Wunderkind - Sunday 23rd at 7.30

[ardcarp]

Sebastian Baczkiewicz's new drama is inspired by the Mozarts' visit to Rome in 1770. Teen prodigy Wolfgang manages to get his father into trouble with the church.

It's 1770 and Leopold Mozart is taking his 14-year-old son on a much-anticipated trip to Italy to perform for the great and the good. They hit trouble in Rome when young Wolfgang is found to have written down the closely guarded and hitherto unpublished music for Allegri's sacred 'Miserere'. And Cardinal Ucelli sees a chance to make a name for himself.

[french frank]

It's the stuff of drama, isn't it? I wonder which version of the Miserere they''ll play?

[DracoM]

Ans = NONE!!!!

[french frank]

Ans = NONE!!!!

All that bit happened off stage, then!

[ardcarp]

All that bit happened off stage, then!

The Allegri story was merely a peg to hang the play on, and it was a great piece of radio theatre. Even the young Wolfgang himself made no appearance. (Incidentally, he was referred to by Leopold as Dee Dee. Any historical fact there?) One had to suspend not only disbelief (as you do in all theatre) but also one's preconceptions of Leopold. One quickly recovered from his broad Scots accent. How awful it would have been if either ham-Italian or ham-Austrian accents had been used! I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish...and very amused that the playwright had sneaked in an anachronistic reference to The Sound of Music, viz the Salzburg hills being alive with it!

[french frank]

The Allegri story was merely a peg to hang the play on, and it was a great piece of radio theatre. Even the young Wolfgang himself made no appearance. (Incidentally, he was referred to by Leopold as Dee Dee. Any historical fact there?)

Yes, that's fine, dramatically (though there might have been a bit of mis-selling in the blurb!).

Dee Dee for Ama-Dee-us? When he was small his father called him Woferl, and he himself signed letters 'Wolfgang' until his mid teens. In a letter to his sister in 1774, giving her the news that he had toothache, he called himself Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Amadeus Sigismundus Mozartus. More prosaically, Leopold reported 'Wolfgang has toothache'. Leopold never refers to him in letters as anything but Wolfgang, but from c. !776 he starts referring to himself as (Wolfgang) Amadeo/Amadé, and later W A Mozart. So a bit of harmless Shafferisation in the play?