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Read on to discover how Mozart’s marriage, hastily organised, stopped a call to the police by his mother-in-law to be…<\/strong><\/p> I can think of no better way through this than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning… Or even today if that\u2019s possible.\u2019 Mozart<\/a><\/strong> penned these words in a letter to the Baroness von Waldst\u00e4tten, his patron, in the summer of 1782. And when he wrote them he was in a decidedly tricky situation. Hours earlier he had been visited by a maidservant of Frau C\u00e4cilia Weber, to whose daughter Constanze he was betrothed.\u00a0<\/p> Ostensibly there to deliver music, the maid also brought some startling information with her. Frau Weber, evidently convinced that Constanze and Mozart were co-habiting prior to becoming man and wife, was insisting that Mozart \u2018send Constanze back\u2019 to the family home a short distance away. If the composer didn\u2019t, she would call in the police to \u2018recover\u2019 her daughter from Mozart\u2019s lodgings. And forcibly restore Constanze to the moral sanctuary of the\u00a0Weber residence.<\/p> Mozart\u2019s initial reaction was to panic. \u2018Can the police here just walk into any house they like?\u2019, he asked the Baroness in his anxious letter. Would \u2018the stupid Madame Weber\u2019 really be so idiotic as to make private affairs public, bringing \u2018disgrace\u2019 on the family and \u2018shame\u2019 to the daughter whom she claimed to be protecting? Or was Frau Weber simply bluffing, hoping that her threat would be enough to bring Constanze home again?<\/p> Mozart was right to worry about Frau Weber\u2019s covert ultimatum… Not least because there were elements of truth in her analysis of Constanze\u2019s situation. Her daughter and Mozart had become romantically attracted when, on arriving in Vienna a year earlier, the composer rented a room with the Webers. \u2018Fool\u2019s talk\u2019 (as Mozart put it) ensued. And Frau Weber asked Mozart if he would move out to silence the malicious tongue-wagging. Now, it seemed, Mozart and Constanze were actually living together at his new address, inviting the scandalised opprobium of Viennese society. How could this possibly be tolerated?<\/p>Mozart’s marriage: a nosy maid reports a scandalous living situation<\/h2>
‘Can the police here just walk into any house they like?’<\/h2>