Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "amadeus"

The long wait for a successor to Amadeus is over. In fact, my new novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA answers questions about the great composer’s death that are far more deeply rooted in historical research than Peter Shaffer’s nonetheless terrific play.

Shaffer, whose play was first performed in 1979 and filmed by Milos Forman in 1984, proposed court composer Salieri as the man who killed Mozart at the age of 35. (Actually, Shaffer’s play was largely based on a play from the 1830s by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.) The truth behind the Salieri murder myth is that when the court composer claimed to have killed Mozart, he was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. Once he regained his sanity, however, he refuted the story as something he had made up in his madness.

My novel also rescues Wolfgang from the popular perception (rooted in Amadeus) that he was some kind of giggling buffoon who just happened to write angelic music. Far from it, Wolfgang’s letters and his friends’ recollections show that he was a deep thinker who had great admiration for Enlightenment ideals (something that would’ve put him in jeopardy with the Emperor’s spies much greater than the risk he faced from Salieri’s jealousy). Clearly he was excitable immediately after musical performances, but then The Rolling Stones have been known to drop tv sets out of tenth-floor hotel rooms to let off steam and they’re no Mozarts.

The Wolfgang I’ve come to know from my research and from an intense listening of his music was no fool. He was one of the great minds of history, and I hope my novel will rescue his reputation as an intellectual whose concern for his fellow man was rooted deep in a profoundly caring, warm personality.

As for his murder, Mozart believed he was being poisoned. Six weeks before he died, he was promenading in the Prater Gardens of Vienna with his wife Constanze. He told her he had been poisoned, that he was to be sacrificed and knew he would die. His wife tried to cheer him up, but the conviction that he had been poisoned remained with him until his death in early December 1791.

The premise of my novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA is that Nannerl, Wolfgang’s gifted sister, learns of her brother’s belief that he had been poisoned and travels to Vienna to find out the truth. (In fact, she never went to Vienna after his death, though she lived a further 37 years in and around Salzburg.)

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

Historical novelists recreate the emotions and events of distant times. It helps if they can use real places that still exist. In the case of MOZART’S LAST ARIA, I was able to set much of the action in streets and buildings where Mozart lived and worked – and where you can still visit.

In my historical thriller, the composer’s sister Nannerl comes to Vienna to investigate her suspicion that Wolfgang was poisoned. One of the men who helps her is Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an important patron of her brother. Swieten was Imperial Librarian, and you can see the majesty and learning of that time arrayed on the shelves of the Prunksaal, the great library attached to the Hofburg, the Emperors’ palace in central Vienna.

The library is open to the public, but you’ll rarely find more than five or six other visitors there at one time – most people are shuffling with the crowds through the Emperor’s rooms down the way. It’s a gem hidden in rather plain site.

The house where Mozart died was destroyed some time ago (though you can visit a museum in the house where he wrote The Marriage of Figaro nearby). There’s a department store there now, on Rauhenstein Lane. But if you stand with your back to the spot, you can look to your left, your right, and in front of you, and you’ll see just what Wolfgang would’ve seen – except there’ll be less horse manure on the streets. Much of central Vienna remains just as it was in Mozart’s time.

Despite its destruction, I was able to describe the interior of Mozart’s home quite fully, however. There have been a number of academic theses written about the furniture and layout of the apartment. Yes, really. (Some years ago, the startling discovery was made that not only did he have two windows on the front of his studio, but he also had another one on the side. You get a Ph.d. for this stuff, you know. But anyway I’m very grateful to those dedicated Mozartians.)

You can look at a photo tour of other Mozart sites and locations from MOZART’S LAST ARIA in Vienna on my website.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns