Rita Charbonnier

La importancia y trascendencia de la obra de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ha hecho que la de su hermana, pianista y compositora, quedara en la sombra desde el principio. En su época estaba mal visto que una mujer tocara según qué instrumentos musicales, y mucho más que compusiera, y eso, añadido a la rígida disciplina del padre, hizo que la obra de Maria Anna pasase casi desapercibida por completo, aun cuando hay constancia de que su hermano interpretó en ocasiones composiciones de la que todos conocían como Nannerl. La historia de Nannerl es pues la de una joven muy apegada a su hermano, hasta el punto de convertirse a la muerte del gran compositor en la persona que más hizo por la preservación de su obra, pero sobre todo la de una mujer que tuvo que enfrentarse a las convenciones de su tiempo. Mediante un exhaustivo trabajo de investigación histórica, la autora logra además reproducir con colorido y brillantez la atmósfera de una época y unos ambientes por los que desfilaron Madame de Pompadour, Johan Sebastian Bach, Farinelli o Antonio Salieri, entre otros muchos.

Esta novela histórica descubre un personaje clave para la vida del genio y que sin embargo quedó a la sombra: su hermana Maria Anna, conocida familiarmente como Nannerl.Tras un exhaustivo trabajo de investigacion historica y la lectura rigurosa del epistolario y los diarios de Maria Anna Mozart, Rita Charbonnier se ha arriesgado a insinuar en su novela que tal vez Nannerl jugo un papel mas decisivo de lo que se cree en algunas de las composiciones que tradicionalmente se han atribuido al genial autor de La flauta magica.

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, affectionately called Nannerl by her family, could play the piano with an otherworldly skill from the time she was a child, when her tiny hands seemed too small to encompass a fifth. At the tender age of five, she gave her first public performance, amazing the assembled gentlemen and ladies with the beautiful music she created. But her moment of glory was cut short, for even as her father carried her around to receive their praise, her mother began laboring to bring a second child into the world. After hours of her mothers pained cries and agonized shouts, which rang in Nannerls ears like a terrifying symphony, the child was born. They named him Wolfgang. Nannerl loved him instantly. As they grew, Wolfgang and his sister became inseparable, creating a fantasy world together and playing music the likes of which no one had ever heard. They were two sides of a single person, opposite in temperamenthe lighthearted and charismatic, she shy and retiringbut equal in talent. Yet it was Wolfgang who carried their fathers dreams of glory. And as the siblings matured, Nannerls prodigious talent was brushed aside by her father. Instead of playing alongside her brother in the worlds great cities, she was forced to stop performing and become a provincial piano teacher to support Wolfgangs career. Nannerl might have accepted this life in her brothers shadow but for the appearance of a potential suitor who reawakened her passion for life, for love, for musicand who threatened to upset the delicate balance that kept the Mozart family in harmony. Mozarts Sister draws you into the lush palaces and salons of eighteenth-century Europe and into the fascinating life of a woman who ultimately found a way to express her own genius.