Mozart: Rise of a Genius (2024) s01e03 Episode Script

On June 4th, seven days after his
father's death, Mozart's
pet starling drops dead in
its cage. Well, oh my goodness, Mozart goes bonkers
with grief over the bird.
The bird is putting a little bird casket.
He gets his friends together and they
stage a funeral
procession while singing hymns.
He writes a 24-line eulogy in its memory.
Here rests a little bird called Starling,
a foolish little darling.
This bird, this bird in a cage, there is
a symbolism there, isn't there?
This bird in a cage is precisely what
young Mozart was, but
it's also, if you like, a
displacement of the funeral for his father.
He was still in his prime
when he ran out of time.
My sweet little friend
came to a bitter end.
It's an unresolved problem that he never
satisfied this giant man in his life.
And there's a new Mozart who's born out
of that death, if you like.
That new Mozart is not the same
delightful charmer that he once was.
He is a deep, dark figure now, and it
sets him on a road to
unimaginable greatness.
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.
I mean, where would we be without Mozart?
He is classical music.
Now with the help of experts, Mozart
lovers, and world-class
musicians, 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. 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.
I'm going to be an artist regardless of how it is received.
I'm still going to create art.
That's a bad-ass 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.
Mozart is living comfortably in Vienna
with his wife and young son, Karl.
At 32, he's become rich and famous by
rejecting the traditional
court system that has kept
musicians in the service of aristocrats.
But as he's about to discover, it's a
precarious existence.
Mozart's known throughout Europe.
Everything's going his way, but the whole
world he lives in is about to change, not
just for him, but for everybody.
In 1788, war breaks out between the
Habsburg monarchy and
their Turkish neighbours.
Austria. It's suddenly at war with the Ottoman
Empire by themselves.
It's a disaster, financially, militarily,
and as it turns out, artistically.
The conflict between the two empires
stretches back over a century, and
memories of the last
time the Ottomans besieged Vienna are
still fresh in people's minds.
This time, the population
aren't taking any chances.
Those who can flee the capital.
The all-powerful emperor, Joseph, leaves
town to go to the front line.
That means all the patronage gathered in
his hands is gone, and
suddenly, cultural life
basically grinds to a halt.
And with fear of war, what
people want is light relief.
If those who've stayed behind in Vienna
are hoping for some
distraction, they aren't
going to get it with
Mozart's latest opera.
Plunged into emotional turmoil after his
father's death, Mozart has
produced his bleakest work
in the world.
This is music to make you recoil.
It's dark.
And then the strings, it's off-kilter rhythm.
It's creepy.
I clench my fist when I listen to this
music because I feel
that's what it's saying.
It's the sound of death,
it's the sound of hell.
The Dandjavani is a dark story. It's all
about the man who has bedded
thousands of women, he brags.
This is a man who commits sexual assault
again and again and again.
One of the first things that happens is
he murders the father of a
woman he's trying to seduce.
There is real violence, there is real
aggression in this opera.
And from that point on, he continues to
try and seduce women. But it's clear he's
on the highway to hell.
At the end of the opera, Dandjavani is
confronted by a stone spectre, the ghost
of the murdered father.
The Dandjavani is a man who commits
sexual assault again and again.
This payback time,
guys. Payback is coming.
In Mozart's previous opera, The Marriage
of Figaro, the
aristocratic villain gets to repent.
But Mozart is no longer interested in
salvation. When the statue demands
atonement, Dandjavani remains defiant.
Will you ask for forgiveness? Will you
submit to good sense and
become a better person?
He screams emphatically.
Pantatino! Pantatino!
That's why he goes to hell.
This opera, you definitely see a darker
side of Mozart. There's so many motifs of
his life story playing out.
And the idea of the father dying right at
the beginning. His dad's died. Someone
who he's had such a
trying relationship with.
Someone who's said to him, "You have to
change your ways. You have to be the way I want you to be."
It feels like Mozart's trying to figure
out his life story. He's like, "Am I
going to be like Dandjavani or am I going to change?"
But Mozart's dark introspection doesn't
go down well in Vienna.
The aristocratic audiences are kind of
looking for light relief and Dandjavani
has many things, but it is not light relief.
It's just not right for the new zeitgeist
because no one in Vienna wants to hear a
tale of death and punishment and sin when
they're out fighting a war. And it's a flop.
The news reaches Emperor
Joseph on the front line.
When the emperor says, "You've given the
audience meat that they cannot swallow."
And Mozart just, he gets so hardcore and
he says, "Well, they're just going to
have to chew longer. They're just going
to have to chew on this
until they can swallow it."
Hell, that's ballsy.
And that's where you see the child in him come out.
You can't believe that the Viennese don't
see how great Dandjavani is. And it is
great. What's the greatest things mankind
has ever done? And he knows
that. Why should he change?
But like it or not, if you're not going
to sell your work, you're
not going to feed your family.
Constanze has had enough. Exhausted and
ill with worry, she needs to get away
from Mozart to recuperate.
We still don't know for sure
what has made Constanze ill.
Whatever the causes are, with her
doctor's recommendation, she goes to the
nearby spa town of Baden. And her absence
does not help her husband.
When Constanze goes, Mozart just
unravels. She's the backbone of their
family. He's so dependent
on her and now she's gone.
Mozart is now alone in wartime Vienna,
contemplating his failed opera and his
failing marriage. And it seems the world
around him is falling apart.
In July 1789, extraordinary news reaches
Vienna. France has
erupted in violent revolution.
This long brewing French pressure cooker
finally blows and the Bastille is stormed
the French Revolution has started.
And of course Mozart welcomed the idea of
revolution, as did most liberals in
Europe, because he believed it was going
to be this whole new world of hope and brotherhood.
Vienna's ruling class are less
enthusiastic. Emperor Joseph's sister,
Marianne Poinette, is under arrest in
Paris. In Vienna there is a conservative
backlash and the liberal reforms that
have made the city so
appealing to Mozart are reversed.
The lights go out on the joyful,
forward-looking Vienna that Mozart knew
and where he was a superstar.
Mozart is living in a very changeable
time and it's having a very negative
effect on his life and on his career.
He takes on an opera here that other
people have turned down because it's
mucky, because they think that it's a
grubby little story. But he turns it into
one of the most
remarkable operas ever written.
It's a story about female infidelity.
Cosi Fantute translates
as "they are all the same".
Cosi is bleak. Cosi is about how awful
relationships can get. He knew what this
was about. He knew love and
how love can go wrong sometimes.
Cosi is not the souffle that many people
think that it is. It has a
disillusionment, a bitterness, a sense of
dread because it's embedded in life
experience. It's
heartfelt. He knew that pain.
Does his own sex life play into this?
Yes, I think it does. Does he just
distrust Constanza? Definitely.
All of that doubt, all of that jealousy,
all of that rage is so much
part of what he's writing about.
In 1790, Emperor Joseph dies after a long
illness. In febrile wartime Vienna, many
are pleased to see the back of him. But
for Mozart, it's another heavy blow.
As a little child, Mozart knew Joseph.
He's always been there as the man to
impress, the man who can make you or
break you. And he's been making Mozart
for the last few years. And suddenly he's
gone. And his replacement, Leopold, does
not like Mozart. Just because Mozart was
the favourite of his predecessor. Mozart
is left, sponsorless.
It's just, can someone
just give me a break?
From 1788 to 1790, Mozart has a series of
bad years. Bad financially, bad in terms
of his health, bad in terms of his
emotional health. He
wrote very little music. We see in Mozart this year of not
producing things. The energy has gone out
of him and that is such a
classic symptom of depression.
450 miles away, in Frankfurt, the great
dynasties of Europe are gathering.
Leopold II is about to be
crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
Everyone's invited, except Mozart.
Haydn's going to compose something for
it, Salieri's going to compose something
for it. But Mozart, the greatest composer
in Vienna, is absolutely out in the cold.
How much humiliation can this man take?
Is there something about not being
invited to Leopold's coronation and his
decision, "Sodek, then, I'm going to go anyway"?
He has to be where the noise is. He has
to be at the centre of everything.
And what he does is quite extraordinary.
He decides to mount an alternative
coronation concert at his own
expense. It's almost insane.
So what does he do? He takes everything
he can of his wife's that
is pournable and pawns it.
These are the most beautiful possessions
she has. The lovely silver hairbrush and
mirror. Beautiful trinkets
given to her as a present.
And he's sold it all because he wants to
get to Frankfurt. It's a
reckless slap in the face.
On the eve of the coronation, Mozart sets
out for Frankfurt. His mission? Show the
world he's still a
force to be reckoned with.
There's a degree of self-delusion, a
degree of desperation, but also a
fabulous degree of optimism if we think about it.
Mozart plans to showcase a brand new work
full of turbulent emotion.
The Fortier Symphony is the closest
Mozart gets to what we feel romanticism
is, this idea of expression, ultimate
expression of emotions through music.
This theme we hear at the beginning of
the Fortier Symphony is one of Mozart's
best known musical gestures, isn't it?
In the Fortier Symphony, you really feel
the emotions from Mozart pour out into
the music. And it mirrors this time in
his life of desperation.
This feeling of despair at the opening,
the grief, the anger, he's incredibly
confident in what he wants to achieve and
has a kind of swagger about the music.
He's managing to bring all these elements
together to create such an
extraordinary masterpiece.
But for a musical genius,
Mozart's timing is decidedly off.
There is actually a major military parade
happening at exactly the same time.
So no one turns up. It's a complete
failure, in fact, a debacle.
When Mozart turned around and saw the
auditorium was at best half full, he must
have been devastated.
But I wish I'd heard that performance.
Because that's what that music is about,
devastation and desolation. I
bet he put some fire into it.
Mozart has hit rock bottom. Constanza and
Karl are gone. It's time to decide what
kind of man he wants to be.
Mozart persuades Constanza to come home.
She's ready to give him a second chance.
They can acknowledge that they've had a
really difficult year, but now they're
going to focus on the future, come
together and be a family again.
As a gesture to his commitment to his
family and to his wife,
Mozart buys back the toilet.
There's a bit of
optimism back in the family.
Mozart vows that his wife and son, not
his fame, will be his
number one priority.
For years, Mozart's resisted working for
anyone. Now he takes an assistant,
Kapelmeister, position at
St. Stephen's Cathedral.
Mozart says, "I'll take any job you give
me because I need to
have something secure."
And Mozart comes back to life.
It's almost like the sun is rising.
And he's seeing the light, and that's
where this beautiful piece
of music has stemmed from.
Mozart was able to
write this in a morning.
And he uses the choir like one voice,
it's like one long incantation or prayer.
You feel like the whole choir is a lung
altogether. It feels like the biggest
expression of community inside
religion. It's extraordinary.
It's so held in and so controlled, and
then these moments of
grace that rise from it.
He must then think I'm
Mozart again. I can do it.
Mozart now turns his back on the
aristocrats of old Vienna and moves to a
radical artistic commune.
The Fry House Theatre specialises in
popular opera sung in German.
The Fry House is a new kind of theatre
for Mozart. It's a place where anything
goes. It's more bohemian, it's more
relaxed, it's much more varied.
Mozart would have felt completely at home
in that, and in a way he
sort of found his niche.
The theatre is run by larger-than-life
impresario Emmanuel Schickenader. He
specialises in Zingspiel, popular shows
closer to modern musicals than opera. He
commissions Mozart to write one for him.
Together they cook up a scheme for a
completely new kind of opera that's
targeted at an audience which is a
rambustious commonplace audience of people.
Mozart and Schickenader are both
freemasons. A brotherhood which promotes
liberty, equality and fraternity.
Enlightenment ideals which come together
in their latest production. The Magic Flute.
The Magic Flute is a completely
subversive kind of theatre. It's so
removed from that erudite
old-school Italian opera.
I think the Magic Flute is basically
Mozart in opera form.
It's all there, so it's got high
moralising, it's got low comedy, weird
esoteric Masonic interests, baddie
aristocrats, goodie enlightenment
figures, and it's all in one space. It's
like, it's, it's Mozart.
[Applause]
The opening three chords which is the
Masonic knock on the door bang, bang,
bang, right through to the end. The Magic
Flute is ridden with
symbols of the Masonic world.
Who's knocking on that door? The door
opens and you just know you're in for a
great show. Here, here's my
hand. Let's go on this journey.
The Magic Flute tells of the evil Queen
of the Night and her gentle daughter,
Pamina. The Queen demands that Pamina
commit a terrible
crime, but Pamina refuses.
The Queen of the Night is really angry.
She is unleashing this furious power in
her famous aria where it's
just this torrent of notes.
When I'm on stage in that scene, I try
really hard not to grin like an idiot
because I'm just so excited. As Pamina,
you get the full force of that
experience, but this is all directed at
me and I'm so happy. I love it.
The Queen of the Night delivers an
ultimatum to Pamina. Commit murder or you
are no daughter of mine.
All these high notes are not about
display. It's drama. It's energy. The way
to sing it correctly is to drive those
notes like knives into the heart of
Pamina. These are the stakes.
This is what I'm demanding. This is what
you will do. And then Pamina is left with
this dilemma. What do I do?
Pamina refuses to obey her mother.
Instead, she risks everything to save the
man she loves, Prince Tamino.
And then there's the silence of them just
seeing each other. And it's so epic.
You're singing an interval of a major
sixth. In Mozart's music, this is the
holy interval. We're going from human to
absolute divinity in that little jump.
And when she does it, she goes, "Tamino
mine." Just that. The whole world stands
still. It's sort of his way of saying,
"She's really the one who
saves the day." Not the Prince.
And sometimes when I think of his and
Constanze's relationship, I feel like
that's how he sees her. She saved him.
That's such a love letter, if ever I saw
one. And he did it with two notes.
There's a lot of Constanze around Pamina.
The respect and love that he had for her
finds its way into the musical
characterization. He loved her. She must
have been a remarkable woman.
The magic flutes. The story of what it
takes to go from the space of naivete and
childhood into adulthood.
Two young, innocent people who choose to
be together and choose to walk together,
knowing all the good and the bad.
It's a very profound story of what it is
to be in a relationship.
The opera is a huge success. The magic
flute is staged almost a
hundred times in its first year.
It's funny that a piece of this so
optimistic, ultimately, has come out of a
really dark time. It's the thing that
ends that dark time for him. And it's
optimistic for him
because it's a huge triumph.
After his world has fallen apart, he's
figured out that his real future lies
with entertaining the public, which fits
perfectly with the post-French Revolution
times that he's now living in.
It's like he's figured it out. But he's
just figured out a touch too late.
Mozart is now back in demand and working
flat out to repay his debts when a
commission arrives from a mysterious
patron who wishes to remain anonymous.
And he said he wanted Mozart to write a
requiem for which he would pay
handsomely. But nobody was to know that
he was writing it. He
was writing it in secret.
A requiem mass is a
Catholic funeral text set to music.
Well, Mozart knows who's commissioning
his requiem. It's being commissioned by
someone named Count Franz von Walsseg.
Von Walsseg's hobby is to commission
known composers to write pieces of music
that he can then pass
off as being his own.
And Mozart was willing to play the game
because he still needs cash.
And so in his rekindled creative period,
he's trying to do too
much at the same time.
He's overworking. And at other times in
his life, when he's overworked, he's
gotten sick. And he's
getting sick now as well.
Soon, Mozart takes to his bed with a
fever. He calls his student Susmaya to
help him continue working on the funeral mass.
Mozart's working tirelessly on this
requiem. He's completely focused on it.
And he's trying to tell his
student how it's going to end.
From his sick bed, he manages to write
these eight bars of the Lacrimosa.
In that moment of absolute transcendence
and those voices just
[Gasp] and it stopped, it's gone. It's so pure,
it's grief personified.
I shall die now when I am able to take
care of you and the children.
Now I will leave you unprovided for.
Mozart's condition gets much, much worse
and a doctor is sent for.
On the 5th of December 1791 at 12.55 in
the morning Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies.
He is 35 years old.
Five days later Mozart's friends, the
cast of the magic flute gather to sing
his unfinished requiem.
This piece of music suddenly takes on a
new meaning. It's a requiem
for the dead and he is the dead.
His last piece of humanity, his last
offering of beauty to the world.
Decades after Mozart's death there is one
final reconciliation.
Mozart's sister Nana and his wife
Constanza haven't
spoken for almost 40 years.
Now they agree to meet. Nana was willing
to hand over hundreds of
letters so that Mozart's
full story can be told. It's
extraordinary that we only have Mozart's
story today because of these
two women. That for all that this is a
story about one man and what he could
create. The imagination
he had, the confidence he had, without
these two women we wouldn't know so much.
And of course without the stories about
Mozart there would be no genius.
For me he is sort of beyond the summit.
Like Shakespeare and
like Michelangelo, you know,
he's somewhere above the rest of the
human race. When I listen to
the music it just works on an
almost cellular level and in that way you
experience yourself in a
different way and you get to know
yourself. All he had to say was cut off
and I don't know what to say.
We didn't get enough of him.
He should have been with us for longer. Can you cut please?