Cantata, “Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia” (fragment), K. 477a (G major)
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (K. 477a) is a short secular cantata in G major, written in Vienna in 1785, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was 29. Only incomplete evidence survives, and even the intended forces are not firmly documented in modern summaries.
What Is Known
Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (“For the recovered health of Ophelia”), K. 477a, is associated with Vienna in 1785 and survives only in fragmentary or otherwise imperfectly transmitted form in the Mozart catalogue tradition [1]. The text is by Lorenzo Da Ponte, and the work is linked—at least in later reporting—to a collaborative context involving Antonio Salieri and a third contributor named “Cornetti” [2].
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Placed against Mozart’s Viennese year of 1785—dominated by public piano concertos, chamber music, and intense professional networking—this little cantata reads as an occasional piece: music written for a specific social moment rather than for the theatre or the subscription concert hall.
Musical Content
What can be described with some confidence is the surviving musical profile: the cantata is in G major and takes a gently lilting 6/8 gait, marked Andante pastorale in modern presentations of the rediscovered material [2]. The opening projects an unmistakably pastorale topic—soft rocking motion, uncomplicated diatonic harmony, and phraseology that suggests a vocal line designed for clarity of Italian declamation.
The page conveys an intimate, domestic scale rather than a ceremonial one: the rhetoric is closer to Mozart’s salon cantatas and songs than to his grand Viennese concert works of the same season, and its charm lies precisely in that modest, gracefully turned surface.
[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum (Köchel-Verzeichnis online): KV 477a work entry with basic catalogue information and surviving designation.
[2] Wikipedia: overview of Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, including Da Ponte attribution and commonly cited musical details (key, meter, tempo marking in modern presentations).