01x03 - Episode 3

[bunniefuu]

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-a*s 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, w*r breaks out between the

Habsburg monarchy and

their Turkish neighbours.

Austria. It's suddenly at w*r 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 w*r, 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 as*ault

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 m*rder*d father.

The Dandjavani is a man who commits

sexual as*ault 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 w*r. 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.



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 m*rder 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?