It’s a birthday bash being heard around the world.
Salzburg, the cobblestoned and turreted city of Mozart’s birth, was leading Friday’s 250th anniversary celebrations — but the strains of the master’s music were vibrating through every corner of the planet.
Symphony orchestras and opera houses worldwide planned performances of his works, while classical-music radio hosts lined up their Mozart CDs. Piano students scheduled Mozart marathons and puppeteers were planning jubilee performances as hundreds of cities across five continents toasted the musical genius — and the more than 600 musical works he composed.
For mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager, Mozart is ”a gift from God” and ”the light I orient my life around”.
Too much hoopla? Consider this: Mozart wrote his first symphonies before turning 10 and his first significant opera at 12.
He was instrumental in changing opera into the form we enjoy today. He was prolific like few others, creating nearly two dozen operas and other stage works and hundreds of solo and orchestral pieces before his death at 35. Other greats such as Beethoven and Wagner publicly recognised their debt to him.
But he had plenty of detractors in his day. Some history books depict his tenure in Salzburg ending ingloriously in 1781 with a kick in the bottom from a servant of Mozart’s patron, the city’s imperious archbishop, after Mozart refused to follow orders on how to compose.
Salzburg
For many, Mozart Central on Friday was Salzburg, where he was born on January 27 1756.
One modern-day anti-Mozart rebel on Friday appeared to be Salzburg’s Hotel Auersperg. There, breakfast was accompanied by the soft piped-in sounds of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
But the seeming protest against too much Mozart was short-lived.
”Oops, how did that happen?” tittered waitress Anna Santiago, when asked about the choice of music. Within minutes, excerpts from a Mozart concerto were wafting through the air.
Always a trove for Mozart souvenirs, Salzburg has outdone itself this year. Store shelves are stocked with Mozart beer and wine, Mozart baby bottles, Mozart milkshakes, Mozart knickers and Mozart jigsaw puzzles — along with the usual T-shirts, calendars and coffee mugs.
Salzburg was awash with Mozart posters on Friday and the daily Salzburger Nachrichten displayed a full-page portrait of the boy genius sitting at a harpsichord, as it proclaimed: ”Salzburg celebrates its great son.”
On the Salzburg schedule were Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic with Mozart’s Piano Concert No 18 and later Riccardo Muti was to lead the orchestra — and renowned signers — through their paces in a collage of his works.
Vienna, which claims Mozart in his later years, was staging a new production of his Idomeneo in one of the city’s three opera houses and reviving The Magic Flute in another.
Both cities were offering either musical or culinary tours built around Mozart’s works, his favorite restaurants, his friends and enemies, and his approach to art and love.
Around the world
But Mozart ruled elsewhere as well.
Public broadcaster Swedish Radio set up an internet radio station broadcasting Mozart music for 24 hours. The station will be up for at least five days, playing what Swedish Radio called ”Wolfie’s hits and misses”. Public TV also honoured Mozart with a 12-hour special.
Performances of his works were planned by orchestras or opera houses in Moscow, Washington, Prague, London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Caracas, Quito, Havana, Mexico City, Taipei, Budapest and scores of other cities worldwide.
Even Nashville, more famous for country than classical, scheduled a musical tip of the hat to Amadeus, with the city’s symphony orchestra performing his Piano Concerto No 21.
Many classical radio outlets worldwide were reprogramming for the day to play only Mozart. Hundreds of marionettes were to take to the stage in excerpts of his operas in the German city of Augsburg, where his father was born.
Vienna visitors could listen to his works and information about his life and times at 50 bright red ”Calling Mozart” booths. Later in the day, the city was to reopen formally the restored house where he wrote The Marriage of Figaro.
Salzburg visitors were advised to watch the calories. One of the star attractions at an open-air Mozart event was a gargantuan birthday cake weighing in at 150kg. — Sapa-AP