On today’s date in 1782, Mozart’s opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” opened at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The libretto of Mozart’s opera was full of the high-minded ideals of the Enlightenment. These same ideals were expounded by the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II, who had recently curtailed censorship and established religious tolerance in Vienna. For spice, Mozart included some colorful Turkish music, and for comic relief, what he himself called “a boozy drinking song.”

It was also an opera written in German, Vienna’s native tongue, and not in Italian, the customary language for the court operas in Mozart’s day. Apparently, the reforming Emperor Joseph II also encouraged the development of operas performed in a language that most of his subjects could understand.

These days, supra-titles can provide instant translations for staged productions of operas written in a foreign language, and sub-titles can do the same for foreign films. Television programs are more often than not re-dubbed into the language of the land where they are shown.

Today’s date also marks the birthday in 1941 of an English composer, Geoffrey Burgon, who achieved international fame when his scores for the successful British TV adaptations of John Le Carré’s espionage thriller “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and Evelyn Waugh’s novel “Brideshead Revisited” were broadcast worldwide. Burgon has composed successful works for the concert hall as well, including, like Mozart, a setting of the “Requiem Mass.”