The public and private affairs of Josepha Duschek a reinterpretation on Mozart´s Bella mia fiamma, addio kv528 CHEW, Geoffrey

RESUMEN: Mozart´s concert aria Bella mia fiamma, addio kv528 is a farewell aria, composed in Prague in 1787 for the singer Josepha Duschek, to a text set earlier by Niccoló Jommelli. The choice of text, in the light of an early anecdote concerning the circumstance of tha composition of the music, might seem to suggest that Mozart and Duschek were using it to tease one another in slightly risqué terms. This article reviews recent scholarship concerning Duschek´s moral reputation (including Maynard Solomon´s suggestion that Duschek and Mozart were lovers) in the light of the contemporary sources, compares Duschek´s career and relationship with her patron with those of other women musicians in Bohemia at the time, and compares Jommelli´s setting of the text with Mozart´s. Discussing the interplay of the private and tha public, in the performances of 18th-century actresses in England, the theatre historian Felicity Nussbaum has suggested that these women increased their "marketability" by combining a hint of scandal with a reputation for "noble" behaviour. Drawing on these ideas, the article segguests that Bellla mia fiamma, addio is best interpreted as simultaneously tragic and comic, rather than either exclusively- at least for contemporary audiences who were able to sense an ironic interplay between the roles singers were performing in public, and tha private lives they could imagine the singers to be leading. Keywords: Mozart, Josepha Duschek, patronage, farewell aria, parody, women in music.