The Italian opera which then ruled supreme everywhere, was far from being such a dramatic performance on the stage as rivets the attention. The taste of the Italians which revelled in beautiful songs, soon made these the chief feature in the entire opera. Interesting or thrilling incidents from history, and still more the great myths of antiquity and of the middle ages, were so adapted for the occasion that a love affair always played the principal part in them, and the whole culminated in the effusions of happy or heart-broken lovers. There was here, certainly, a rich opportunity for an art like music. As it was, almost the entire opera was made up of arias, and the person who wrote the prettiest arias, of course, carried off the palm. These arias had like a garment to be made to order, so to speak, for the several singers, and to fit them exactly, if they were to produce their full effect: the finest note of the prima donna, or a tenor, had to be at the same time the finest part of the air, and _vice versa_. Thus prepared, the opera was sung, and went the round of one-half of Europe. We have seen this, in this century, in the case of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, and we see it in our own day, in the case of Verdi. It was at this point that Mozart modestly entered on the musical inheritance from the past. A youth of fourteen will certainly not change or attack what more than a century and the whole educated world has approved and admired. But how he took up into his work the several features of the “fabulous history” of the old, unfortunate king of Pontus, Mithridates, and united them into glowing music, we learn from the critic of the day, after the performance of the piece on the 26th of December, 1770, in the following words: “The young _Capellmeister_ studies the beautiful in nature, and then gives us back that beauty adorned with the rarest musical grace.” Envy and intrigue were, indeed, not wanting here, either. But Wolfgang was equal to the task of taking care of himself, and even of adapting himself to the whims of the singers. “If this duet does not give satisfaction, he can re-arrange it,” the first sopranist exclaimed; and people were very much surprised to see the tone of the home opera, its _chiaroscuro_, as they called the beautiful discordance of the different pieces with one another, so accurately hit by a young beginner. Cries of _Evviva il maestro! Evviva il maestrino!_ were heard on every side; the work had to be repeated twenty times, and it was immediately ordered for five other stages, among them that of Mozart’s own beloved capital--all of which, however, according to the custom of the time, turned only to the advantage of the copyist.