Josef Mysliveček

• 1. The Miller's Son

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  Josef Mysliveček entered the world on the 9th of March 1737 in Prague. He was one of twin sons born to a prosperous mill owner who lived on Melantrichova Street. The family home still stands today with a commemorative plaque and a bust of the composer visible above it. Young Josef studied philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University before following his father into the milling trade. He achieved the rank of master miller in 1761 but abandoned that profession to pursue music instead. His early composition studies took place under Franz Johann Habermann and Josef Seger during the early 1760s. Ambition drove him to travel to Venice in 1763 where he studied with Giovanni Battista Pescetti. Family wealth and support from Bohemian nobleman Vincenz von Waldstein subsidized this journey south.

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• 2. The Bohemian Abroad

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  Mysliveček arrived in Italy in 1763 and rarely left except for brief visits to Prague and Vienna. He became known as Il Boemo or the Bohemian throughout the Italian peninsula. Reports claiming he was called Il divino Boemo during his lifetime are false according to modern scholarship. The nickname originated from a romanetto by Jakub Arbes published in 1884 long after his death. He earned his living through teaching performing and composing while frequently receiving gratuities from wealthy admirers. Mysliveček never held direct employment by any noble prelate or ruler unlike most contemporaries. His first opera Semiramide appeared at Bergamo in 1766 though no evidence supports a putative production of Medea at Parma. Il Bellerofonte achieved great success in Naples after its premiere on the 20th of January 1767 at the Teatro San Carlo. This triumph led to numerous commissions from Italian theaters that almost always featured first-rate singers in leading roles.

• 3. Fire And Betrayal

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  Mysliveček met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Bologna in 1770 when the young composer was only fourteen years old. Leopold Mozart mentioned him in travel notes dated between the 24th and the 29th of March 1770. Twenty-eight surviving letters from the Mozart family document their relationship until contacts broke off in 1778. Wolfgang described his character as full of fire spirit and life in a letter written from Munich on the 11th of October 1777. The friendship ended over an unfulfilled promise to arrange an opera commission for Mozart at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. An incompetent surgeon burned off Mysliveček's nose while attempting to treat a mysterious illness. Wolfgang visited him at a hospital in Munich where he found his friend half crying saying My dear friend I feel for you with all my heart. The facial disfigurement likely resulted from tertiary syphilis though Mysliveček claimed bone cancer caused by a carriage accident. No individual outside the Mozart family ever inspired such emotional outpouring in their correspondence regarding this suffering.

• 4. The Disfigured End

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  A letter from Leopold Mozart dated the 1st of October 1777 referred to the illness as something shameful deserving social ostracism. Mysliveček died destitute in Rome on the 4th of February 1781 after years of financial irresponsibility. He is buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina where modern Czech admirers placed a memorial plaque. No trace exists of a marble memorial supposedly erected shortly after death by James Hugh Smith Barry who paid funeral expenses. Reports of romantic liaisons with singers Caterina Gabrielli and Lucrezia Aguiari lack documentation predating the fifth edition of the Grove Dictionary published in 1954. His reputation for promiscuity combined with the facial disfigurement suggests symptoms of advanced disease. The composer never married and no names of lovers appear in surviving records despite persistent rumors.

• 5. Opera And Innovation

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  Mysliveček wrote twenty-six opere serie including Il Bellerofonte which dominated production numbers across Europe between 1766 and 1780. More of his works appeared at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples than any other composer during that period. Yet contributions to Italian operatic culture of the 1760s and 1770s remain almost universally ignored by opera historians. An exception occurred when Armida failed disastrously at La Scala during carnival season of 1780. Some irregularities doomed this production beyond his control such as interruptions caused by prima donna Caterina Gabrielli giving birth out of wedlock mid-run at age forty-nine. Mysliveček and Christoph Willibald Gluck were the first Czechs famous as operatic composers yet their output exhibits few Czech characteristics. Their style rooted itself in Italian opera seria prioritizing vocal artistry found within elaborate arias above all else.

• 6. Silent Symphonies

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  Nearly all symphonies cast three movements without a minuet following Italian traditions originating from opera overtures. He was the finest symphonist resident in Italy during the 1770s reflected in an anthology published by Ranieri del Vivo in Florence around 1777. This collection marked the first anthology of symphonic works ever printed in Italy despite being originally opera overtures. His greatest composition may be the oratorio Isacco figura del Redentore first performed in Florence in 1776. Violin concertos rank among the finest composed between Vivaldi's generation and Mozart's own violin concertos of 1775. Wind octets stand as outstanding examples of pioneering work for wind ensemble though largely ignored until modern rediscovery. String quintets with two violas represent some of the earliest such publications ever released to the public.