All people are affected by the women in their lives. Mozart no more or less than anyone else. The story of the women in Mozart's life is not different enough to write a book about it.

I read every book about Mozart I can get my hands on. This one brought me closest to perceiving Mozart as a person, using his relationships with the women in his life and the depiction of the women in his operas.

More people need to read this book, especially people who love or are interested in or fascinated by classical music or Mozart or his music PLEASE!!!

Really good content, extremely difficult to read as there was not much flow and jumped around a bit.

I’m not much of a nonfiction or biography reader, so this took some time getting used to. To be fair, this was interesting, I’m just not used to this type of writing. I think I now understand Mozart a little better, and for sure there are also some important lessons in parenting and self discipline! My heart went out to his sister Nannerl and the cards she was dealt with. Constance indeed was a formidable person in her own right.

Mozart's Women is one of the best biographies I've read. Prior to this, the only Mozart biography I'd read was [b:Mozart: A Life in Letters|749652|Mozart A Life in Letters|Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1311647827s/749652.jpg|735790]. This primary source bio, filled as it is with letters by Leopold and Wolfgang, is a great resource, but it focuses primarily on the men. While Jane Glover's bio includes the most important male relationships in Mozart's life, its focus is on the women, particularly Nannerl and Constanze, the two women who knew him best, one in his early years, one in his final ones.

The book is divided into four sections: "Mozart's Family", "Mozart's Other Family", "Mozart's Women", "After Mozart" (there's also a Prelude and a Postlude). The section entitled "Mozart's Women" focuses on the music he wrote for women, particularly his operas. As such, it interrupts the more-or-less chronological flow that begins with "Mozart's Family" (which starts with his grandparents) and ends in "After Mozart", which concludes with the death of his last direct descendant, his son Carl (in total, the book covers the early 1700s through the mid 1800s). And yet who would want to be without the transition that connects this section to the last one: "He was, to be sure, entirely at home in Sarastro's (Masonic) world, which he respected, honored, and defended. But for him the presence too of a woman as companion and guide was absolutely essential (308). MOZART'S OWN companion and guide, Constanze, was only twenty-nine years old when she was left a widow with a seven-year-old boy and a four-month-old baby" (311).

Plus, Mozart's Women is rich in the reasons why Mozart was a genius at characterization through his music, makes an argument for his strongest operas being the ones in which he had input on the librettos, and proves that his best operas had casts which not only included great singers, but singers with whom Mozart was well-acquainted. Consider Die Entführung aus dem Serail:

Blonde's adorable perkiness and abundant common sense are perfectly expressed in her music. Her two arias are mainly syllabic, indicating both a matter-of-fact defiance in her dealings with Osmin and a beguiling and straightforward sweetness in her relationship with Pedrillo. But since [Therese] Teiber evidently had a marvellous agility in her upper register, which Wolfgang exploited as happily as he did Fischer's low notes, Blonde has in her opening aria, 'Durch zärtlichkeit' (With tenderness) spectacular melismatic flourishes on the word 'entweicht' (banished), taking her aria above the stave as she confidently brushes aside Osmin's boorish commands ('mürrisches Befehlen'). The duet between them, 'Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir' (I'll go, but take my advice and stay away), is a brilliant piece of subtle comedy for Wolfgang's two old friends. He delights in allowing Blonde to mimic Osmin's low notes, taking her way below her normal tessitura before springing her back up again over two octaves. In the central andante section Blonde weaves a manipulative ornamental line above Osmin's bemused and syllabic bass line. And in the final allegro, 'Nun troll dich', which she constantly leads, she firmly threatens to scratch his eyes out ('Es ist um die Augen geschehen') in music which appropriately taunts and stabs. (226-7)

That's not to say that the more biographical sections are lacking. In fact, each section is informative, well-researched, and brimming with the joy that Glover finds in her subject (and his music -- read her comments on "Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!" and Le Nozze di Figaro, or earlier, his Piano Concerto No. 9). Nor does she give short shrift, in the other sections, to individual arias and piano compositions he wrote with women in mind, particularly Aloysia Weber for the former and Nannerl for the latter.

In the final analysis, if it weren't for women, particularly his wife and sister, Mozart's legacy wouldn't be what it is. Both women helped preserve his music and his character after he died. Through this book, I felt I understood all of Mozart's world: the world he entered into, the world he lived in, the world he left behind. For Mozart's world was the friends and family who populated it and the music he composed for them, especially the women. All influenced him, from his big sister who toured with him when they were young, to his mother who died while accompanying him; from his first crush (his "little cousin," the Bäsle) to his first love (Aloysia) to his wife. Without them, there is no Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.