Isacco, figura del redentore (Isaac, a Forerunner of the Redeemer) is an Italian oratorio by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček sometimes referred to as Abramo ed Isacco. The text is one of the most favored oratorio librettos produced by Metastasio, originally set by Luca Antonio Predieri for performance in Vienna in 1740.For details about the original performance, see Corago project Eventi Isacco of 1740. The setting by Mysliveček was first performed in Florence in 1776, the last (and greatest) of his eight oratorios. It is perhaps the finest setting of Metastasio's Isacco ever produced in the 18th century and often singled out as the composer's greatest work. Widely performed during Mysliveček's lifetime and about a decade after his death in 1781, its excellence was considered so striking that it was passed off at times as a work of both of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.Two early manuscripts of Mysliveček's Isacco (one housed in the Berlin State Library, another in the Saxon State and University Library Dresden) bear attribution to Haydn, whereas a copy in the library of the Florence Conservatory is attributed to Mozart. Complete information about the sources of Isacco is found in Freeman (2022), pp. 490–493. In fact, the musicologist Felice Boghen, who came across the manuscript attributed to Mozart in Florence sometime in the early 20th century, hailed it in print as a newly discovered Mozart masterpiece.See "Mozarts Isacco figura del redentore: ein unbekantes und noch nicht herausgegebenes Oratorium", Die Musik 20 (1928), pp. 491–494. In the latest edition of the Köchel catalogue, Mysliveček's Isacco bears the number K. Anh. C 4.03.See the Thematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts, Wiesbaden 2024 (Appendix C for misattributed works), p. 912 . In Anthony Hoboken's Joseph Haydn: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkerzeichnis, vol. 2, Mainz 1971, it is assigned the number Hob. XXI A. The work has been revived with conspicuous success in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Performance history The city of Florence became a frequent stopping place for Josef Mysliveček in the 1760s shortly after his move from Prague to Italy late in 1763. At first, it was a valuable location for him to cultivate his activities as a teacher and violinist.Mysliveček's earlier periods of residence in Florence in 1765 and 1766 are detailed in Freeman (2022), pp. 29–33. Later, he was able to savor notable productions of his operas in Florence (the first two L'Ipermestra in 1769 and Motezuma in 1771, followed by Adriano in Siria in the same year that Isacco was first performed), and the first two of a series of three oratorios that marked his greatest period as a composer in that genre (the other two were Adamo ed Eva of 1771 and La passione di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo of 1773). No later than 1771, he became closely associated with Earl Cowper, an English nobleman who was a great patron of the arts in Florence.Mysliveček's connections with Lord Cowper are discussed in Freeman (2022), especially pp. 53–66.
Beginning at an unknown time near the end of 1775, Mysliveček found himself stranded in Florence. The Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian III Joseph, intended to engage Mysliveček to compose an opera for the carnival season of 1776 in Munich, but the composer was unable to make the journey due to the effects of a chronic illness believed to be syphilis.Freeman (2022), pp. 65–66 He remained in Florence for an extra year and sought opportunities to publicize his abilities as a composer. He was able to see productions of his oratorio Isacco during Lent of 1776 (with the assistance of Lord Cowper) and the opera Adriano in Siria in the autumn at the . Each was a notable success. He also came into contact with the Florentine music publisher Ranieri del Vivo, who published a number of his orchestral works, including a collection of his symphonies that constituted the first anthology of symphonies ever published in Italy.Freeman (2022), p. 262
It was Lord Cowper's musical establishment that sponsored the first performance of Isacco in the Casino dei Nobili on 10 March 1776, with another performance given on 13 March at a gathering of the Accademia degl' Armonici, a group of music lovers headed by Lord Cowper.The venues of the first performances of Isacco in Florence are verified in Robert Lamar Weaver and Norma Wright Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1751–1800, Warren, Michigan 1993, p. 352. The all-male cast of the original productions of Isacco doubtless reflects an attitude in Italy that sacred works should be performed only by men (a proposition for oratorios made much easier in the 18th century by the wide availability of castrated male sopranos). Unlike in liturgical musical performances, a non-liturgical sacred work could include female performers in Italy of the 1770s, but this was not done in the case of the first performance of Mysliveček's Isacco.
The long series of revivals of Isacco began already in the year 1777 after Mysliveček had recovered well enough from his illness to travel to Munich and fulfill the opera commission extended to him earlier from the Elector of Bavaria. In the carnival season of 1777, there was a performance of a new setting of Mysliveček's Ezio followed by a fresh production (with minor alterations) of his Isacco during Lent. These events are described in Freeman (2022), pp. 67–70.
Whereas the reception of Ezio in Munich was mixed, Isacco was an overwhelming success, due in particular to the singing of Luigi Marchesi, at that time an obscure young Italian castrato whose appearances in Ezio and Isacco in Munich were the most significant roles of his career up to that time.Specific testimony about the impact of Marchesi's singing in Isacco in Munich is recorded in Freeman (2022), p. 230. Marchesi was able to take advantage of his new acquaintance with Mysliveček to secure casting at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the most prestigious opera theater in Europe, for the 1778/1779 operatic season, which featured performances of Mysliveček's operas La Calliroe and L'Olimpiade that helped to establish him permanently as one of the greatest operatic stars of the era (in particular the latter).
Many revivals of Mysliveček's Isacco took place in the late 18th century. As of now, nearly twenty of them can be documented up to 1791.See Freeman (2022), pp. 491–493. Nine of these performances took place at the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome, where it was a reliable favorite between 1779 and 1791.See Joyce L. Johnson, Roman Oratorio, 1770–1800: The Repertory at Santa Maria Vallicella, Ann Arbor 1987, p. 152. Mysliveček's residence in Rome during the last year of his life and the Roman premières of his last two operas (Medonte and Antigono) may have helped create interest for it. One subsequent revival in Florence in recorded (in 1777) and two subsequent revivals in Munich are recorded (in 1778 and 1787). In addition, there were performances in Milan (probably in 1777), Buda (in 1785), Bratislava (in 1786), Koblenz (in 1787), and Pest (in 1787). Mysliveček's admirers in Prague made certain that Mysliveček's oratorios were heard regularly in the church of St. Francis Serafin in the Old City between 1770 and 1782. Isacco was given there in 1778. Interest in Isacco began to be revived in the late 20th century, with the release of a complete recording by the Czech label Supraphon in 1972 a landmark event. A notable recent revival took place in 2022 at the Mozarteum in Salzburg as part of the Salzburg Festival, performed by the Czech early music ensemble Collegium 1704.Mysliveček's Isacco in Salzburg 2022
Connection with Mozart The alternative title Abramo ed Isacco for Mysliveček's Isacco has been perpetuated mainly from a precedent in the Mozart correspondence. An extraordinary letter of Wolfgang Mozart written to his father from Munich on 11 October 1777 describes a visit to Mysliveček's sickbed in a hospital where he was recovering from a failed operation that resulted in his nose being burned off.The letter of 11 October 1777 that confirms Mysliveček's facial disfigurement is translated in Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, New York 1985, pp. 302–306, and is discussed in Freeman (2022), pp. 73–78.The concern Mozart revealed to his father at this time for Mysliveček's sufferings was very touching indeed. In the entire Mozart correspondence, no individual outside the Mozart family was ever the cause for as much outpouring of emotion as what is found in Wolfgang's description of his visit to Mysliveček at this time. As a part of explaining to his father the professional assistance that Mysliveček was trying to supply him and the high esteem with which he was held in Munich, Wolfgang noted that in reference to the oratorio he knew as Abramo ed Isacco, "all Munich is talking about [it]".Freeman (2022), 77. This remark earlier created confusion in the musicological literature about when Isacco was first performed in Munich, since it hinted at a première in the autumn of 1777 while Mozart was visiting the city. It is now known that the oratorio was first performed in February 1777, during Lent, which means that in the autumn of 1777, Munich was still talking about it, unless there were subsequent performances in Munich in 1777 whose details remain obscure.
The German musicologist Christoph-Hellmut Mahling was the first to notice an uncanny similarity between the opening of an accompanied recitative in Mysliveček's Isacco ("Eterno Dio" from Part 1) and the opening of the scene "Zu Hülfe, zu Hülfe" from act 1 of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute of 1791.Christoph-Hellmut Mahling, "Mysliveček und Grétry-Vorbilder Mozarts?" in Die frühdeutsche Oper und ihre Beziehungen zu Italien, England und Frankreich: Mozart und die Oper seiner Zeit, Laaber 1981, 57–89. In addition, the music for the march written for Part 2 of the Munich version of Isacco is strongly reminiscent of the ceremonial music associated with the high priest Sarastro in Act I of The Magic Flute. It is unknown whether or not Mozart actually came into contact with music from Isacco during his trip to Munich in autumn of 1777, and it is doubtful that he could have continued to remember passages from it early 14 years after visiting with Mysliveček in Munich. Nonetheless, the oratorio was performed in many parts of Europe later in the 1770s and 1780s. As far as contacts with Mozart are concerned, it is known that Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist and producer of The Magic Flute with a long-standing relationship with the Mozart family, lived in Munich in the late 1770s and produced Isacco in Buda in 1785 as part of his activities as an impresario,Rudolf Pečman, Josef Mysliveček, Prague 1981, p. 155. thus it is possible that Schikaneder could have brought Isacco to Mozart's attention closer to the time of the composition of The Magic Flute.
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