Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was performing for European courts at six and composing at five, and the child-prodigy years shaped everything that followed, including his inability to tolerate a patron. He completed more than eight hundred works in thirty five years: symphonies, concertos, chamber music, church music and the operas that are still the centre of the repertoire. The last decade in Vienna, freelance and permanently short of money, produced Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte and the Requiem he did not finish. He was buried in a common grave, which was ordinary for the time and has been misread as tragedy ever since.
Movies (1)
Books (1)
Music (2)
Where to start with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The catalogue holds him mostly through the operas. Così fan tutte is the filmed production, the cruellest and funniest of the three Da Ponte comedies, and the one that took two centuries to be forgiven for its plot. Don Giovanni appears here as the libretto, which is worth reading on its own: a comedy that keeps turning into something colder every time the Don opens his mouth.