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Wagner wanted effective airs, duets, trios, choruses and marches; and no libretto-monger ever went to work in a more deliberate, matter-of-fact and business-like way to provide opportunities for these. Both in Die Feen and in Das Liebesverbot his purpose had been more definitely, more disinterestedly, artistic. Now he set to work to manufacture for the Paris market.
Hallé remarks that when he talked of his operatic dreams at this time he was commonly regarded as being a little, or more than a little, "off his head." It became evident at the outset that all hopes anent the opera must fall to the ground. He met Scribe, the omnipotent libretto-monger of the day, and of course nothing came of it.
The noise impressed Da Ponte, the libretto-monger, and he asked Salieri to set his best libretto and gave Mozart only his second best; and thus by a curious irony stumbled into his immortality through sheer stupidity, for his second best libretto was "Don Giovanni" of all possible subjects precisely that which a wise man would have given to Mozart.
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