Recently, I was surfing away, on the web that is, and I came across a very old photograph of an elderly woman. Her mode of dress dated the photo back 150 years, at least - I know my Victoriana - and the daguerreotype image was not really clear. But there she was, in a bonnet with white ribbons, staring into the camera. [caption id="attachment_20705" align="alignright" width="140" caption="Constanze Mozart in 1840, age 78"][/caption] The woman was identified as Constanze Mozart Nissen (1762-1842) the widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. She outlived her first husband by fifty-one years. As you look at this photo, blurred and dark it may be, you are looking into the eyes of a woman who looked into the eyes of Mozart. What other ancient photographs exist of great composers or their spouses? Here's another favorite: Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1791-1868), composer of Il barbiere di siviglia, William Tell, La cenerentola and thirty other operas, comic and tragic. [caption id="attachment_20707" align="alignright" width="113" caption="Rossini in 1858 age 66"]
[/caption] As a young man, Rossini was admired by Ludwig van Beethoven (no photographs of him, alas). You're looking at the photo of a man born when Joseph Haydn was writing his 'London' symphonies and when George Washington was still alive. Years ago I saw a heart-rending photograph of the composer Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). I can't find it - I'll keep looking- but this photo was taken a few years before the composer's death. His mind was gone and he stares vacantly in his chair, alive but with nobody home. (This was the composer of Lucia di Lammermoor and Don Pasquale.) Photographs of Johannes Brahms, Wilhelm Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi are not unusual. Photography was in wide use in the latter half of the 19th century. But here is Robert Schumann around 1850, as he, similar to Donizetti, began a mental decline, his mind eaten away by syphilis. [caption id="attachment_20709" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Robert Schumann...mind going"]
[/caption] We have plenty of photographs of the elderly Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and, even, a film of his funeral in Milan, January 30, 1901. [caption id="attachment_20711" align="alignright" width="85" caption="Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)"]
[/caption] Watch as the procession is entering the Piazza della Scala. It will later stop at the adjacent Milan Cathedral where a huge choir, conducted by the young Toscanini, performs the Va pensiero chorus from Nabucco: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc9fCcrFEa0 There's no film of Wilhelm Richard Wagner (d. 1883), but some footage of his son, Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930), a mediocre composer and conductor who (alas) lives in infamy for his marriage to the notorious Winifred Wagner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8EmDIOXaeQ There is no known footage (though there are photographs galore) of Gustav Mahler, but there is a 1958 interview with Alma Mahler Werfel, then 84, that I haven't yet found. Sweet and cuddly she is not. There are actually home movies of Giacomo Puccini and family. (If you thought Alma Mahler was a handful, some day I'll tell you about Elvira Puccini.) Finally, six seconds with Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), the voice of the 20th century, at his comic best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6oe_1emXug
