My Mozart, a new release from Juliet Waldron, author of the highly acclaimed Mozart's Wife
Mozart was her teacher, her mentor, her rescuer--and, finally, fatally, her lover. ..
At dawn, in the marble palace of a Prince, a nine-year-old sings for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then at the peak of his career. Always delighted by musical children, he accepts Nanina as a pupil. Gifted, intense and imaginative, she sees the great "Kapellmeister Mozart" as an avatar of Orpheus and her own, personal divinity.
His lessons are irregular and playful, but the teacher/pupil bond grows strong. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro premieres, and Nanina, now twelve, is given a solo part. For her, this is the beginning of a long stage career. For Mozart, it marks the start of his ruin. His greatest works will be composed in poverty and obscurity.
Reviews:
5.0 out of 5 stars The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same June 11, 2012
By Patricia A. Martin
Format:Kindle EditionThose of you who are familiar with Mozart's Wife, the companion novel to My Mozart, will be swept up again in the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but this time from the perspective of his child mistress, Fraulein Nanina Gottlieb. The prodigious amount of research that obviously went into this flight of fantasy shows itself in every paragraph. Ms. Waldron has again captured the very essence of the period, and places the reader as observer in a fascinating era of human history. And as we soon see, love's labors are as lost in the 18th Century as they are in our current lives, some three hundred-plus years later.
The brilliance of the plot is that it is timeless ... Teenage fan falls in love, has a brief love affair with her idol, and is dropped (inevitably) by older man who didn't really mean for things to go this far, but who is now alarmed that they have. But he's Mozart, so creating music is all he really cares about. His human relationships are a means to an end. As she is a singer/dancer and a genuine musician, the music--his music--does magical things to her--even, in the end, keeping her (apparently) sane and relatively happy with her memories and his ghostly presence. The characters are as real as today, once again underscoring the fact that people, after all, never change in motives or behavior ... only in time.
Juliet Waldron has done it again. "My Mozart" brings history to life and tells the story beyond the music. Waldron's talent for pulling the reader in and creating a time travel experience is a rare and precious gift. I have been waiting for this book for years, and am grateful it's here now. Give yourself the gift of "My Mozart," and then buy its companion book, "Mozart's Wife." Both are stories to be read again and again. They're that good.