Celeste Lawson's narration bridges this novel, which crosses historical fiction and romance. The story of Mozart's adult life is told from the perspective of his long-suffering (or hard-hearted, depending on your perspective) wife.
It's the story of her passion for her husband and her struggle to survive being a married to a musical genius who gave little care to the money required to support a lifestyle of parties, hard drinking, and chasing after women and the fickle patronage of aristocrats, upon whom they depended.
Lawson presents distinct and nuanced characters who avoid playing to the soap opera quality of the events in Mozart's life.
Giddy sugarplum or calculating bitch? Pretty Konstanze aroused strong feelings among her contemporaries. Her in-law's loathed her. Mozart's friends, more than forty years after his death, remained eager to gossip about her "failures" as wife to the world's first superstar.
Maturing from child, to wife, to hard-headed widow, Konstanze would pay Mozart's debts, provide for their children, and relentlessly market and mythologize her brilliant husband.
Mozart's letters attest to his affection for Konstanze as well as to their powerful sexual bond. Nevertheless, prominent among the many mysteries surrounding the composer's untimely death: why did his much beloved Konstanze never mark his grave?
If you gobbled up Confessions of a Courtesan by Deborah Hale, you will love Mozart’s Wife by Juliet Waldron.
Mozart was born #OTD in 1756. So here is Guido Cantelli's bicentenary performance of Così fan tutte, broadcast fromMilan's Piccola Scala, also #OTD in 1956.
It is Cantelli's only extant opera recording, and one of the greatest Cosìs of all.
@Daojoan this is generally very, very true, but #Mozart is not a good example - he's an example of the extremely rare cases in which someone IS born with a capacity well beyond normal people. He started composing at 5. He wrote his first symphony at 8.
He was lucky (?) to be born into a musical family with a father who drove him to make the most of his talent, but if I had turned up in the Mozarts' crib, I would still never have composed Don Giovanni.
2024 saw new works from some old faces: Bram Stoker, Mozart, and Euripides. Pop Heist's Ethan Kaye looks at how these were uncovered, and why we can expect more such finds over the coming years.