Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Mozart family begins a grand tour of Europe. Wolfgang is seven. He performs for Louis XV at Versailles, George III in London, Maria Theresa in Vienna. His father advertises him as a prodigy, sometimes shaving a year off his age for effect.

Visits Rome during Holy Week and hears Allegri's Miserere in the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican forbids anyone from copying the score. Mozart walks out and writes the entire piece from memory. He is 14.

His mother Anna Maria dies in Paris while accompanying him on a job-hunting trip. He is 22 and alone in a foreign city. He writes his father a letter saying she is 'very ill' before working up the courage to tell the truth.

Breaks from his patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, after years of humiliation. The archbishop's steward literally kicks him out the door. Mozart stays in Vienna as a freelancer. No steady salary, no safety net. It's the most productive period of his life.

Joins the Freemasons in Vienna. Lodge Zur Wohlthatigkeit. Freemasonry influences The Magic Flute seven years later. Trials, enlightenment, the journey from darkness to light. The symbols are everywhere in the opera.

The Marriage of Figaro premieres in Vienna. A comedy about servants outsmarting their masters. The Viennese audience demands so many encores that the emperor issues an order limiting them. In Prague, the opera is a sensation. Mozart writes to his father: "Here they talk about nothing but Figaro."

Don Giovanni premieres in Prague. Mozart conducts. The overture, according to legend, is written the night before. His wife Constanze keeps him awake with punch and fairy tales while he composes it.

The Magic Flute premieres in Vienna. Mozart conducts from the keyboard. He is visibly ill. The opera is a popular triumph, but Mozart has less than ten weeks to live. He is simultaneously working on his Requiem, commissioned by a stranger who refuses to reveal who hired him.

Dies in Vienna shortly after midnight. He is 35. The cause is still debated: rheumatic fever, kidney disease, mercury poisoning, or trichinosis from undercooked pork chops. The Requiem is unfinished. His student Franz Xaver Sussmayr completes it. He is buried in a common grave at St. Marx Cemetery, as was customary for the Viennese middle class. The exact location is unknown.

Amadeus wins the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film depicts Mozart as a vulgar genius and Salieri as his jealous rival. The real Salieri was a respected colleague. The rivalry is mostly fiction. The movie makes Mozart a household name for a generation that doesn't read liner notes.