Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756. His father Leopold was a composer and chapel master at the Archbishop of Salzburg, while his mother Anna Maria Pert was the daughter of a prefect. When his father gave lessons to Wolfgang's older sister, Marianna, the little one assisted and already with his little hands he found the "thirds" on the keyboard of the harpsichord. By the age of five he was playing pieces to perfection and improvising short compositions.
In 1762, Leopold took his little son to Vienna where he was invited, together with his sister Marianna, to play at the emperor's court Francis I.. The following years I always traveled with my father, and soon became famous.
He traveled and performed in many European cities, and when he arrived in Italy he was already famous. Despite his young age, in Bologna, he was appointed philharmonic academic. In Rome, Pope Clement gave him the honor of Golden spur. In Milan he composed his first major work, mithridate, the opera performed twenty times when the theater was sold out.
Back in Salzburg, Wolfgang became court musician at the archbishop, he was only 16 years old. To continue his career she chose to move to Mannheim, a town famous for his orchestra.
Here he met the Weber family who had five daughters. Wolfgang fell in love with fifteen-year-old Aloysia, but his father Leopold was furious and with a letter invited him to leave immediately for Paris where he could have the whole world talked about. In reality it was not so, because he did not obtain fame or glory, and so he returned to the Archbishop of Salzburg.
Wolfgang hated Salzburg, and at the origin of this hatred was the pettiness of his patron, the archbishop Geronimo Colloredo, who always treated him like a servant forcing him to take his meals with the cooks and waiters. For nine years he endured these humiliations. But in 1781, when the archbishop prevented him from giving concerts in Vienna, then Mozart insulted and kicked the archbishop's adjutant, and moved permanently to Vienna.
The Weber family also moved, or rather the lady who had been widowed together with her daughter Costanza, while her first love, Aloysia, had long since been married to an actor.
He married Constance a short time later, a happy marriage which lasted only nine years, until the composer's death. Wolfgang's wife bore six children, but only two survived infancy.
They were years of success for the composer, he played his most recent compositions for the Viennese society, going from the harpsichord to the piano in a superlative way.
In 1782, the emperor attended one of his works, and immediately consecrated Mozart, sacred monster of music.
Over the next few years he read about a hundred librettos before he found one that suited him, and finally found a Lorenzo da Ponte adaptation of the opera"The Marriage of Figaro“. The work was so well received in Prague that all the people on the street whistled, sang and danced to the tune of him.
He then composed a stupendous version of the “Don Giovanni“, and it was an immediate triumph.
The operatic composition reflected his belief in the nobility of man's soul, and in the victory of good over evil. He became a member of Freemasonry, and some experts believed they recognized symbols in his own work "Il flauto magico“, an exuberant and joyful work at the same time.
The first was held on 30 September 1791 and after just one month it had already been repeated 24 times; then he fell ill, he was only 35 years old.
At that time the public no longer followed him as in the past, and it was Count Arco, the archbishop's assistant, the one who had kicked him who said: "At the beginning honors and money are collected, but after some time the Viennese prefer other novelties, because replicas are not welcome".
Here the Mozart family decided to move to a more modest house to better balance expenses with little income.
The first was held on 30 September 1791 and after just one month it had already been repeated 24 times; then he fell ill, he was only 35 years old.
At that time the public no longer followed him as in the past, and it was Count Arco, the archbishop's assistant, the one who had kicked him who said: "At the beginning honors and money are collected, but after some time the Viennese prefer other novelties, because replicas are not welcome".
Here the Mozart family decided to move to a more modest house to better balance expenses with little income.
In July 1791, a stranger showed up who, paying in advance, commissioned him a requiem mass. Wolfgang, was increasingly weak and feverish, with constant fainting and tormented by his illness. “I am writing the requiem for myself” he confided to Costanza. His rheumatic disease that afflicted him since he was a child was leading him to paralysis.
The work remained forever unfinished due to the author's death on 5 December 1791 and was subsequently completed by his friend and pupil Frank Zaver Süssmayr.
