Constanze Mozart

Maria Constanze Cäcilia Josepha Johanna Aloysia Mozart (née Weber, Austrian German: [kɔnˈstantsə ˈmoːtsart ˈveːbɐ]; 5 January 1762 – 6 March 1842) was a German soprano, later a businesswoman. She is best remembered as the spouse of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who from the evidence of his letters was deeply in love with her throughout their nine-year marriage. Following her husband's sudden death in 1791, Constanze Mozart escaped poverty and supported her family through concertizing and promotion of her husband's memory; she was responsible in part for the extensive posthumous publication of her husband's works. Constanze is also regarded, less positively, as a source of mythology concerning her husband's life, deriving in part from the biography she jointly wrote with her second husband, Georg Nikolaus von Nissen.

Constanze Weber was born on 5 January 1762 in Zell im Wiesental, a town near Lörrach (in present-day Baden-Württemberg, southwest Germany), then a Further Austrian territory in the Holy Roman Empire. Her mother was Cäcilia Weber (née Stamm), and her father, Fridolin Weber, worked as a "double bass player, prompter, and music copyist". Fridolin's half-brother was the father of composer Carl Maria von Weber. Constanze had two elder sisters, Josepha and Aloysia, and a younger sister, Sophie. All four were trained as singers and Josepha and Aloysia both went on to distinguished musical careers, later on performing in the premieres of a number of Mozart's works.

During most of Constanze's upbringing, the family lived in her mother's hometown of Mannheim, an important cultural, intellectual and musical center. The 21-year-old Mozart visited Mannheim in 1777 on a job-hunting tour with his mother and developed a close relationship with the Weber family. He fell in love—not with 15-year-old Constanze, but with Aloysia. While Mozart was in Paris, Aloysia obtained a position as a singer in Munich, and the family accompanied her there. She rejected Mozart when he passed through Munich on his way back to Salzburg.

The family moved to Vienna in 1779, again following Aloysia as she pursued her career. However, a month after their arrival, Fridolin died. By the time Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, Aloysia had married Joseph Lange, who agreed to help Cäcilia Weber with an annual stipend; she also took in boarders to make ends meet. The house where the Webers lived (on the second floor) was at Am Peter 11, and bore a name (as houses often did at the time): Zum Auge Gottes ("God's Eye").

On first arriving in Vienna on 16 March 1781, Mozart stayed at the house of the Teutonic Order with the staff of his patron, Archbishop Colloredo. In May, he "was obliged to leave", and chose to board in the Weber household, originally intending "to stay there only a week".

After a while, it became apparent to Cäcilia Weber that Mozart was courting Constanze, now 19, and in the interest of propriety, she requested that he leave. Mozart moved out on 5 September to a third-floor room in the Graben.

The courtship continued, but not entirely smoothly. Surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlor game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting permission for the marriage from his father, Leopold.

The marriage finally took place in an atmosphere of crisis. Daniel Heartz suggests that eventually Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time. Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, "All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question." Heartz relates, "Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home [presumably from Mozart's apartment]." On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldstätten, asking: "Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today."