Mozart's Journey to Prague

Mozart is creative, brilliant and charming. But is he also a thief?

Making his way to Prague for the opening of Don Giovanni, the great composer playfully tries to steal an orange from a Bohemian family's garden. But no sooner has he taken the fruit than he is caught by a furious gardener. Desperate to escape, Mozart frantically scrawls an apologetic note to the owners of the tree.

Soon, he finds himself not only forgiven but welcomed by a family who have adored the beauty of his music and are stunned to find the celebrity wandering lost in their orangery. And when they reveal it is their daughter's wedding, there can only be one guest of honour: the musical genius Amadeus.

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In the autumn of 1787 Mozart, accompanied by his wife, travelled to Prague, where he was to stage the first production of Don Giovanni. On the third day of their journey, at about eleven o’clock in the morning of 14 September and not more than thirty hours distant from Vienna, the couple were driving in the best of spirits in a northwesterly direction, beyond the Mannhardsberg and the German Thaya, not far from Schrems and the highest point of the beautiful Moravian mountains. ‘Their carriage,’ writes Baroness von T— to her friend, ‘a handsome orange-yellow vehicle drawn by three post-horses, was the property of a certain old lady, the wife of General Volkstett, who always seems to have rather prided herself on her acquaintance with the Mozart family and the favours she has shown to them.’ This imprecise description of the conveyance in question is one to which a connoisseur of the taste of the 1780’s may well be able to add a few details. The doors on both sides of the yellow coach were decorated with floral bouquets painted in their natural colours, and it was edged with narrow gold trimming, but the paintwork in general was still quite without that glossy lacquered finish favoured by modern Viennese carriage-builders. The body moreover was not fully rounded out, though lower down it curved inwards with coquettish boldness; the roof was high and the windows had rigid leather curtains, though at present these were drawn back.

Here we might also make some mention of the costumes of the two travellers. Frau Constanze, carefully saving her husband’s new clothes for special occasions, had packed these in the trunk and chosen a modest outfit for him to wear: over an embroidered waistcoat of rather faded blue his usual brown topcoat with its row of large buttons, each fashioned in a starlike pattern with a layer of red-gold pinchbeck glinting through the outer material; black silk breeches and stockings, and shoes with gilt buckles. The weather being quite unusually hot for the time of year, he had removed his coat and for the last half hour had been sitting bareheaded and in shirt sleeves, chattering contentedly. Madame Mozart was wearing a comfortable travelling dress, light green with white stripes. Loosely bound, her beautiful auburn hair fell in abundant curls over her neck and shoulders; all her life she had never disfigured it with powder, but her husband’s vigorous growth of hair, tied in a pigtail, was today merely powdered more casually than usual.

The road rose gently between the fertile fields which here and there intersected the wooded landscape; at a leisurely pace they had reached the top and were now at the forest’s edge