The names of Mozart and Prague will be forever linked by the most famous work that he wrote for Prague, his opera Don Giovanni. Mozart, Don Giovanni’s musical father, wrote the monumental opera in 1787. Composed with a Prague audience specifically in mind, Mozart is reputed to have remarked “my Praguers understand me” – something borne out by the way that he was welcomed in the capital as the composer of Figaro, as well as by the rapturous response with which the people of Prague received the opera. Mozart’s music seemed indeed to be peculiarly suited to the Czech musical heart and while not his artistic domicile of Vienna, Prague nevertheless seemed to offer for Mozart that crucial sense of affirmation and acceptance which was lacking back in his home city. Mozart has left undoubted traces behind him – the musically curious visitor can follow the composer’s footsteps to the Estates Theatre for example, where the premiere of Don Giovanni took place, with Mozart conducting himself from the piano, on 29 October 1787. The opera, Don Giovanni, is then Mozart’s greatest footprint in Prague, along with the ‘Prague’ Symphony No. 38, which premiered in Prague during Mozart’s first visit of 1787. And these are lasting footprints – most certainly, they are his most significant legacy to the city.
Equally fascinating, however, is also the fact that the tomb of Mozart’s younger surviving son, the composer and pianist Franz Xaver Mozart, is at Karlovy Vary. Perhaps most poignantly, the tomb reads ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’, because as the inscription explains, “May the name of his father be his epitaph, as his veneration for him was the essence of his life”.
Elizabeth Jane Timms is a writer, historian and freelance royal journalist. She contributes to an international academic journal about royalty and also writes for magazines and the web.
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