A Requiem for Mozart 2025

Mozart is a particularly captivating figure. His fame and success as both a player and a composer in his lifetime; the breadth of styles he mastered; the memorability of so many of his tunes; this, combined with how prolific his music still is in concert programmes around the world today, define him as synonymous with classical music itself. Many have described him as the greatest composer that ever lived – the GOAT of composition.

The end of Mozart’s life has in recent times become much associated with Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus and its subsequent adaptations. Whilst the film and play are wonderful, they paint Mozart as perhaps a rather two-dimensional character and most of the historical events depicted have no actual basis in fact. The real Mozart was a far more serious moral character, and much more successful than the sick, haunted, friendless pauper portrayed (haunted to death by his own Requiem...). One of the reasons for creating our production was to give a more truthful snapshot of the end of his life. To shine a spotlight on the real Mozart, and through that, to explore some of the fascinating culture of Mozart’s late 18th-century Vienna. We are incredibly grateful to world-renowned Mozart expert Cliff Eisen for devising our script and helping us better discover the true man.