Mozart in Italy: Coming of Age in the Land of Opera

The book draws on the experiences of famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s teenage travels — showing how his years in Italy shaped his musical identity.

Written by renowned conductor and scholar Jane Glover, blending musical expertise with historical narrative.

At thirteen years old, Mozart was already a child prodigy beloved across northern Europe — but his father Leopold was determined that he conquer Italy. Over three visits (the last at age seventeen), father and son traveled from the theatres and concert salons of Milan, to the church-filled streets of Rome, to the troubled, vibrant cities of Naples, and to Venice, birthplace of public opera. During these journeys, Mozart absorbed Italian culture, language, style, and art — and faced the challenge of writing Italian opera for Italian singers and audiences. These Italian years were transformative: the experiences shaped not only his compositional craft but arguably the course of his entire musical life. The book paints this pivotal period in vivid — and deeply human — detail, exploring how what he encountered changed Mozart — and his music — forever.

“You don’t have to be able to hum Mozart to find this book utterly engrossing … I couldn’t put it down.” — Joanna Lumley

“An account of the teenage Mozart’s operatic awakening is packed with humanising detail … [Glover] makes clear that Mozart lived very much in the real 18th-century world of dirt, illness, bedbugs and discomfort, not permanently wrapped in some fuzzy golden halo of brilliance.” — The Guardian

“A fine conductor… is also an accomplished writer, displaying … a nonchalant grace in marshalling her sources… as the Mozarts zigzag over the chessboard of Italian princely states.” — The Literary Review