Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791):
Ma se colpa io non ho!?Batti, batti, o bel Masetto
(from Don Giovanni) (1787)
Text:  Lorenzo da Ponte, after Giovanni Bertati?s libretto for 
Giuseppe Gazzaniga?s opera Il convitato di pietra

Original Key/Recorded Key (aria):  F Major
Teach-Track  begins:  m. 1 of recitative
Accompaniment Track begins:  m. 1 of recitative
Pianist:  Daniel Michalak

N. B.  The allegro marking found in some editions for the final 6/8 section of the aria (?Pace, pace, o vita mia?) tends to lead to an unnecessarily fast tempo (especially in light of the textual meaning at this point).  This marking may in fact be redundant, because even without any explicit tempo change there is an implicit understanding that the dotted-quarter note of the 6/8 is equal in speed to the quarter-note of the preceding section.  (To feel how this transition works, be sure to keep feeling the last few measures of 2/4 in 2 [i.e., pulsing quarter-notes] rather than in 4; then when you reach the F-natural of the last ?core,? hold it for a full half-note, subdividing the underlying quarter-note pulse into triplet-8th notes.  That way these triplet 8ths are exactly the same speed as the 8th-notes of the following 6/8 section will be (in order to end up with the right number of beats, you?ll have to imagine that the 6/8 section actually begins on the ?-re? of ?core,? rewriting the ?re? [C-natural] as an 8th-note followed by two 8th rests).  This shift from duple to triple meter is a technique Mozart employed to similarly delightful effect in several of his piano concerto finales, and its success depends largely on the listener?s ability to feel the shift in the underlying pulse.  Adding any significant tempo change on top of this meter change is, at least in the present case, gratuitous; keeping the tempo approximately the same, on the other hand, lends the music a lilting easefulness, allowing the singer?s 16th-notes runs on ?passar,? for example, to sound graceful and charming rather than effortful and agitated.

If one chooses to perform this aria without the recitative (and, in truth, the recitative has been included in the present recording not because it is familiar, but only because it appears in some recent printed editions of the aria), it is recommended that the accompaniment to ?staro qui, staro qui, le tue botte ad aspettar? (mm. 12-16, starting and ending on beat 3) be played as an introduction (you?ll need to rewrite the last quarter-note as a simple F-major arpeggio). 


Notes © 1999 by Daniel O. Michalak