Mozart: Rise of a Genius (2024) s01e02 Episode Script
Episode 2
At this point, Mozart feels he's got
license to do anything.
There's a sort of a desire to push a boundary.
We have to remember, Mozart is a
compulsive rule breaker.
There's a musical anarchist in there.
This opera is sticking up
two fingers at some of those
powerful elements of his audience.
And he's so arrogant, he's expecting
them to applaud at the end.
Mozart is making
extraordinary demands of his audience.
He's risking everything,
pushing those boundaries.
That's his genius, but
also maybe his downfall.
This is the story of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A child prodigy, a
flawed human, and a composer,
the like of which the
world has never seen.
Mozart has some magical touch.
He is above and beyond normal mortals.
I mean, where would we be without Mozart?
He is classical music.
Now, with the help of
experts, Mozart lovers,
and world-class musicians--
One.
Using his private letters
and original manuscripts,
it's possible to piece
together who he really was,
a man who battled society.
Your world is not this.
Your world is this.
That's it.
He battled his family. You hid his rage against the world.
You must go this way.
No, I won't.
Yes, he will. No, I won't. And ultimately, battled himself.
He is complicated,
Mozart, and slightly crazy.
It's a grand history of
child stars who go off the rails.
A genius who channeled all this to chart
the human condition.
The success of how it is received.
I'm still going to create art.
That's a badass mic
drop moment right there.
Mozart's music makes us question why
we're put on this earth.
What is it all about?
It makes us question our existence, I think.
It really is mind-blowing
just how far above that bar
Mozart is.
Vienna, 1781.
Leaving his family behind, 25-year-old Mozart
has finally broken free
from provincial Salzburg
to follow his dreams of
becoming a great composer.
He's come to Vienna. And in his head, he has the
whole time, his father going,
what are you doing, boy? Why are you there?
Why are you not listening to my instructions?
You think you can do this on your own?
And Mozart says, I will
now make my own destiny.
Can he?
Vienna in the latter
part of the 18th century,
in the 1770s and 80s, is
a very cosmopolitan place.
It's one of the great cities of the world.
Vienna is the capital of a vast empire.
The newly crowned emperor, Joseph II,
wants to cement his
power by turning the city
into Europe's cultural epicenter,
creating a magnet for
aspiring artists like Mozart.
What Mozart wants is to write opera,
and he wants to write symphonies,
and he wants to write concertos, and he wants to do that
for the court of Joseph II.
And I think he arrives in Vienna thinking
he's going to walk into the
top job and to greater claim.
He's the homegrown boy,
and instead he finds a court
overrun by Italian
composers, and it's clear
that he's not going to get a look in.
In 18th century Europe, Italian opera
is at the height of fashion, and in Vienna,
one composer rules the
roost, the famous Italian, Antonio
Salieri. In our mind, Salieri is a much older figure.
In fact, he's only six years older than Mozart,
but he's had the
court composition sewn up
for the previous decade.
He's the favourite of the emperor.
Mozart is really jealous
of the status of Salieri.
That exposure and
prestige is something Mozart
desperately craves.
With few contacts in
Vienna, Mozart turns to the family
of his ex-girlfriend, the Vabers.
There, he gets cheap board and lodgings,
and gives piano lessons to make ends meet.
While he would like to
have a cushy court job,
he knows he's going to have to freelance.
But the only thing he can do is to have a court job.
He feels as if his
talents are being wasted,
and his life is dripping away.
When you are a fated wunderkind,
you assume that this is just your due.
The way that you're brought up as a child
massively affects your view of the world.
And if the world is telling you through
your formative years,
"Oh, you're the absolute tits,"
then this is not a good
way to emerge into adulthood
with a psychology that's intact.
That's partly why Mozart is so arrogant.
Mozart had previously been infatuated
with Madame Weber's older daughter, Aloysia.
(singing in foreign language)
A beautiful soprano and rising star.
But Mozart's father
banned their relationship,
and Aloysia moved on.
(singing in foreign language)
Now, Mozart sets his
sights on her younger sister,
Constanza.
We might think
Constanza's a bit of a wallflower.
She's been in the shadow of her sister,
who's a better singer, more beautiful.
Like her sisters,
Constanza is a trained singer
with a deep love of music.
If you care about music,
to be able to share that love with someone else
who cares equally, perhaps even more than you do,
that's a very powerful thing.
She's kind, she's got a generous spirit.
Mozart and Constanza,
they bring out a fun,
playful side in each other.
But Mozart is still just a
struggling piano teacher.
His quest, as he says
himself, is to meet the emperor.
He says, "I need to get him to know me."
If he can get face to face
with the man in the high castle,
he is just going to blow away
all these Italian guys
like Salieri with their opera.
He just needs to get to the right guy.
On Christmas Eve, 1781,
Mozart finally gets the chance
to take on the Italian competition.
Joseph has a bunch of very important
ambassadors visiting.
He wants to show off the local talent.
There's a very famous Italian pianist
right now in Vienna,
named Muzzio Clementi.
So a contest is arranged.
He's got a chance to
impress the emperor face to face
on a moment of high artistic and
diplomatic importance.
Clementi specialized in certain aspects
of piano technique,
doing things on a keyboard
that seemed physically impossible.
(audience applauding)
Clementi turns up with this astonishing set
of technically impossible pieces and
blows everybody away.
They are prepared acts of virtuosity
that are meant to dazzle.
Mozart already had that technique when he was 10 years old.
What Mozart does in response to that
I think shows you everything about him.
He starts to play a French tune
that we know as
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
And you can imagine
everybody sitting there going,
what is this? What's going on? Because all the baristas
have taken bets on this battle
about who's gonna win. He gets to the end of
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then he starts it again.
He's looked at Clementine going, sure,
that's very impressive, but can you do this?
Can you pull music out of
the air and just spin it?
It's like he's casting
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
in different roles. At one point it's a mad dance
and then suddenly it's
sort of swooning and romantic
and then it's this weird baroque waltz.
(audience applauding)
It's show offy, it's mischievous,
it's sort of experimental,
it's sort of Mozart wrapped up.
(audience applauding)
For the sake of court league convention,
the competition is declared a draw
but it's clear that
Mozart has wiped the floor with his opponent.
Joseph II, the emperor pulls into one side and goes,
"Yeah, don't worry about that, you won really."
And he gives Mozart 225 florins,
which is one and a half
times his annual salary
back in the Salzburg days.
He must feel extraordinary at that point
because he's pulled this incredible thing off
and he's quite dismissive of Clemente.
It's quite shocking to a court society
that he could treat a fellow artist
with contempt and disdain.
He wasn't a man of an institution,
he didn't play by the rules.
And it's pretty clear that
he can't be part of the fabric
of a court society.
With 225 florins in his pocket,
Mozart's ambitious landlady sees his potential.
It's actually Cecilia Constanza's mother
who sees an opportunity here for her daughter
to wed an up and coming musician.
She's very keen that
Constanza should hook up with him.
And behind the scenes is
rather pushing them together.
And they clearly have a
fantastic relationship
in the bedroom.
Wolfgang is in love.
He plucks up the courage to
tell his domineering father.
To be Righteous Father and tell some you know, Dad,
I might be a little guy,
but I have the same desires
as some big strapping workmen.
And it just so happens that I've met
this lovely young woman.
Well, I don't have to
tell you how Leopold reacts.
He goes Vesuvius once again.
He absolutely forbade
Mozart from seeing Constanza.
Mozart defies his father and
goes ahead with the wedding.
Leopold is outraged and refuses to attend
or even send his blessing.
The wedding is a very
small, modest affair.
There's hardly anyone present. There's
hardly anyone present.
For Constanza, marrying
Mozart would represent
adventure, possibility, ambition.
And of course she was a singer as well.
Constanza's always been
the wallflower, right?
And now she's with this brilliant
virtuoso of a musician.
She finally feels like
she's independent of her mother
and her sisters.
For Mozart, marrying Constanza is an act
of open rebellion against his father.
A year later, there's
still a rift in the family.
Mozart and his father haven't seen each other
since Mozart got married.
There's been this push-pull between them
for as long as he's been alive.
He desperately needs
his father's approval
as well as wanting to break free of it.
So he's trapped in this kind of tension.
As a wedding gift, Mozart
promises Constanza a mass,
a musical mass in which
he will feature his wife
as a singer.
Constanza wasn't the star.
She was in the shadow of her sister
and she's been asked to stand
up in front of these in-laws
who have been really cold
to her and perform a solo.
It's a huge moment for her.
(gentle music)
(singing in foreign language)
This piece is remarkable.
It's dark, but when she comes in,
it's like we finally see the light.
(singing in foreign language)
(gentle music)
It's a wonderful feeling when you sing it.
You're the beacon here.
You're the beacon of hope.
You're the beacon of love
that he obviously felt
personified his wife.
And it feels immense.
(singing in foreign language)
Watching her younger
brother and his new wife
perform together is a bittersweet
experience for Nano.
She traveled the world with her brother.
They shared this bond of music
and now he's sharing that bond with someone else.
This woman has come and usurped her.
(singing in foreign language)
I deeply empathize with Nano,
living your life and just
being reminded constantly
of what you could have had and what you
could have achieved.
She's there thinking, that could have been me.
(gentle music)
(audience applauding)
The mass in C minor is a triumph,
but if Mozart thinks it
will bring his family together,
he will be disappointed. (gentle music)
All Nano wrote in her diary was,
we went to a performance, it rained.
It would be the last time
she would ever see her brother.
(gentle music)
Back in Vienna, Mozart is getting impatient
for the recognition he feels he deserves
and he's had enough of sitting around
waiting for a job at court.
There is no monarch in the world
I'd rather serve than the emperor,
but I shall not go
begging for a post here.
I cannot wait around indefinitely,
for it is my sense that
even though he is the emperor,
I don't want to be dependent on his favor.
Inspired by the public concerts
he'd seen in London and Paris,
Mozart now takes a gamble.
In a radical departure,
instead of waiting to be
offered a job at court,
he will invite the court to come to him.
Mozart is an
entrepreneur who sees an opening.
I'm gonna hire in femalists to perform.
I'm gonna write music for them.
I'm gonna get people to
subscribe to multiple concerts.
Yes, yes.
And I'm gonna keep the profits and that's what he does.
You've bought your ticket for a subscription concert
in Mozart because you've heard that they really are
rather the thing, this guy is amazing.
What Mozart delivers is
this incredible synthesis
of different elements that make him
like no one's been before.
He sets up his concerts
with the audience close up
to the piano where he
sits commanding the orchestra
but close enough to the audience to wink,
to nod, to wave to them.
He is like a modern rock star.
He's selling the personality as much
as he's selling his music.
This is a human being just doing things
that are impossible.
Wow, it gives you a buzz.
It's like a drug almost.
(audience applauding)
Mozart's gamble pays off.
His series of concerts is a sellout
with even the emperor himself in attendance.
Aged 28, Mozart is now recognized
as the most dazzling composer
and showman of his generation.
We know that Mozart is quite impulsive.
He reminds me slightly of Elvis in that he spends
idiotically once he's got the money.
He feels like if he
can buy a billiard table
that costs twice his salary in Salzburg,
then he's gonna do it.
The former child star is finally back
where he wants to be.
Center stage and in the spotlight.
He and his wife Constanza
hold these insane parties
and become the sort of social center.
They're not elegant and
genteel, they are tariffs.
(audience cheering)
It's a party scene, it's like
New York in the studio 54 days.
Yeah, he was eccentric, he was out there,
he was manic I think I would say.
I think we know enough now
about mental health problems
to recognize that
Mozart had his manic moments
and the nature of
bipolar disorder, for example,
what used to be called manic depression
is the two sides to it.
The mania does allow
for an enormous energy,
enormous creativity, sometimes excessive.
In 1785, 29 year old
Mozart is on top of the world,
but there was still something missing.
Mozart hadn't seen his father for two years
and he's essentially
often olive branch to say,
that thing that a five year old child does is,
yeah, watch me dad, watch me mom. Knowing that he is now at
the pinnacle of his financial
and musical career, but
still Mozart would crave
the approval from his father.
Leopold goes to every concert,
that Mozart gives and
he's surrounded by the great
and the good of his age
and it's like turning up
at the Oscars every single
night and his son is the star.
At one of these concerts,
the emperor himself stands up
and yells Bravo Mozart, Bravo Mozart as he applauds,
the emperor. His son is this enormous success.
There is no control
that the father has anymore
and no understanding of
the life that his son lives.
We never get to bed before one o'clock at night.
Never get up before nine
o'clock, eat at two to half past,
concerts every day, music composing at two o'clock.
The emperor is a very good friend of his son.
Music composing, et cetera.
Where should I put myself?
If only the concerts were over and done with.
Wow. I don't know how you put into words
what this music makes you feel,
but it's beauty personified.
It's as close as I can get.
Stashing.
When I listen to this piece of music,
to me marks the moment Mozart
becomes a giant in the world.
He's doing things with
the mind and the soul
of the individual listener
that's really not been done before.
You want to be a romantic, right?
And you want to say, his
dad listens to that and goes,
single tear running down his cheek,
thinking, that's my boy.
But it's difficult for
parents to watch their children
surpass them in talent and celebrity.
Leopold had talent, but
what his son had was genius.
And he as a musician would
know that this piece of music
is very simple,
but that it has this effect
on people and such resonance.
I think reconciling in his head
that he would never have what his son had
must have been ego crushing.
Why his son, not him?
Leopold Mozart returns to
Salzburg in April, 1785,
depressed and disillusioned.
The influence he once
wielded over his son
has been completely extinguished.
Mozart's freelance concerts have made him
the most famous musician in Vienna,
but he still craves the status
that comes with an official court appointment.
It's hard to separate those two parts
of Mozart's personality,
the rebel, the tear away
who wanted to make his own rules and live outside
these courts, but also
the person who deeply craves
their acceptance.
Those two elements in his
character seem to travel
with him through his life.
To secure his place in
Vienna's cultural elite,
Mozart needs to play the big Italian composers
at their own game,
Italian language opera.
He's now putting his hat into the ring
as another person who
wants to be taken seriously
as a composer of Italian opera.
This is what he's been wanting to do for years.
All I want to do is compose opera
and he has what he
believes is the perfect vehicle,
a play called the Marriage of Figaro.
Mozart's choice is typically audacious.
The marriage of Figaro is
the most controversial play
of its time and has already
been banned by the emperor.
This play is so
explosive that Napoleon says it's the first shot of
the French Revolution. If I'm advertising to
you, you know the play that you were excited
to see that got banned and you never got to see it?
Well, we're putting it on stage, but with music
by the greatest composer of the age.
Would you like a ticket?
You say, yes, please.
Figaro will be premiered
on the most important stage
of its day, the Imperial Berg Theater.
The Berg Theater would
have been an exercise
in the deluxe.
Social societies.
He knew he was challenging his audience
in a way that a composer
like Salieri certainly wasn't.
(audience applauding)
(singing in foreign language)
(orchestral music)
Over the years, people
emphasize the elegance
at the expense of the life of the music.
When you hear the
overture to marriage of Figaro,
it's not supposed to be a lovely little tune
that you can hear in the background.
It's supposed to go bang right in your face.
(orchestral music)
The opera is about a
count who wants to enforce
his aristocratic right
to sleep with the fiance
of his servant Figaro.
The Count, he's the villain of the piece.
It's very tempting to see Mozart
channeling some of his own difficulties
with male authority figures into this character.
The notion of the little
guy against the establishment,
that really appeals to Mozart,
who considers himself to
be a man of the people.
And that is the heart of Figaro.
(singing in foreign language)
The opera is a political
attack on the upper classes.
When Figaro challenges
the authority of the Count,
Mozart has him sing in a musical style
traditionally reserved for the aristocracy.
(singing in foreign language)
(orchestral music)
Lower class characters
with that level of respect
to give them so much
musical poise, that was new. (singing in foreign language)
Oh shit, I did it wrong already.
Sorry guys, start that again, cat.
(singing in foreign language)
Whenever I listen to Figaro,
I'm always so fascinated by the
succession with equality.
He's trying to show people who he is as an artist
and say, this is what I offer.
I'm offering you not stories of kings and queens,
I'm offering you stories about us, just people,
having to get along with each other.
(singing in foreign language)
Now something we have
to remember about opera
for a moment is that
really until Mozart's day,
opera was about certain character types
that would behave certain ways under
certain circumstances.
(singing in foreign language)
They are formulas and
Mozart, he's the first person
to capture real humanity.
And so when Count
Almaviva is finally shamed
in front of everybody,
the bluster we have heard
up to now disappears.
A lyricism enters his
voice as he begs his wife,
Rosina, for forgiveness.
(singing in foreign language)
It's an attempt to
create realistic characters
behaving realistically.
Forgive me, Countess, forgive me.
And she says, because
I am kinder than you,
I will say yes.
(singing in foreign language)
I will do the hard work
of saying I forgive you
and try to move on.
Because the easiest thing would be to say,
fuck you, piss off.
Like everybody wants that.
Everyone who watches the show is always like,
why doesn't she just leave him?
Because he's gonna do it again.
And I always think to myself, but that belies how we
as human beings operate.
We operate on the notion that
forgiveness is something real and tangible.
And forgiveness is the only
reason we are around each other.
Is that we're gonna make mistakes.
And if we just all said to
every person who injured us
and hurt us and just say, well, piss off
and everyone to deal with you again,
we would all be extremely lonely people.
Forgiveness is the only thing
that keeps us as a society together.
In the final scene,
all the characters come
together in forgiveness.
For Mozart, a man still
estranged from his family,
it is a poignant statement of hope.
But not all of his audience feels the same way.
The aristocracy just witnessed four hours
of being made fun of,
of being put down by common characters
singing common music
that ultimately resulted
in the humiliation of one of their own.
Mozart believes this
is his best work yet.
(crowd cheering)
But the powers that be disagree.
Mozart turns around, greets the audience,
many of whom are cheering,
but looks up and sees a
group of people cheering.
And how strange it must have been for him
to have this celebration of the peace
with the people it's been written about
with a portion of the
audience booing him. The idea yet again, that he
can't be part of the fabric
of a court society is pretty clear.
Mozart has bitten the hand that feeds him
and the marriage of Figaro is
given only nine performances.
A folk line is starting to crack open.
Mozart needs to express his radical genius,
but society has to come with him
and the world is about to change.
license to do anything.
There's a sort of a desire to push a boundary.
We have to remember, Mozart is a
compulsive rule breaker.
There's a musical anarchist in there.
This opera is sticking up
two fingers at some of those
powerful elements of his audience.
And he's so arrogant, he's expecting
them to applaud at the end.
Mozart is making
extraordinary demands of his audience.
He's risking everything,
pushing those boundaries.
That's his genius, but
also maybe his downfall.
This is the story of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A child prodigy, a
flawed human, and a composer,
the like of which the
world has never seen.
Mozart has some magical touch.
He is above and beyond normal mortals.
I mean, where would we be without Mozart?
He is classical music.
Now, with the help of
experts, Mozart lovers,
and world-class musicians--
One.
Using his private letters
and original manuscripts,
it's possible to piece
together who he really was,
a man who battled society.
Your world is not this.
Your world is this.
That's it.
He battled his family. You hid his rage against the world.
You must go this way.
No, I won't.
Yes, he will. No, I won't. And ultimately, battled himself.
He is complicated,
Mozart, and slightly crazy.
It's a grand history of
child stars who go off the rails.
A genius who channeled all this to chart
the human condition.
The success of how it is received.
I'm still going to create art.
That's a badass mic
drop moment right there.
Mozart's music makes us question why
we're put on this earth.
What is it all about?
It makes us question our existence, I think.
It really is mind-blowing
just how far above that bar
Mozart is.
Vienna, 1781.
Leaving his family behind, 25-year-old Mozart
has finally broken free
from provincial Salzburg
to follow his dreams of
becoming a great composer.
He's come to Vienna. And in his head, he has the
whole time, his father going,
what are you doing, boy? Why are you there?
Why are you not listening to my instructions?
You think you can do this on your own?
And Mozart says, I will
now make my own destiny.
Can he?
Vienna in the latter
part of the 18th century,
in the 1770s and 80s, is
a very cosmopolitan place.
It's one of the great cities of the world.
Vienna is the capital of a vast empire.
The newly crowned emperor, Joseph II,
wants to cement his
power by turning the city
into Europe's cultural epicenter,
creating a magnet for
aspiring artists like Mozart.
What Mozart wants is to write opera,
and he wants to write symphonies,
and he wants to write concertos, and he wants to do that
for the court of Joseph II.
And I think he arrives in Vienna thinking
he's going to walk into the
top job and to greater claim.
He's the homegrown boy,
and instead he finds a court
overrun by Italian
composers, and it's clear
that he's not going to get a look in.
In 18th century Europe, Italian opera
is at the height of fashion, and in Vienna,
one composer rules the
roost, the famous Italian, Antonio
Salieri. In our mind, Salieri is a much older figure.
In fact, he's only six years older than Mozart,
but he's had the
court composition sewn up
for the previous decade.
He's the favourite of the emperor.
Mozart is really jealous
of the status of Salieri.
That exposure and
prestige is something Mozart
desperately craves.
With few contacts in
Vienna, Mozart turns to the family
of his ex-girlfriend, the Vabers.
There, he gets cheap board and lodgings,
and gives piano lessons to make ends meet.
While he would like to
have a cushy court job,
he knows he's going to have to freelance.
But the only thing he can do is to have a court job.
He feels as if his
talents are being wasted,
and his life is dripping away.
When you are a fated wunderkind,
you assume that this is just your due.
The way that you're brought up as a child
massively affects your view of the world.
And if the world is telling you through
your formative years,
"Oh, you're the absolute tits,"
then this is not a good
way to emerge into adulthood
with a psychology that's intact.
That's partly why Mozart is so arrogant.
Mozart had previously been infatuated
with Madame Weber's older daughter, Aloysia.
(singing in foreign language)
A beautiful soprano and rising star.
But Mozart's father
banned their relationship,
and Aloysia moved on.
(singing in foreign language)
Now, Mozart sets his
sights on her younger sister,
Constanza.
We might think
Constanza's a bit of a wallflower.
She's been in the shadow of her sister,
who's a better singer, more beautiful.
Like her sisters,
Constanza is a trained singer
with a deep love of music.
If you care about music,
to be able to share that love with someone else
who cares equally, perhaps even more than you do,
that's a very powerful thing.
She's kind, she's got a generous spirit.
Mozart and Constanza,
they bring out a fun,
playful side in each other.
But Mozart is still just a
struggling piano teacher.
His quest, as he says
himself, is to meet the emperor.
He says, "I need to get him to know me."
If he can get face to face
with the man in the high castle,
he is just going to blow away
all these Italian guys
like Salieri with their opera.
He just needs to get to the right guy.
On Christmas Eve, 1781,
Mozart finally gets the chance
to take on the Italian competition.
Joseph has a bunch of very important
ambassadors visiting.
He wants to show off the local talent.
There's a very famous Italian pianist
right now in Vienna,
named Muzzio Clementi.
So a contest is arranged.
He's got a chance to
impress the emperor face to face
on a moment of high artistic and
diplomatic importance.
Clementi specialized in certain aspects
of piano technique,
doing things on a keyboard
that seemed physically impossible.
(audience applauding)
Clementi turns up with this astonishing set
of technically impossible pieces and
blows everybody away.
They are prepared acts of virtuosity
that are meant to dazzle.
Mozart already had that technique when he was 10 years old.
What Mozart does in response to that
I think shows you everything about him.
He starts to play a French tune
that we know as
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
And you can imagine
everybody sitting there going,
what is this? What's going on? Because all the baristas
have taken bets on this battle
about who's gonna win. He gets to the end of
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then he starts it again.
He's looked at Clementine going, sure,
that's very impressive, but can you do this?
Can you pull music out of
the air and just spin it?
It's like he's casting
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
in different roles. At one point it's a mad dance
and then suddenly it's
sort of swooning and romantic
and then it's this weird baroque waltz.
(audience applauding)
It's show offy, it's mischievous,
it's sort of experimental,
it's sort of Mozart wrapped up.
(audience applauding)
For the sake of court league convention,
the competition is declared a draw
but it's clear that
Mozart has wiped the floor with his opponent.
Joseph II, the emperor pulls into one side and goes,
"Yeah, don't worry about that, you won really."
And he gives Mozart 225 florins,
which is one and a half
times his annual salary
back in the Salzburg days.
He must feel extraordinary at that point
because he's pulled this incredible thing off
and he's quite dismissive of Clemente.
It's quite shocking to a court society
that he could treat a fellow artist
with contempt and disdain.
He wasn't a man of an institution,
he didn't play by the rules.
And it's pretty clear that
he can't be part of the fabric
of a court society.
With 225 florins in his pocket,
Mozart's ambitious landlady sees his potential.
It's actually Cecilia Constanza's mother
who sees an opportunity here for her daughter
to wed an up and coming musician.
She's very keen that
Constanza should hook up with him.
And behind the scenes is
rather pushing them together.
And they clearly have a
fantastic relationship
in the bedroom.
Wolfgang is in love.
He plucks up the courage to
tell his domineering father.
To be Righteous Father and tell some you know, Dad,
I might be a little guy,
but I have the same desires
as some big strapping workmen.
And it just so happens that I've met
this lovely young woman.
Well, I don't have to
tell you how Leopold reacts.
He goes Vesuvius once again.
He absolutely forbade
Mozart from seeing Constanza.
Mozart defies his father and
goes ahead with the wedding.
Leopold is outraged and refuses to attend
or even send his blessing.
The wedding is a very
small, modest affair.
There's hardly anyone present. There's
hardly anyone present.
For Constanza, marrying
Mozart would represent
adventure, possibility, ambition.
And of course she was a singer as well.
Constanza's always been
the wallflower, right?
And now she's with this brilliant
virtuoso of a musician.
She finally feels like
she's independent of her mother
and her sisters.
For Mozart, marrying Constanza is an act
of open rebellion against his father.
A year later, there's
still a rift in the family.
Mozart and his father haven't seen each other
since Mozart got married.
There's been this push-pull between them
for as long as he's been alive.
He desperately needs
his father's approval
as well as wanting to break free of it.
So he's trapped in this kind of tension.
As a wedding gift, Mozart
promises Constanza a mass,
a musical mass in which
he will feature his wife
as a singer.
Constanza wasn't the star.
She was in the shadow of her sister
and she's been asked to stand
up in front of these in-laws
who have been really cold
to her and perform a solo.
It's a huge moment for her.
(gentle music)
(singing in foreign language)
This piece is remarkable.
It's dark, but when she comes in,
it's like we finally see the light.
(singing in foreign language)
(gentle music)
It's a wonderful feeling when you sing it.
You're the beacon here.
You're the beacon of hope.
You're the beacon of love
that he obviously felt
personified his wife.
And it feels immense.
(singing in foreign language)
Watching her younger
brother and his new wife
perform together is a bittersweet
experience for Nano.
She traveled the world with her brother.
They shared this bond of music
and now he's sharing that bond with someone else.
This woman has come and usurped her.
(singing in foreign language)
I deeply empathize with Nano,
living your life and just
being reminded constantly
of what you could have had and what you
could have achieved.
She's there thinking, that could have been me.
(gentle music)
(audience applauding)
The mass in C minor is a triumph,
but if Mozart thinks it
will bring his family together,
he will be disappointed. (gentle music)
All Nano wrote in her diary was,
we went to a performance, it rained.
It would be the last time
she would ever see her brother.
(gentle music)
Back in Vienna, Mozart is getting impatient
for the recognition he feels he deserves
and he's had enough of sitting around
waiting for a job at court.
There is no monarch in the world
I'd rather serve than the emperor,
but I shall not go
begging for a post here.
I cannot wait around indefinitely,
for it is my sense that
even though he is the emperor,
I don't want to be dependent on his favor.
Inspired by the public concerts
he'd seen in London and Paris,
Mozart now takes a gamble.
In a radical departure,
instead of waiting to be
offered a job at court,
he will invite the court to come to him.
Mozart is an
entrepreneur who sees an opening.
I'm gonna hire in femalists to perform.
I'm gonna write music for them.
I'm gonna get people to
subscribe to multiple concerts.
Yes, yes.
And I'm gonna keep the profits and that's what he does.
You've bought your ticket for a subscription concert
in Mozart because you've heard that they really are
rather the thing, this guy is amazing.
What Mozart delivers is
this incredible synthesis
of different elements that make him
like no one's been before.
He sets up his concerts
with the audience close up
to the piano where he
sits commanding the orchestra
but close enough to the audience to wink,
to nod, to wave to them.
He is like a modern rock star.
He's selling the personality as much
as he's selling his music.
This is a human being just doing things
that are impossible.
Wow, it gives you a buzz.
It's like a drug almost.
(audience applauding)
Mozart's gamble pays off.
His series of concerts is a sellout
with even the emperor himself in attendance.
Aged 28, Mozart is now recognized
as the most dazzling composer
and showman of his generation.
We know that Mozart is quite impulsive.
He reminds me slightly of Elvis in that he spends
idiotically once he's got the money.
He feels like if he
can buy a billiard table
that costs twice his salary in Salzburg,
then he's gonna do it.
The former child star is finally back
where he wants to be.
Center stage and in the spotlight.
He and his wife Constanza
hold these insane parties
and become the sort of social center.
They're not elegant and
genteel, they are tariffs.
(audience cheering)
It's a party scene, it's like
New York in the studio 54 days.
Yeah, he was eccentric, he was out there,
he was manic I think I would say.
I think we know enough now
about mental health problems
to recognize that
Mozart had his manic moments
and the nature of
bipolar disorder, for example,
what used to be called manic depression
is the two sides to it.
The mania does allow
for an enormous energy,
enormous creativity, sometimes excessive.
In 1785, 29 year old
Mozart is on top of the world,
but there was still something missing.
Mozart hadn't seen his father for two years
and he's essentially
often olive branch to say,
that thing that a five year old child does is,
yeah, watch me dad, watch me mom. Knowing that he is now at
the pinnacle of his financial
and musical career, but
still Mozart would crave
the approval from his father.
Leopold goes to every concert,
that Mozart gives and
he's surrounded by the great
and the good of his age
and it's like turning up
at the Oscars every single
night and his son is the star.
At one of these concerts,
the emperor himself stands up
and yells Bravo Mozart, Bravo Mozart as he applauds,
the emperor. His son is this enormous success.
There is no control
that the father has anymore
and no understanding of
the life that his son lives.
We never get to bed before one o'clock at night.
Never get up before nine
o'clock, eat at two to half past,
concerts every day, music composing at two o'clock.
The emperor is a very good friend of his son.
Music composing, et cetera.
Where should I put myself?
If only the concerts were over and done with.
Wow. I don't know how you put into words
what this music makes you feel,
but it's beauty personified.
It's as close as I can get.
Stashing.
When I listen to this piece of music,
to me marks the moment Mozart
becomes a giant in the world.
He's doing things with
the mind and the soul
of the individual listener
that's really not been done before.
You want to be a romantic, right?
And you want to say, his
dad listens to that and goes,
single tear running down his cheek,
thinking, that's my boy.
But it's difficult for
parents to watch their children
surpass them in talent and celebrity.
Leopold had talent, but
what his son had was genius.
And he as a musician would
know that this piece of music
is very simple,
but that it has this effect
on people and such resonance.
I think reconciling in his head
that he would never have what his son had
must have been ego crushing.
Why his son, not him?
Leopold Mozart returns to
Salzburg in April, 1785,
depressed and disillusioned.
The influence he once
wielded over his son
has been completely extinguished.
Mozart's freelance concerts have made him
the most famous musician in Vienna,
but he still craves the status
that comes with an official court appointment.
It's hard to separate those two parts
of Mozart's personality,
the rebel, the tear away
who wanted to make his own rules and live outside
these courts, but also
the person who deeply craves
their acceptance.
Those two elements in his
character seem to travel
with him through his life.
To secure his place in
Vienna's cultural elite,
Mozart needs to play the big Italian composers
at their own game,
Italian language opera.
He's now putting his hat into the ring
as another person who
wants to be taken seriously
as a composer of Italian opera.
This is what he's been wanting to do for years.
All I want to do is compose opera
and he has what he
believes is the perfect vehicle,
a play called the Marriage of Figaro.
Mozart's choice is typically audacious.
The marriage of Figaro is
the most controversial play
of its time and has already
been banned by the emperor.
This play is so
explosive that Napoleon says it's the first shot of
the French Revolution. If I'm advertising to
you, you know the play that you were excited
to see that got banned and you never got to see it?
Well, we're putting it on stage, but with music
by the greatest composer of the age.
Would you like a ticket?
You say, yes, please.
Figaro will be premiered
on the most important stage
of its day, the Imperial Berg Theater.
The Berg Theater would
have been an exercise
in the deluxe.
Social societies.
He knew he was challenging his audience
in a way that a composer
like Salieri certainly wasn't.
(audience applauding)
(singing in foreign language)
(orchestral music)
Over the years, people
emphasize the elegance
at the expense of the life of the music.
When you hear the
overture to marriage of Figaro,
it's not supposed to be a lovely little tune
that you can hear in the background.
It's supposed to go bang right in your face.
(orchestral music)
The opera is about a
count who wants to enforce
his aristocratic right
to sleep with the fiance
of his servant Figaro.
The Count, he's the villain of the piece.
It's very tempting to see Mozart
channeling some of his own difficulties
with male authority figures into this character.
The notion of the little
guy against the establishment,
that really appeals to Mozart,
who considers himself to
be a man of the people.
And that is the heart of Figaro.
(singing in foreign language)
The opera is a political
attack on the upper classes.
When Figaro challenges
the authority of the Count,
Mozart has him sing in a musical style
traditionally reserved for the aristocracy.
(singing in foreign language)
(orchestral music)
Lower class characters
with that level of respect
to give them so much
musical poise, that was new. (singing in foreign language)
Oh shit, I did it wrong already.
Sorry guys, start that again, cat.
(singing in foreign language)
Whenever I listen to Figaro,
I'm always so fascinated by the
succession with equality.
He's trying to show people who he is as an artist
and say, this is what I offer.
I'm offering you not stories of kings and queens,
I'm offering you stories about us, just people,
having to get along with each other.
(singing in foreign language)
Now something we have
to remember about opera
for a moment is that
really until Mozart's day,
opera was about certain character types
that would behave certain ways under
certain circumstances.
(singing in foreign language)
They are formulas and
Mozart, he's the first person
to capture real humanity.
And so when Count
Almaviva is finally shamed
in front of everybody,
the bluster we have heard
up to now disappears.
A lyricism enters his
voice as he begs his wife,
Rosina, for forgiveness.
(singing in foreign language)
It's an attempt to
create realistic characters
behaving realistically.
Forgive me, Countess, forgive me.
And she says, because
I am kinder than you,
I will say yes.
(singing in foreign language)
I will do the hard work
of saying I forgive you
and try to move on.
Because the easiest thing would be to say,
fuck you, piss off.
Like everybody wants that.
Everyone who watches the show is always like,
why doesn't she just leave him?
Because he's gonna do it again.
And I always think to myself, but that belies how we
as human beings operate.
We operate on the notion that
forgiveness is something real and tangible.
And forgiveness is the only
reason we are around each other.
Is that we're gonna make mistakes.
And if we just all said to
every person who injured us
and hurt us and just say, well, piss off
and everyone to deal with you again,
we would all be extremely lonely people.
Forgiveness is the only thing
that keeps us as a society together.
In the final scene,
all the characters come
together in forgiveness.
For Mozart, a man still
estranged from his family,
it is a poignant statement of hope.
But not all of his audience feels the same way.
The aristocracy just witnessed four hours
of being made fun of,
of being put down by common characters
singing common music
that ultimately resulted
in the humiliation of one of their own.
Mozart believes this
is his best work yet.
(crowd cheering)
But the powers that be disagree.
Mozart turns around, greets the audience,
many of whom are cheering,
but looks up and sees a
group of people cheering.
And how strange it must have been for him
to have this celebration of the peace
with the people it's been written about
with a portion of the
audience booing him. The idea yet again, that he
can't be part of the fabric
of a court society is pretty clear.
Mozart has bitten the hand that feeds him
and the marriage of Figaro is
given only nine performances.
A folk line is starting to crack open.
Mozart needs to express his radical genius,
but society has to come with him
and the world is about to change.