The World & Mozart

January 27th was the 200th anniversary of Mozart's birth, and the world celebrated harder than it ever has for a musician.

His native Salzburg, a town that never favored Mozart's music while he lived--and which he could not abide either--spent the day in commemorative folderol, and Austria plans a whole year of Mozartish festivities. Salzburg's musical coup last week: a rare performance of his opera La Finta Semplice, composed when Mozart was too young (12) to understand its labyrinthine plot or its Italian words. Chancellor Julius Raab pledged that his country would never let another promising Austrian musician starve.

In Paris, where Mozart once sought a paying position in vain, government officials and academicians came to honor him at the Sorbonne. In London, a city to which Mozart considered fleeing from his continental misfortunes, the Royal Festival Hall and Covent Garden opera house were booked solid with Mozart music all week. Prague, the only city that applauded Don Giovanni while Mozart was alive, had a Mozart Week. Moscow presented Figaro at the Bolshoi Theater. Even Japan is broadcasting homage on its five radio stations and their networks, while Tokyo department stores display pictures of the composer in Ginza windows.

In the U.S., too, scarcely a symphony or opera company is missing the chance to adorn itself with the Mozart halo. And the most readable biography of him was reissued (see below).

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