My father loved opera and classical music. I grew up listening to Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Not until Mozart’s Wife did I put a face on one of the men that wrote that music, and he turned out to be bigger than life.

I started writing the review in my head for Mozart’s Wife by Juliet Waldron before I was halfway through reading the novel. In my opinion, it’s that good—a strong six stars out of five. This is no Hollywood stereotype with a happy prince charming ending although that also happens—sort of.

This is a get-in-the-gutter with the rats kind of story that hides nothing. There are no devils here. There are no angels either. There are only real, flesh and blood people. If you want an entertaining trip to discover Mozart, the man behind the music, your journey ends here. This novel delivers. Mozart’s Wife is a story that had me laughing, shuddering and exhausted but satisfied by the end.

Mozart’s Wife paints a convincing picture of Mozart as the first superstar with all of the dangers that title entails. Today, the tabloids would have had a field day with Mozart. The paparazzi would have chased him everywhere. Cameras, action, lights and freeway car chases would have been daily fare for this man and his family.

Then, in the beautiful white-and-gold Tyl Theater, I witnessed something I’ll never forget. The delirious passion of Prague for the ‘Marriage of Figaro’ had been but a prelude.
By the time the old commendatore lay dead at the feet of the wicked Don Giovanni, the audience had gone completely mad. The applause, the shouts of “Bravo!” were ear-splitting.
In the box where Josefa and I sat, we could feel the building tremble. Clouds of hats and handkerchiefs flew into the air after each ‘aria’. Confetti rained into the orchestra and onto the stage. There was encore after encore.

Mozart was a wild man. He drank. He partied. He seduced endless women that threw themselves in front of him like doorstops. He didn’t have brakes, and it was his wife that suffered and was corrupted. She was the one that starts out as an innocent beauty with visions of prince charming and ends up wounded like so many that have followed in her footsteps since with other superstars. Pretty Konstanze is the flower that opens, changes color and almost wilts in the process

Then I’d remember Elise, or worse, Magdalena.
“You liar!” I’d scream and push him away. “You broke my heart!”

Mozart doesn’t have much of a character arc in the novel, but that does not detract because the novel opens up Mozart and dissects him as the story goes along. Mozart is the same man from beginning to end. Nothing changes him, but you will have to read Mozart’s Wife to find out what that means. Slowly, we discover his moral corruption step by shadowy step as it is revealed inches at a time. The cost of his fame eats him like a malignant cancer from the inside out and like his wife, we are in the room standing beside her experiencing Mozart’s decline in all its tragedy. Mozart’s superstar status across Europe makes him the bell of the ball until he ruins his reputation and loses his welcome in cultured society. Even that is not enough to stop him.

“How could you! How could you! In our own house! Pig! Taking advantage of your own poor, wretched servant!”

He has his followers, both parasites and sycophants, along with a handful of real friends that support him and his wife until the end.

When we meet Konstance, his wife, as a young girl, Mozart is busy seducing her older sister. After the older sister, Aloysia, gets tired of waiting for Mozart and marries another man, Konstance becomes the consolation prize for Herr Kapellmeister. Her innocence captures his heart and there is no doubt that he loves her through the entire novel to his bitter end.

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