Mozart and the Man in Black

1791. Divine Amadeus Mozart suffers from the terrible anguish of a cruel illness (chronic nephritis with renal atrophy) whose symptoms are similar to those of poisoning and make the composer believe that his rival Salieri would have tried to kill him.

Waiting for imminent death, he is visited by a mysterious guy, a tall man dressed in black who claimed he was the envoy of an important dignitary and wanted to order a Messa da Requiem he needed shortly.

The condition was that the applicant’s name would remain unknown and did not require any explanation. Mozart accepted, but he was deeply disturbed, being convinced that this weird guest dressed in mourning clothes was a messenger of death who asked him to write his own requiem.

Abandoned and then resumed after another strange client visits, this requiem has become the obsessive concern of the composer. As death approaches, Mozart devoted himself to his last strength to finish this sad mission. At the Lacrimosa passage the exhausted musician broke into crying and interrupted the rehearsal of the orchestra.

Mozart died at midnight, humming a piece of requiem and standing with his eyes fixed on a point in the empty space where he saw the emissary of death who came to fulfill his mission.

The mysterious visitor never came to take his ordered requiem.

from Constantin Popescu, Realitate si fictiune

 

 

 

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