This Friday “In Search of Mozart” opens at the Cinema Village in New
York City. As the title implies, it is an attempt to come to grips with
perhaps the greatest composer of all time who died at the age of 35 in
1791. It mixes interviews with musicologists and performers who all
share a love of his music as well as uncommon insights into his
particular gifts. While the musical excerpts tend to be on the brief
side, the film is “wall-to-wall Mozart” with performances from many of
the interviewees including Renée Fleming, Roger Norrington and Lang
Lang, the rising virtuoso pianist from China. It is also an
old-fashioned travelogue as we follow the young Mozart and his ambitious
father from city to city.
Although this might sound like the typical PBS fare, it is much more
interesting and much more human. The Mozart director Phil Grabsky is
intent on showing us is not a deity, but a living, breathing human
being. We learn that he, like his parents, enjoyed writing scatological
letters, filled with references to farting, oral sex and other off-color
topics. He was also bent on enjoying the good life, even if it meant
going into debt, not unlike millions of Americans today. Although he was
prodigious in his output and a total disciplinarian when it came to his
craft, he also knew how to relax–spending his afternoons playing
billiards or playing cards.
His life was also filled with conflict. Like many child prodigies, he
had to contend with an overbearing father who wanted to use his son as a
vehicle for his own ambitions. Unlike many prodigies, however, Mozart
handled all this pressure with great aplomb. Even as a very young man,
he had a good grasp of human relationships as opposed to the almost
“idiot savant” version of Peter Schaffer’s “Amadeus.”
Indeed, he not only had a gift for harmony but also for understanding
the human condition from an early age. Operas like “Marriage of Figaro,”
“Don Giovanni” and “Cosi Fan Tutti” demonstrate a level of understanding
about society that transcends just about everything that preceded it.
The librettist for these three masterpieces was Lorenzo Da Ponte, a
Venetian who had been born a Jew but converted to Roman Catholicism.
Expelled from Venice for his democratic leanings, he ended up in the
United States, where he opened a grocery store in the Bowery! Eventually
he moved on to better things as a local opera promoter and Professor of
Italian at Columbia University in New York.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/in-search-of-mozart/
