Librettos & Texts
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Project Description

With the online edition of the Mozart Librettos, the International Mozarteum Foundation offers a digital edition of the textual sources of the vocal works of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart according to academic criteria. The edition is published as part of the Digital Mozart Edition, which is currently being developed by the International Mozarteum Foundation in collaboration with the Packard Humanities Institute in Los Altos, California.

Although the librettos of Mozart’s operas have appeared in numerous printed editions since his lifetime, no edition has yet been dedicated to the scholarly evaluation of their sources. The online edition of Mozart’s librettos attempts to close this editorial gap and make a critical edition of the texts of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s vocal compositions available to a wide audience for the first time. Through the digital medium, the edition offers scholars, professional musicians, and music lovers alike a variety of opportunities to deepen their understanding of Mozart’s librettos and their sources.

As an integral part of a multi-layered genre, the text of an opera combines several philological and musical dimensions. Its creation is influenced by various sources: the actual text set to music by the composer, the original libretto, and its possible models. From a linguistic point of view, the opera text lives from historical peculiarities in the literary language of its time, which on the one hand no longer correspond to today’s usage, but on the other hand are closely connected to the musical interpretation. As a text set to music, it stands in a complicated relationship to the musical notation due to its verse form. The online edition of the Mozart librettos chooses an electronic form in order to present these different levels of the opera texts for the settings of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart in all their diversity according to scholarly criteria, which can only be partially conveyed in printed editions.

As a critical digital source edition, the online edition of the Mozart librettos differs as an “open edition” from a strictly defined printed edition in terms of:

  1. the sources considered relevant for the edition,
  2. the edition forms in which the sources are presented,
  3. the media involved.

Editorial Guidelines

The online edition of the librettos to Mozart’s operas offers a digital edition of the text sources to the settings of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart according to scientific criteria.

The text sources are edited in two different forms:

  1. CRITICAL EDITION: in a critically revised edition
  2. DIPLOMATIC EDITION: in diplomatic rendering
  3. FUNCTIONS: for both edition forms additional data beyond the pure text edition are offered.

LICENSE / CONTACT

Project Team Librettos
Edited within the Digital Mozart Edition (DME) by the International Mozarteum Foundation, Salzburg

Program Director DME Ulrich Leisinger
Project Manager Iacopo Cividini
IT Development Franz Kelnreiter
Former Employees Anja Morgenstern (2018 – 2020)
Valentina Codognotto (2018 – 2020)
Norbert Dubowy (2018 – 2020)
Till Reininghaus (2008– 2020)
Agnes Amminger (2014 – 2018)
Amandine Schneebichler (2016)
Thomas Ballmann (2015 – 2016)
Carolina Barazza (2012 – 2015)
Adriana De Feo (2008 – 2015)
Geneviève Geffray (2014)
Bérengère Le Boulair (2014)

Funder
Packard Humanities Institute (PHI), Los Altos (California/USA)
Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum (ISM), Salzburg

Contact
cividini@mozarteum.at
kelnreiter@mozarteum.at

How to quote
Mozart-Librettos – Online-Edition, published by the International Mozarteum Foundation, Salzburg (https://dme.mozarteum.at/en/text-editions-2/librettos/, [date]).

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