- Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria January 27, 1956 to Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart.
- 2006 was Mozart’s 250th birthday year.
- Mozart was the seventh child of Leopold and Anna Maria, but only he and his sister, Nannerl, would survive past infancy.
- Mozart’s full name is Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Theophilus is Greek for “God’s Love.” As Mozart got older he began to sign with the Latin translation of “God’s Love” – Amadeus.
- Mozart started his career as a composer early. At the age of four he was composing piano pieces, at the age of five he was composing minuets and by the age of nine he had composed his first symphony.
- Mozart wrote 20 complete operas. The final opera being The Magic Flute, which he wrote in his last year of life.
- The Magic Flute was originally written in German and was called Die Zauberflöte.
- Mozart made his first documented public appearance, as a singer, at the age of 5. His first public appearances as a musical virtuoso occurred at the age of 6.
- Mozart performed for King George III and Queen Sophia Charlotte at the age of eight.
- The first public performance of a Mozart symphony occurred in 1766 when Mozart was 10.
- Mozart was named the honorary concertmaster to the archbishop of Salzburg in 1769. He was 13 years old.
- Mozart married Constanze Weber in 1782. But was she his first pick? Three and a half years earlier, Mozart had proposed to Constanze’s sister, Aloysia, but she had refused.
- In the first performance of The Magic Flute, the part of Pamina was played by Mozart’s sister-in-law, another Weber sister, Josepha (Weber) Hofer.
- The couple, Constanze and Mozart, had six children but only two survived their infancy. The eldest, Karl Thomas, became a minor official on the staff of the viceroy of Naples in Milan. The youngest, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, was a composer like his father but never garnered his same fame.
- Mozart died of heart failure December 4, 1792 at the age of 36. His grave is unmarked.
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