Nannerl, sister of Amadeus
Salzburg, 1756. A five year old girl is giving a performance at the harpsichord that stupefies her aristocratic audience. Her fingers are extremely fast, the little hands creating limpid sounds like those of an adult professional. Where’s the trick? No, there is no trick. But there must be! The noblemen draw near to check and are struck dumb as she plays random melodies from memory: inspired by the rustle of a fan, the crackling of a fire, or the smash of a crystal glass on the floor.
In a corner, a pregnant woman is holding her stomach in alarm. She cries, “It’s coming” just as the sound of the final chord fades in the air, but her voice is drowned out by the applause. “Take me home!” she shouts to her husband, but he is too intent on pushing the little girl forward to accept the public’s caresses to hear her. If no one helps, she may well give birth to their son right there on the drawing room floor – the boy who will be named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We interviewed Rita Charbonnier on this subject and on her novel Mozart’s Sister.
Q. The greatest composer of all time had a sister, Nannerl, who was another musical genius: Mozart’s Sister: A Novel is based on this historical fact. On the other hand, how much of the story is invented?
A. It is almost all true, I did not take too many liberties. The main characters all existed, except one…
Q. Who?
A. An important female character. Naturally, not Nannerl! Otherwise, I changed a few dates and made up lots of events, but in essence I kept to the facts. The inventive part mainly concerned the characters’ psychology, their way of behaving and their reasons for behaving like that. And it was the only way to do it, because every one of the characters, as a psychologist would say, is a part of the author.
Q. The book comes alive through a romantic exchange of letters between Nannerl Mozart and a court officer, Armand d’Ippold. Are the letters authentic?
A. The correspondence is all made up, both between Nannerl and Armand, and between Wolfgang and Nannerl. But Nannerl really did love d’Ippold, and he loved her. Even her relationship with her brother is based on real life: theirs was a relationship forged of complicity, reciprocal affection and frequent teasing, above all on his part.
Q. Why did you decide to tell Nannerl’s story?
A. Some years ago I was working on an article for a theatre review, on the theme of women belonging to a profession traditionally reserved for men, like that of director or playwright. I took up Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own, which was conceived as a response to those who claimed that women were intellectually inferior. To demonstrate that women were certainly not incapable of thinking, but that in expressing their thoughts they encountered enormous difficulties, Woolf traces the biography of Shakespeare’s imaginary sister, who, though as gifted as he, did not succeed in expressing her talent. And suddenly the figure of Nannerl flashed before my eyes. I vaguely remembered her from when I studied music and I thought to myself, this really happened!
Q. Before writing the novel, you must have had to do some accurate historical research.
A. As soon as I had decided to take the subject on, I took a holiday and left for Salzburg with the aim of visiting the Mozarteum library and the places where the Mozarts were born and lived. And the more I went on, the more I became convinced not only that I had to tell the story, but that the story deserved to be told. In one of the two museum-houses that belonged to the Mozarts there is a room dedicated to Nannerl, where the following phrase stood out in very large letters: “She gave up her artistic career for the sake of her brother”. When I saw that, I was struck by the idea that no one had yet decided to tell a story with such huge dramatic potential, and one that had been under everyone’s nose all along.
Q. Even biographies of Mozart rarely mention his sister, and then only in a marginal way. In your opinion, why has she generally been so undervalued?
A. Perhaps because in the public imagination there is already Salieri, by Mozart’s side, occupying the position of the less-accomplished figure. The main difference is that Salieri represents envy, while my Nannerl is never jealous of her brother. She knows and understands music too well not to love Wolfgang Amadeus’ music without reserve.
Q. What do you think of the legend that Salieri was responsible for Mozart’s death?
A. In the book I give an implicit response to that question… on a personal level I believe that it is indeed a legend. Even the most successful productions, like Peter Shaffer’s splendid play Amadeus and his equally splendid screenplay that Milos Forman used for the film, tell how Salieri perhaps desired Mozart’s fall, but certainly didn’t poison him.
Q. Nannerl isn’t mentioned in Amadeus either. Why do you think that is?
A. It is simple: because the story concentrates on Mozart’s last years in Vienna, when he and his sister were no longer in contact. The two of them were very close in childhood, but over time their relationship broke down. How and why this happens, I explain in the novel…
Q. Going back to Mozart’s death, do you think that there is a definitive explanation?
A. There are various hypotheses and no certainty; perhaps he died from nephritis, perhaps even from blood-letting. What is certain is that medicine at the time was truly frightening, and what can be easily cured today could then cause a rapid death. And it is so sad that it brought about the premature death of such a genius… if he had lived to eighty, like his sister, where would he have taken us, and Music?
Infinitestorie, Italy, January 2006
