01x02 - Episode 2

[bunniefuu]

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 t*ts,"

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

expl*sive 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 sh*t, 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,

f*ck 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.