What remains scarcely mentioned in Mozart scholarship to this day is that the first great love of the century’s towering composer was a boy his own age, Thomas Linley — both were fourteen at the time. They met at a private performance in April 1770 in Florence and played together on two occasions. Linley was a handsome, charming violinist from England, and Wolfgang became smitten with him — the first time in his life that he was overwhelmed by ardent feelings. The affection was mutual; the two young men pressed and embraced one another constantly. On the farewell, Wolfgang received from Thomas a poem that reads almost like a love confession. Tears streamed down their faces.
Such emotional connections among young men were unusual for the era, yet they did not breach a social taboo — as long as there were no sexual acts. Nevertheless, his father, Leopold Mozart, was so unsettled by the incident that he resolved to sever the friendship. Wolfgang would never encounter Thomas again, but throughout his life he kept a fervent, longing memory of that moment.
Wolfgang was inspired by two castrati
When Wolfgang Mozart underwent this experience, he and his father Leopold had already spent months on a grand Italian journey. In December 1769 they began a grueling crossing of the Alps amidst a harsh winter. In Verona, Wolfgang gave his first concert. For the first time in a long stretch, he was away from his mother and sister. He was in the midst of a voice change and no longer wore any trace of boyish appearance on the outside. In a period when his body pressed him to confront his sexual identity, he spent his free time with two boys his own age who were castrated singers. Their company apparently inspired him, for Mozart composed two motets for the two at no cost.
By this point he already had an astonishing trajectory behind him. From early childhood he had stood out for his extraordinary musical talent, which he expressed on the piano, the violin, and later the organ. He possessed a cultural and spatial horizon without precedent. His father had taken him on an initial grand journey—from Vienna through Paris to London—where he was paraded at the courts of numerous kings and princes as a wonderchild, showcasing his talents with astonishing ease. He premiered his own early compositions, displayed tricks with a concealed keyboard, played by sight from spontaneously supplied sheet music, and improvised with a spontaneity and devotion that left delighted audiences’ ears flapping under the oversized Rococo backrests.
A Father’s Ambition Leads to the First Setback
Even before Wolfgang celebrated his twelfth birthday, in the presence of his father, he was urged to compose an opera for a Viennese theater during an audience with Emperor Joseph II. Immediately, Leopold, fired by paternal ambition, pushed his son to set to music a libretto drawn from a literary source by Carlo Goldoni. Yet this wunderkind project of the father ran into boundaries — after a painfully protracted back-and-forth, the performance of “La finta semplice” (“The Pretended Simpleton”) was cancelled.
The reason probably lay not only in a lack of goodwill toward the young Wolfgang, as his father suspected. Rather, the barely twelve-year-old was overwhelmed by the task of crafting the right sensibility for a work about erotic intrigue — despite the virtuosity of the composition, the characters remained wooden and clichéd. Even though the piece, after a long struggle, was staged at the Salzburg Residence, the father understood that a new, more strenuous effort was required to move his son into an adult career. He redirected his attention toward the dramatic work as the artistic crown jewel — a research-and-tour concert journey to the homeland of opera should now bring the long-awaited breakthrough. It worked: over the next few years in Milan, three of his operas were staged, and they were undoubtedly successful at their premiere venue, though they were not widely restaged anywhere.
“Lick my ass clean, very neatly”
The ambitious father remains unsatisfied. Leopold sees this as a signal that he must not leave his son to himself, either professionally or personally. He will not tire of exerting a strong influence over Wolfgang’s emotional life until the end of his days, and manipulating him. He fears that the artistic impulse of his son would fade if Wolfgang’s attention were too strongly drawn to the fulfillment of passionate desires. The father’s zeal bears fruit in that, although Wolfgang eventually overcomes a handful of failed romances and affairs with various women and enters into a love marriage with Constanze Weber, a deep, insistent longing lodges in his heart. From early childhood he has been tormented by a sense that he is not loved or recognized enough for who he is.
This inner conflict shapes him and his work just as his confrontation with death does. Death has haunted him from birth, since apart from him and his sister Maria Anna, five of his siblings did not survive their first year—an event his mother regards as a family catastrophe, even though infant mortality was high at the time. Four of Wolfgang and Constanze’s six children also die young. In spite of all the bitterness, Wolfgang preserves a childlike, buffoonish humor that at times can verge on the cruder side. The line he penned for the canon “Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber” is just one example among many.
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Queer Aspects in Some Opera Figures
Most of his wit remains subtle. Particularly in his later operas, he relishes subverting conventions with a sly, playful hand. His hallmark is to manipulate the audience musically, letting expectations collapse into nothing. For instance, a moment of ultimate, moving truth is undercut a few bars later by the sound of a chord that reveals a completely different emotional truth. This is the typically Mozartian irony in his music, not meant to be mocking, but aware of the fragility and fleeting nature of feelings and of social norms.
When you listen closely, you can also detect queer dimensions in some of his operatic characters: Don Giovanni’s loyal servant Leporello is one example, as is Osmin, the harem guard who leans toward the brazen and functions as a hypersexualized projection of European fantasies about the Muslim man in The Abduction from the Seraglio.
By transcending the rigid rules of Italian opera drama and by elevating the German singspiel to its highest form, he carved his name as one of the most important figures in opera history. Despite the successes he enjoyed during his brief life, the proper acknowledgment of his work came only after his early death at the age of 35 in Vienna.
For this contribution, a text first published in the opera guide “Casta Diva” has been newly revised.
