' (The Deluded Bridegroom, or The Rivalry of Three Women for One Lover) was supposed to be a two-act opera buffa, K. 430, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1783. However, the opera was never completed and only a 20-minute fragment from act 1 exists.
Performance history
Mozart had originally planned to have the opera performed by a seven-member Italian troupe in Vienna. Although it was once thought that Lorenzo Da Ponte might have been the author of the libretto, scholarship by Alessandra Campana has established that the libretto was written by an unknown Italian poet for Domenico Cimarosa's opera Le donne rivali, which he composed for the Rome carnival season of 1780. According to Neal Zaslaw, Cimarosa's librettist may have been Giuseppe Petrosellini, the house poet of the Teatro Valle where Le donne rivali premiered. (Petrosellini was also the probable librettist of Mozart's earlier opera La finta giardiniera). For Lo sposo deluso, Mozart had the characters in Le donne rivali expanded from five to seven, renamed the original five, and established the cast of singers for whom he would be writing. The composition of Lo sposo deluso was considerably inconsistent, with Mozart sketching several numbers from the first act in no particular order, and a final trio being the only number constituently orchestrated. The rest of the numbers were completed in concept, but ultimately left unfinished.
It is unclear why he abandoned the work, although Zaslaw has proposed that it was a combination of the difficulties presented by re-writing and adapting the libretto for the Viennese audience and the fact that in 1785, Da Ponte had finally come through with the libretto for Le nozze di Figaro. Musicologist Rudolph Angermüller has also proposed that, due to the fact that the work was not commissioned and that the libretto was chosen by Mozart himself, the composer realised subsequently that there was a slim chance of the opera being performed.
The first known performance of material from Lo sposo deluso dates from 15 November 1797, six years after Mozart's death. Mozart's widow, Constanze, arranged for the overture and opening quartet to be performed at the Estates Theatre in Prague during a concert highlighting the musical debut of their youngest son, Franz Xaver Mozart. The identity of the arrangers are unknown, but Zaslaw proposes that one of the composer's pupils or some other "member of his circle" orchestrated the two musical numbers. All of the five numbers have since been completely reconstructed and performed.