On 8 Jul 2013, YH and I visited one of the houses, Mozarthaus, that Mozart had lived in when he was in Vienna. This house is perhaps the only surviving house that Mozart had lived in when he was in Vienna. When we were at the Mozarthaus, we met a number of our friends in the orchestra. This seemed to be a popular choice to visit for music-lovers.
In this house, I learnt that Mozart had spent 11 years in Vienna. Over the period of 11 years in Vienna, Mozart was said to have changed 13 addresses. Mozart had lived in the house from 1784 to 1787. The house is located very near St Stephen Cathedral.
The mysterious Free Masons somehow caught my interest. I learnt of Mozart's admission to the Free Masons in Dec 1784.
During my visit to the Mozarthaus, I had the pleasure to use the audio guide. It offered a lot of information on Mozart and could easily replaced a human tour guide except that it did not answer questions! A word of reminder if visitors were to use the audio guide, it will require a lot more than a hour to listen to every single item on the audio guide.
Mozarthaus also gave visitors a glimpse of how Mozart's Marriage of Figaro was so well-received in Prague. There was a lot of material being put on display yet quite a number were replicas or copies of the originals. If I was there to do a research on Mozart, it would make sense to put myself through so much information. However, if I were a mere tourist, it may be the visuals that would get me interested in Mozart. However, while the visuals on display attempt to get the visitors to imagine how life could have been during Mozart's times, some of the visuals appear disconnected with the general themes presented by the audio guide.
Anyway, a quote under the section of Mozart's Requiem left the strongest impression in me. The quote (translated in English) went,
"As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling!"
Structurally, the house consists of four large rooms, two small ones and a kitchen. The Wien Museum has done an excellent task to curate the apartment.
Admission is 10 euro per adult for regular entry. It will require at least 2 hours to browse the exhibition and to listen to most of the items on the audio guide. While I would recommend lovers of classical music to make a visit to Mozarthaus for the sake of learning more about Mozart, visitors who prefers to see important exhibits related to Mozart may prefer to give Mozarthaus a miss. Essentially, I realized that many of the exhibits found in Mozarthaus were generally not original copies. This meant that the focus of the visit to Mozarthaus would not be to see the exhibits but to experience the house.
Photography is not allowed in the exhibition galleries of Mozarthaus. This reason may be strong enough to deter all the photography buffs. Anyway, this is is reason why I have limited photographs of Mozarthaus to show you. Whatever it is, this may be the place for fans of Mozart to visit while in Vienna.
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Mozarthaus
A-1010 Vienna, Domgasse 5
Opens daily from 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Tel: +43 1 512 17 91
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