Beyond the Kitsch: Vienna still Mozart’s city

By Emma Bellantoni

VIENNA – Austria’s capital offers Mozart fans some tantalizing choices: Enjoy a Mozart ball, a chocolate-and-marzipan candy seemingly ubiquitous in touristic areas. Or, pull out a map and start visiting the many historical sites where the composer lived, worked, played, and died.

Kitsch or culture: The choice is up to the visitor, because Vienna offers up both in abundance.

Vienna is known for its musicians and composers, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Despite being born in Salzburg almost 200 miles away, Mozart, and his long-fingered legacy, are prominent all over Vienna. From street signs and statues to souvenirs and sweets, kitschy Mozart gimmicks are all over the city. You could say he is a significant aspect of Vienna’s brand.

Beyond the schlock, however, is the opportunity uniquely provided by this city to re-trace the composer’s footsteps along the cobblestone streets of the old town and trace the trajectory of his life from its spectacular beginnings at age 6 to its abrupt and premature end at 35.

From the windows in his study, Mozart was able to see his first apartment in Vienna. Mozart moved in with his boss, the Archbishop of Salzburg, in 1781 at Deutschordenshaus.

The Mozart story in Vienna begins when his father, Leopold, takes the 6-year-old and his sister, Maria Anna, on a performance tour through Europe to show-off the children’s talents. Being a child performer put an immense amount of pressure on the young Mozart, according to Eugene Quinn, a local walking tour guide in Vienna.

“We know that it’s not good to become famous when you’re 6,” Quinn said. “It’s a huge amount of pressure, especially because it’s basically your parents who are pushing you.”

Unfortunately, the grand tour did not change the lifestyle of the family. Instead, it enabled the children to experience a world of music and education. The three-year journey led the family through western Europe, traveling to major cities that included Munich, London, and Paris.

The Salzburg native moved to Vienna at the age of 25.

Schönbrunn Palace

We begin our re-enactment of Mozart’s life in Vienna at the sprawling Schönbrunn Palace complex, a museum-and-gardens experience that is at the top of the lists of most tourists to the city. It was in a salon here in the Habsburgs’ summer palace that on October 13, 1762, a precocious 6-year-old Mozart enraptured the royal family with a piano concerto before climbing into the lap of the Empress Maria Theresa to plant a kiss on her face.

The charm must have worked.

Listening to the audio tour of the palace, one can almost see and hear what transpired: The Mozarts enter the Hall of Mirrors, dazzled by gold and white and red velvet furnishings. The room is filled with light from the many sconces mounted to the pearlized plaster and crystal chandeliers. Mozart takes his place at the piano while his sister strikes the first note on the violin.

Maria Anna’s and Wolfgang’s last notes meet with reserved applause and a few nods and smiles from the audience to mark the concert a resounding success. Wolfgang springs from the stool and runs to the empress. All eyes are on him as he leaps into her lap, wrapping his arms around her neck and giving her a kiss on the cheek. The room that only moments before overflowed with music falls eerily silent. Gasps hang in the air. A child touching the archduchess of Austria without permission? Inconceivable! But, laughter breaks the forbidding silence, and to everyone’s surprise, Maria Theresa returns Wolfgang’s innocent embrace.

Mozart became a darling of the Habsburg family, a relationship that flourished throughout his relatively short lifetime.

Café Frauenhuber

From Schönbrunn Palace on the western perimeter of Vienna we move to the very heart of old town to step inside the Café Frauenhuber, once a medieval bathhouse. It’s also where both Mozart and Beethoven played their music, albeit not at the same time. Now that would be a double bill.

The café’s coral white arched ceiling contrasts with the ruby red upholstery and hickory chairs and hat stands. The pungent patois of cigarettes and coffee wafts in the air. A brass lantern joins the many glass chandeliers in cloaking the restaurant in an inviting amber aura. Sitting with a mélange, the coffee of choice in Vienna, it is easy to imagine Mozart playing a selection of Händel at the intimate café’s only piano.

Mozart not only played at Café Frauenhuber, he dined here, as well. But then Mozart ate at a lot of places in Vienna; his appetites and pleasure-seeking are famous. They likely led to his death.

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Domgasse 5

As long as we are in the city center, let’s drop by the impresario at his apartments of three years, a rather impressive address for a man of his age and profession and the only apartment out of 13 that still stands largely unchanged since Mozart’s time. Now a museum, the apartments at Domgasse 5 give us a tantalizing glimpse of domestic life for Mozart, his wife Constanze, and their infant son, Karl Thomas.

With so few artifacts from his life or time in this residence, a visitor has to strain to imagine daily living for the Mozarts. The baby cradle helps; we might be able to hear the Mozarts’ infant son, Karl Thomas, crying while Mozart works on the Marriage of Figaro, which historians think he wrote in a stately room here. We might imagine Mozart’s hand skimming over the banister as he rushes up the eggshell-tinted stairs and through the thick, blocky entrance to retreat into his study, where he would routinely work by candlelight until midnight.

Through the ivory French doors, sitting on the dark oak planks is his piano, Mozart could see into what was and remains the busy cobblestone street Domgasse. He could easily hear the chimes of St. Stephen’s Cathedral just a block away. His hand, holding his plume, flies across the manila pages.

As the radiance of day is replaced by the glow of moonlight, the house does not sleep. Notes flow from his fingers, bouncing off walls and streaming through the streets of Stephansplatz, Vienna’s famed square anchored by the cathedral. As the midnight bells strike, Mozart staggers to his bedroom for a few hours of respite. The Marriage of Figaro will make its debut at the Burgtheater in May 1786.

The Burgtheater, where Mozart’s wife and her sister, Mozart’s first love, Aloysia, each performed, is Austria’s national theater. There visitors can see some of the most important German-language drama in the world.

St. Stephen’s Cathedral

Only a three-minute walk from the Mozart family home is the St. Stephen’s Cathedral (or Dom). The city’s most recognizable symbol sits on the ruins of two earlier churches, the first consecrated in the 12^th century. The Dom has borne witness to many important events, ranging from coronations to weddings to funerals. Both Mozart’s wedding and funeral occurred within its hallowed walls.

Constantly in need of money, Mozart gave music lessons where he resided. It was through these lessons that he met his wife, Constanze Weber. In August of 1782, the pair married in St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

The Dom’s Gothic architecture turns the heads of visitors, but it was not nearly as impressive for the Mozart family. The church was simply the closest to where they lived, meaning its colorful tiled roof, stained glass windows, and ornate altars were not factors in deciding a wedding venue. In fact, the wedding was rather modest due to Mozart’s many financial obligations.

St. Stephen’s also saw Mozart’s two surviving children christened.

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Rauhensteingasse 8

The house in which Mozart died is but a mile from Domgasse 5. In 1790, Mozart and his family lived in a four-room apartment located in the first district, which stood until 1847. The apartment is no longer, so visitors have to content themselves with a plaque on the face of the Steffl Department Store.

If we concentrate, we might imagine the imprint of the composer’s body glued to the sweat-soaked sheets. For two weeks Mozart has been bed ridden, pain oscillating from head to toe. Even in his worst moments, he asks to work. He is determined to finish his Requiem, a fitting last piece, but he is thwarted by either illness, disease or an assassin. (Mystery attached itself to Mozart’s death from the very first day, with rumor of poison immediately emerging as the cause. Suspects included his physician, van Swieten, and Salieri, his artistic and professional rival.)

Late in the evening of Dec. 5, 1791, just before his 36^th birthday, Mozart is gone; Rauhensteingasse 8 is the last place that Mozart and his family lived.

Central Cemetery

Mystery also surrounds his gravesite. Mozart might be buried in St. Marx Cemetery in the Landstrasse district of the city. Aficionados will be disappointed to learn that his grave is unmarked and has even been re-used. The City of Vienna built a new, larger cemetery and began adding famous graves to boost its popularity. Mozart could be there, as well.

You will find the gravesites of Beethoven, Schubert, and many others at the Central Cemetery, and though there is a marker for Mozart, his actual gravesite remains a mystery to this day.

Even after death, Mozart continues to be a significant figure in Vienna. The reconstructed Vienna State Opera opened in 1869 with a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Patrick Hartl, an employee of the opera house, said this was a significant choice due to Mozart’s legacy.

“The operas by Mozart were really, really famous in the opera world,” Hartl said. “As an Austrian composer, it was really important to perform in the biggest opera house, and to perform his representations.” In June 2024, the opera house had Cosi fan tutte in repertoire, a Mozart opera that debuted at the Burgtheater in 1790.