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Una Cosa Rara, un' opera lirica composta da Vicente Martín y Soler (1754 - 1806), libretto di Lorenzo da Ponte, which, in 1786, introduced the waltz to Vienna. "Often compared favorably with Mozart as a composer of opera buffa in his lifetime," says the Wikipedia biography. And, in my opinion, not unjustly. The comparisons to be made are many: harmonic sophistication, rhythmic flexibility, state-of-the-art richness of orchestration, subtlety of counterpoint, melodic invention (sic!), deftness and originality of ensemble writing. When you are told that Paisiello and Hummel were Mozart's chief rivals--and you actually hear the music composed by those worthies, you wonder who's kidding whom: Such dull, wooden, leaden, primitive hurdy-gurdy stuff sounds like Mozart to whom? Mozart's contemporaries?--maybe some of them. One suspects, however, that the real resemblance lies in the mutilated sensibilities of those who, to this day, couldn't tell the difference between Paisiello and Martín y Soler if it bit them on their dodecaphonic asses: "Schusterflecke" seems to be what you hear after you have brutalized your inner ear into not being able to distinguish between the scientific, acoustic realities of concord and dissonance.