Mozart Cities - Members of the European Mozart Ways report on Mozart's stays

Mannheim

Mozart's stays: about 30.7. - 1.8.1763 / 30.10.1777 - 14.3.1778 / 6.11. - 9.12.1778 / about 23. - 25.3.1790

In July 1763 W. A. Mozart travelled to Mannheim with his parents and sister Nannerl for the first time. Of course, it was his five-month stay in 1777 and 1778 that marked a break in the young artist's life, when he came to Mannheim accompanied only by his mother. It was during this time that he began to emancipate himself from his father, and it was here that he made human experiences that would influence the rest of his life. For a time, he also found private happiness: Although he fell in love with the young singer Aloysia Weber, he also met her sister Constanze, whom he later married.

In March 1778, Mozart and his mother travelled to Paris, from where the composer returned to Mannheim alone in late autumn 1778, as his mother had died suddenly in the meantime. The city consoled him: "In a word, as much as I love Mannheim, Mannheim loves me," he wrote to his father. In the autumn of 1790, Mozart and his brother-in-law, Franz de Paula Hofer, walked through the square city for the last time. It is believed that on this occasion, on 24 October, he himself conducted the Mannheim premiere of his opera "The Marriage of Figaro".

Photo / copyright: Stadtmarketing Mannheim