Mozart in Paris

Description

In 1778, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart leaves Salzburg for Paris. The French capital promises to liberate the 22-year-old from the suffocating grip of his father, and from a city that is unable to accommodate his genius. But there is no grand entrance for the former child prodigy. When Mozart arrives in Paris, he is cash-strapped, unknown and his French is poor. His mentor, the critic Baron von Grimm, introduces him to a number of Parisian nobles. But recognition is hard-won, and at times the French court appears indifferent to Mozart's talents and disapproving of his spontaneity. Tracing the composer's six-month stay in the city of lights, Mozart in Paris dramatizes the confrontation between a sparkle-eyed genius and mundane reality. Frantz Duchazeau spotlights a frustrating yet formative period of the composer's life - and in doing so creates a living, breathing portrait of a man whose music, as Einstein famously said, "was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master."

Frantz Duchazeau was born in Angouleme and settled in Paris in 1993. He began his career in the early 1990s working for the French Disney magazine Le Journal de Mickey. He also contributed numerous short stories and a series, 'Une Vie de Chiens' (with Christian Godard), to Spirou. He is the author of a number of graphic novels, including Gilgamesh (with Gwen de Bonneval) and Le Reve de Meteor Slim. His graphic biography, Lomax: Collectors of Folk Songs, is available from SelfMadeHero.