“Ma in Spagna, mille e tre.” (March 31, 1814)

Now this could be a bit of a blooper … Claire is quoting from the Catalogue Aria sung in the Mozart opera Don Giovanni by the hero's servant Leporello. The trouble is, this opera was not performed in London until 1816 (see The Musical Reminiscences of the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, 1834, p. 136, and Ian Kelly, Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy, 2005, p. 275). Kelly explains: “Its sexually licentious themes had been considered too shocking for it to be performed in any of the thirty years since its first production in Prague in 1787.” This means I cannot even pretend that Claire might have got hold of an anthologized version set for piano – her grandmother would not have allowed anything of the kind in the house. It is possible, however, that Claire’s father somehow knew the aria, by the strange paths that music travels, and sang it to torture his wife.

This is the text:

Madamina, il catalogo è questo
Delle belle che amò il padron mio;
un catalogo egli è che ho fatt'io;
Osservate, leggete con me.

In Italia seicento e quaranta;
In Alemagna duecento e trentuna;
Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;
Ma in Spagna son già mille e tre.

 

My dear lady, this is the list
Of the beauties my master has loved,
A list which I have compiled.
Observe, read along with me.

In Italy, six hundred and forty;
In Germany, two hundred and thirty-one;
A hundred in France; in Turkey, ninety-one;
But in Spain already one thousand and three.