In Mozart: The Man Behind the Music, Dr. Amos Navon, classical flautist and consummate biographer, answers profound and hypnotic questions about the man behind the music by examining those elements in Mozart’s life that shaped his personality and determined his destiny, as the reader accompanies the genius composer on the journey that would depict the creation of his unheralded masterpiece, opera seria Idomeneo. In addition, the author describes Mozart’s remarkable development through writing wind instrument music for virtuoso friends. We also explore Mozart’s collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist of his three greatest operas, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan Tutte.

But this is not simply a dry exploration of composition. We learn of the very human Mozart – of Constanze, who barely survived as Mozart’s wife and the mother of his children, and who, after his death, spent her life keeping her husband’s memory alive. The reader suffers through Mozart’s economic woes during the time he lived in Salzburg and later on in Vienna, his interactions with Baron Raymond Wetzlar von Plankenstein, and even his “begging letters” to Michael Puchberg. The rounded-out story of this intensely human being reflects Mozart’s dependence on friends in times of financial need, the role of gambling in his daily life, his attitude toward religion, and whether his ultimate dream of living a wealthy, bourgeois life ever really materialized.