Customer Reviews

Mozart's Wife

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The tortures of the Inquisition wouldn't induce me to confess to reading historical romances, so Mozart's Wife is perforce a historical love story. It's the first-person narrative of Konstanze Marie, nee Weber and in later life Nissen, who has been almost exclusively vilified or ignored through seven generations of her husband's biographers. They see a great genius dead at thirty-five, an unmarked grave and a widow minting cash from his manuscripts. Konstanze's story redresses the balance with an engaging and thoroughly engrossing picture of life as a woman in the late eighteenth century - the complexities of love and marriage, the practicalities of running a household, the horror of "dishonour" and the agony and danger of childbirth - and, in Konstanze's case, the additional complication of her brilliant, charming, vulgar, gentle, generous, philandering, feckless, irresistible and totally incorrigible husband. Though nearly immune to his musical gifts (her favourite of his operas, not unjustifiably in the circumstances, is the one that made the most money), Konstanze clearly contributes more to the survival of his work than the great man himself ever thought of doing. But although Konstanze touchingly recounts her life after Wolfgang's death, it's the Mozarts' life together that takes up most of the book, and it's the details of that life that compel the attention - the characterisation of Mozart's cold, stern and uppity family; the moving from place to place, buoyed up by an adoring Prague only to be dragged down by an indifferent Vienna; the endless, unwinnable battle to try and clear up the disaster area that is Mozart's finances; the exhausting and perilous ordeals of pregnancy, childbirth and what is nowadays blandly called "infant mortality". If, towards the end of the book, Konstanze starts to behave very much like the hard-nosed money-grubber her detractors have accused her of being, it's more a cause for sadness than surprise. Her story doesn't end there, however, and in an exquisitely moving scene at Mozart's grave she finally makes her peace with his memory. Written with a light touch behind which lies a huge wealth of research, Mozart's Wife is definitely historical, decidedly unromantic, and quite captivating.

Mozart's Wife by Juliet Waldron is a richly textured and painstakingly researched trip into the eighteenth century. Waldron's prose is clean, infinitely readable. She develops her characters brilliantly and without sentimentality. The overriding sense is that of *the real*: Stanzi Mozart is voluptuous, spirited, and wretched by turns. What is life lived in the shadow of a genius? Exaltation, poverty, at times madness. Mozart's Wife lays before the reader the picture of a man overcome by the Muse, and the woman who struggles to live with him, keep their meager household, and rear their children. Mozart in essence, remains a puzzle: it has been posited that the heightened sensitivity of artistic genius may render life too painful to bear, and that this is why so many truly brilliant musicians, poets, or writers enter a cycle of inevitable self-destruction. They burn with a blinding light and extinguish themselves. Mozart's Wife takes up this theme in the relationship of Wolfgang and Stanzi; the opiate for Mozart's pain is the female form. Waldron doesn't lapse into romanticism, however. Her characters seize the reader from the outset because they are genuine-their hopes, fears, joy, and pain become our own. The author has the uncanny ability to place us in the conjugal bed, in the midst of a pain-riddled childbirth, a dying man's vision, or at the Opera with equal dexterity. Most telling, when Stanzi must face the reality of her feelings after many years by Mozart's side, we have been there with her; we've mourned and adored and torn our hair.

THIS is life with Mozart from his wife's point of view...
The story will transport you back to the 18th century, reads easily and is entirely engrossing. It was one of the few books that has kept me up reading until the sun rose! The writing is so stark and raw, no flowery romanticism, just honest, straightforward realism. Although I personally found neither Mozart nor Konstanze likable, they were completely, charmingly, and utterly human, flaws and all.
Mozart's Wife is one of the best books I have read in many years. I highly recommend that you don't waste another day without reading this incredible book!

This author's fictionalized account of Constanze Webber--an extraordinary woman who just happened to marry an even more extraordinary man named Mozart--brings 18th Century Vienna and its people vividly alive. Constanze would have been a remarkable woman for any era, struggling with her own perspective on life while trying to cope and understand the icon composer with whom she chose to share her life. But as an 18th Century woman, she is all the more remarkable.

This book is well written and thoroughly researched, that's obvious from the details in dialogue and events. I suspect little of this work is pure fiction, though, given the vast availability of historical information on Mozart and his contemporaries. However, the author melds background information with fictional material so seamlessly, it all seems real. Despite knowing a lot about the man already, I'm even more convinced now that Mozart was one of a kind in history and so was his wife Constanze.

To me, great writing is all about imagery, characterization and dialogue. MOZART'S WIFE has all of that and more. Plus, it's a real eye opener to Mozart himself as seen by his closest companion. If you like historical fiction with a wealth of factual detail, this book should be on your reading list.

Jon Baxley
Editor
Amazing Authors Showcase

I found Mozart's Wife to be absorbing and well-written. It follows Konstanze's life as she grows from a naive young girl to a capable, shrewd woman, her marriage as it disintegrates under the pressures of too many bills, infant mortality, and infidelity.

Konstanze is the narrator here, and her voice is a refreshing one: informal, earthy without becoming coarse, candid, un-self-pitying, and wry. She and Mozart are highly flawed but likable people, who never forfeit our sympathies even as they act appallingly toward each other and toward others. That's very difficult for an author to pull off, and Waldron does it admirably.

Waldron has a nice eye for detail. As a mistress of Mozart's departs the cramped household, she is accompanied by her cats: "Her calico Mutzie and tiger Murr followed, tails up, for all the world like a couple of well-behaved dogs out for a walk."

The book does feel a little disjointed in spots. For instance, Konstanze spends much of Chapter 20 fussing over an impending visit from Leopold, Mozart's difficult father, but the visit is never depicted; when we next hear of Leopold two chapters later, the matter seems to have been forgotten. Did something get cut? I also felt that too little emphasis was placed on Mozart's Masonic ties, considering the crucial role they later assumed in Waldron's explanation of his death and obscure burial.

All in all, though, I enjoyed this book thoroughly.

Many a romance novel ends with marriage. The courtship, the chase, will they or won't they - these things provide the backbone of the novel, and in the end there is marriage and, presumably, a happy-ever-after.

In Juliet Waldron's historical novel, however, the courtship and marriage of Konstanze Weber and Wolfgang Mozart is only the beginning. The true story is of the marriage that follows, which every wife knows is when romance and love is truly tested. Konstanze begins as a self-conscious young maiden, overlooked in favor of her more talented sisters. She falls in love with Mozart and can hardly believe that the astonishing young composer has chosen her for his one true love. But marriage to the musical genius turns out to be a tumultuous existence for Konstanze, who quickly matures into a wife, a mother, and the household accountant. Konstanze, who grew up in a musical family, is not unappreciative of Mozart's genius, but reality dictates that music is primarily the thing which brings money into the house; it is their livelihood; it serves a purpose. While Wolfgang Mozart follows his muse, creating the music he loves - whether there is a market for it or not - Konstanze tries to prevent them from falling into poverty.

Mozart is flighty, unpredictable, and easily swayed by his friends. When flush with cash, he spends it like water, gambles it, and lends it to his friends. Konstanze has to bully him to take charge of the household accounts and keep them from ruin. She finds herself constantly pregnant, every childbirth a life-endangering horror and the precious infants too easily carried off by disease. Besieged by scandalous rumors, Konstanze does not want to believe her husband is unfaithful to her, but soon the unpleasant truth cannot be ignored and her husband scarcely bothers to hide it.

Juliet Waldron has created a believable, multi-faceted portrait of a woman loved but betrayed, adoring and yet resentful, capricious and sometimes spiteful. Her characterization of Konstanze Weber Mozart far outshines that of the genius composer himself, who becomes rather a minor character by the end of the novel. Mozart's Wife is a memorable historical novel about a woman who was long overshadowed and forgotten in the shadow of her husband, but without whose intervention his music might have been consigned to obscurity.

After having watched the movie 'Amadeus' (years after it was released), I was intrigued to find out more about Mozart's wife. She obviously loved this genius with a passion, but sacrificed so much of her own life for him. It was a book that was hard to put down ... beautifully written ... highly recommend.

I was blown away by this novel because it truly is excellent. Waldron's prose is gorgeous all the way through, capturing the reader because of its reality and passion and lyrical quality in a way that enhances the scope of the story, based on history. To travel along throughout Constanze's life as she deals with the difficulty of being married to a genius like Mozart is a real treat. I've always felt history should be compelling and fascinating, and it can be. Waldron just proved it with this excellent book. It's easy to see why it won the Independent E-Book Awards when it was first an e-book.

It's not a romance book but does tell the love story of Mozart for his darling little wife and of Stanzi Marini for him. It also takes you back to Germany, Austria and Prague in the 18th century to watch the trials their love undergoes, the bitter jealousies, the constant worries about bills and money, the heartbreak of losing four of their six children and the horrible toll on Constanza's health. She's been alternately reviled as a woman who wasn't worthy of her genius husband and praised for her efforts to ensure that his musical legacy lives to this day.

Waldron's book shows a middle ground probably closer to the truth. It also immerses the reader in the day to day struggle to survive in those times and offers another
possibility to explain Mozart's mysterious death and burial. I like that neither
Mozart nor Constanza is turned into a villain and both their strengths and weaknesses are presented. Details of daily life and of the two leads show Waldron's years of research. Though it's not a feel good book with a HEA, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent reading it while playing Mozart's immortal music as a background accompaniment.

Given Mozart's fame, it's easy to assume that a book about his wife, Konstanze, would still be more about Mozart. No, not in this case. Not only is it about Konstanze, it is a first person narrative from her to the reader - almost a confession as well as an apologia. Of course, one can glean much about Mozart from his wife's perspective, especially on personal family matters. And that is what this book offers: a very personal story about a passionate but practical woman married to a passionate, brilliant, but impractical man. As a husband and father, Mozart is alternately portrayed as adoring and attentive or wayward and neglectful. For me, the value of Waldron's book lies not so much in how well-written it is as in how historically accurate it is. How much of this story is fictional revisionism? I don't know. Mozart's easy and almost casual genuis is displayed, in which Mozart would write a sonata for the price of a meal, or an entire opera for a few months' rent. Konstanze enjoyed and appreciated good music, but she was mostly oblivious to her husband's genius, "coincidentally" preferring the songs that made money. But given the uncertainties of their life, one cannot blame Konstanze for being practical, especially since, as a wife, she had to manage the household and children. Even with all the problems, Mozart's and Konstanze's love and desire for each other shines through. Some readers may find the frequent references to sex off-putting; some may think it even approaches a Harlequin Romance. I think that if Mozart, Konstanze, and others had a lot of "mojo," then it should be in the story. Why deny or water down the truth?