This event introduces commedia dell’arte as a model for interpreting eighteenth-century music through gesture, character, timing, and embodied interaction. Through presentations and musical examples, the event will touch on Mozart’s Musik zu einer Pantomime, K. 446d, ballet-pantomime sketches, and the Concerto for Three Pianos, K. 242 (which will be performed on campus on September 30), as performative materials that can be played with, recombined, and reanimated, opening the door to the full scope of Mozart’s theatrical world: mischief, slapstick, erotic charge, and ambiguity.

photo credit: Simon Wheeler