) comes from a letter written in Vienna on 5 February 1783 to his father Leopold. There he states that he is “now writing a German opera” for himself, and that he has chosen Carlo Goldoni’s comedy Il servitore di due padroni as the basis; he adds that the first act had already been fully translated, by “Baron Binder” (identified in the edition as Johann Nepomuk Friedrich, Freiherr Binder von Krieglstein). In the same note, however, the editorial comment is blunt: “Mozart never finished the music.” [1]
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The Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum’s Köchel catalogue entry dates the project to Vienna, January–February 1783, and classifies it as an authentic but lost, uncompleted work (“Transmission: lost”). No autograph score is known to survive, and nothing like a coherent set of numbers for the stage can be securely reconstructed from extant sources. [2]
Still, the February 1783 letter shows Mozart thinking pragmatically and theatrically: choosing a proven comic plot, working with a noble translator, and (significantly) framing the enterprise as a German opera “for myself”—suggesting a project tailored to his own circle and opportunities in Vienna’s German-language theatre scene. [1]
Musical Content
No music that can be identified with certainty as part of K. 416a survives. The documentary record supports, at most, the idea of an intended Singspiel (spoken dialogue with musical numbers) and a chosen dramatic source; it does not preserve any pages from the score, any list of characters, or even a single definitively attributable musical excerpt. [2]
[1] Mozart to Leopold Mozart, Vienna, 5 February 1783 (English transcription and editorial notes; mentions Goldoni play, translator Baron Binder; note that Mozart never finished the music).
[2] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum (Köchel Verzeichnis), KV 416a: dating (Vienna, Jan–Feb 1783), status (uncompleted), and transmission (lost).