Was Mozart Murdered?
Was Mozart murdered? Inspired by the film Amadeus, many people have also heard the more obscure rumor that Mozart was murdered by a jealous husband in 1791, and not Salieri, as the film implies.
Here are some curious facts about Mozart's final days.
First of all, it is rumored that Mozart was having an affair with Magdalena Hofdemel, a beautiful young piano student.
Mozart had been invited many times to play chamber music in her home. She and her husband Franz were family friends. Some have conjectured that Magdalena was Mozart's true love. Mozart had long before abandoned his greedy wife Constanze for the more sympathetic Magdalena.
Wolfgang And Magdalena
Wolfgang and Magdalena shared weekend retreats at a country house in the Vienna woods. The excitable husband Franz Hofdemel caught wind of Mozart's affair with his wife.
Hofdemel was a wine merchant and had plied the avid drinker Mozart with many fine wines. He had done so over many years. These wines, in the opinion of some, were filled with increasing doses of a South American poison that kills slowly, but is very hard to trace.
Mozart's Illness
To support this conjecture, the fact is that Mozart complained of an entirely mysterious illness in the weeks before he died.
Hofdemel stabbed Magdalena almost to death on the very day of Mozart's death as a reprisal for his wife's affair with Mozart. Hofdemel then committed suicide, guilty of both Mozart's and Magdalena's murder.
The Solution of the Crime
Some contemporary accounts say that Magdalena came home, stricken with grief over the death of the great master and her lover Mozart.
Hofdemel then attacked his wife in a fit of jealous rage. Knowing he was also guilty of the poisoning murder of the great Mozart, Hofdemel committed suicide.
Current historians are convinced this is the true story of Mozart's death.
