Amadeus was her brother
It is not rare that brothers or sisters of artists – although very talented themselves – are put at a disadvantage by having a genius in the house. This was the case for Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, the gifted Nannerl about whom Rita Charbonnier writes in her first work Mozart’s Sister. A good book hot off the press and brought out to coincide with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Mozart’s birth. It will interest historical fiction lovers and music lovers alike.
The author boasts considerable musical experience as an actress and singer in Italy and abroad. She has also written screenplays for successful productions by TV channels Rai and Mediaset. A theatre journalist, she had already written about Nannerl Mozart as the subject for a film script for which she won the “Euroscript” Film Story Competition.
So, Charbonnier’s close interest in the sister of the more famous Wolfgang Amadeus dates back some way and, matured over time, has produced a book for us that is vividly suggestive, introducing us to a milieu and a time when women were subjugated and condemned to an unjust sacrifice both of their artistic worth and their very identity. Much is known about Mozart, even if an aura of mystery still hovers around his death (illness, vendetta, poisoning?). Little is known about his sister, in her turn also gifted with enormous musical talent, a pianist of rare quality and a composer of vocal music, that has unfortunately not come down to us. Under the rigid guidance of their inexorable father Leopold, the two child prodigies performed in all the most important courts of Europe; but then a silence fell around Nannerl. All merit goes to the author who has succeeded in bringing us a vibrant feminine figure of the eighteenth century with the help of the few letters and scanty documentation that it was possible to track down. If her work therefore lacks the scientific rigour of a strictly historical biography, it shows a literary grace in a style that seems to be taken from real life. And Nannerl, born a few years before her brother, is devastated by the overwhelming preference that Leopold, himself a fine violinist, holds for his son, genius of the household. She is not permitted to play the violin, learn Latin or compose music: unbecoming pursuits for a girl in the eyes of her bigoted father. But our intrepid heroine often disobeys, with the help of Wolfgang, to whom she is very close during their childhood years and with whom she shares a truly affectionate support.
Nannerl twice loses her heart; by chance both times for widowers older than herself. Her first love (and Charbonnier provides correspondence that we believe is for the most part apocryphal and is the invention of her pen) is for an army major, Armand, father of Victoria, her favourite piano pupil. It seems that this is the girl who is the cause of Nannerl’s break with Wolfgang, who – having seduced the young girl – abandoned her to run after fame in Vienna. Here we do not know if the author has let the spirit of the romantic novel run away with her or if she had certain proof of events, however, the break between brother and sister is not invention. And what is known is that only after the death of the composer of The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, Nannerl, who in the meantime had married a rich baron, a little like the storybook happy ending, was reconciled with the memory of the household genius, making an important contribution to the promotion of Mozart: collaborating with his biographers, authenticating his compositions and editing their publication.
Charbonnier’s book offers us not only the life of a passionate and fascinating heroine but also a journey through the mores of the eighteenth century, seen from an exquisitely feminine perspective.
Grazia Giordani in L’Arena, Italy, 11 February 2006
