Let me tell you that Raaff is the best and honestest man in the world, but so wedded to his old jog-trot ideas that it is enough to drive one crazy. Consequently it is very difficult to write for him; very easy, too, I grant you, if one is content to write songs such as, for example, the first, "Vedrommi intorno," &c. If you could only hear it--it is good, and it is pretty; but if I had written it for Zonca I should have made it much better fitted to the words. I had a good deal of trouble with him about the quartet. The oftener I hear this quartet the more effective it appears to me, and every one that has heard it likes it. Only Raaff thinks it will be wanting in effect; he said to me, "Non c' è da spianar la voce." As if there should not be more speaking than singing in a quartet! But he knows nothing about these things. I only said, "My dear friend! if there was only one note in this quartet that I thought should be altered, I would do it; but I am better satisfied with it than with any other piece in the opera, and when you have once heard it together, you will alter your mind. I have done my best to please you with your two songs, and so I will with the third, with good hopes of succeeding; but as far as regards the terzets and quartets, the composer should be allowed his own way." That satisfied him. After the rehearsal Raaff "gladly acknowledged himself in the wrong, and had no more doubt as to the good effect of the quartet" (December 30, 1780). When Mozart had "shown him the paces" of his first air, he was quite satisfied with it (November 15, 1780); and equally so with the air in the second act (December 1, 1780):-- He is as much in love with his song as a younger man might be with his fair lady: he sings it at night before he goes to sleep, and in the morning as soon as he wakes. He said to Baron Viereck and Herr von Castel, "I have always been used to have a hand in my own part, in the recitatives as well as the songs; but I have left this just as it was. There is not a note that does not suit me exactly." _Enfin_, he is as happy as a king over it. Some ill-natured speeches were made in spite of all this, as Mozart writes to his father (December 27, 1780):-- _À propos!_ Becke tells me that he wrote to you again after the last rehearsal but one, and told you among other things that Raaffs song in the second act is not written for the words. "They tell me," he said, "that you know too little of Italian. Is it so?" "You should have asked me, and then written! I can assure you that he who told you this knows very little Italian himself." The song goes exceedingly well with the words. One hears the "mare" and the "mare funesto;" and the {THE MUNICH SINGERS.} (135) passages lead up to "minacciar" in a way that thoroughly expresses "minacciar"--a threatening; in fact, it is the finest song in the opera, and meets with universal approval.