Mozart had a special relationship with Prague and the people of Prague. The audience here celebrated their Figaro with the much deserved reverence he was missing in his hometown Vienna. His quote “Meine Prager verstehen mich” (My Praguers understand me) became very famous in the Bohemian lands. Many tourists follow his tracks in Prague and visit the Mozart Museum of the Villa Bertramka where they can enjoy a chamber concert. In Prague, Don Giovanni premiered on October 29, 1787 at the Theatre of the Estates. In the later years of his life, Prague provided Mozart many financial resources from commissions. German poet Eduard Mörike’s well-known novella Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (”Mozart on the way to Prague”) is a fantasy about the composer’s trip to that city in order to present Don Giovanni (the story, however, relates episodes that happen along the way, not in Prague itself).

In 1781 Mozart visited Vienna in the company of his employer, the harsh Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, and soon fell out with him. According to Mozart’s own testimony, he was dismissed - literally - “with a kick in the seat of the pants.” Mozart chose to settle and develop his career in Vienna after its aristocracy began to take an interest in him.

On August 4, 1782, against his father’s wishes, he married Constanze Weber (1762-1842) (also spelled “Costanze”), a would-be cousin of Carl Maria von Weber. Although they had six children, only two survived infancy. Neither of these two, Karl Thomas (1784–1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791-1844; later a minor composer himself), married or had children.

The year 1782 was an auspicious one for Mozart’s career; his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (”The Abduction from the Seraglio”) was a great success and he began a series of concerts at which he premiered his own piano concertos as conductor and soloist.

During 1782–83, Mozart became closely acquainted with the work of J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of works by the Baroque masters. Mozart’s study of these works led first to a number of works imitating Baroque style and later had a powerful influence on his own personal musical language, for example the fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte (”The Magic Flute”) and the Symphony No. 41.

In 1783, Wolfgang and Constanze visited Leopold in Salzburg, but the visit was not a success, as his father did not take to Constanze. However, the visit saw the composition of one of Mozart’s great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C Minor, which was premiered in Salzburg, and is presently one of his best known works.

In his early Vienna years, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart’s six quartets dedicated to Haydn date from 1782–85, and are often judged to be his response to Haydn’s Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn was soon in awe of Mozart, and when he first heard the last three of Mozart’s series he told Leopold, “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste, and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.”

During the years 1782-1785, Mozart put on a series of concerts in which he appeared as soloist in his piano concertos, widely considered among his greatest works. These concerts were financially successful. After 1785 Mozart performed far less and wrote only a few concertos. Maynard Solomon conjectures that he may have suffered from hand injuries; another possibility is that the fickle public ceased to attend the concerts in the same numbers.

Mozart was influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment as an adult, and became a Freemason (1784). His lodge was a specifically Catholic rather than a deistic one and he worked fervently and successfully to convert his father before the latter’s death in 1787. His last opera, Die Zauberflöte, includes Masonic themes and allegory. He was in the same Masonic Lodge as Haydn.

Mozart’s life was fraught with financial difficulty and illness. Often, he received no payment for his work, and what sums he did receive were quickly consumed by his extravagant lifestyle.

Mozart spent 1786 in Vienna in an apartment (in the “Mozarthaus”) which may be visited today at Domgasse 5 behind St Stephen’s Cathedral; it was here that Mozart composed Le nozze di Figaro. He followed this in 1787 with one of his greatest works, Don Giovanni.

Leopold realized that he could earn a substantial income by showcasing his son as a Wunderkind in the courts of Europe. Mozart soon gained fame as a musical prodigy capable of such feats as playing blindfolded or competently improvising at length on difficult passages. His older sister Maria Anna (Nannerl) was a talented pianist and accompanied her brother on the earlier tours. Mozart wrote a number of piano pieces, in particular duets and duos, to play with her. On one occasion when Mozart became very ill, Leopold expressed more concern over the loss of income than over his son’s well-being.

During his formative years, Mozart completed several journeys throughout Europe, beginning with an exhibition in 1762 at the Court of the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, then in the same year at the Imperial Court in Vienna. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking him with his father to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. They went to Vienna again in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.

After one year in Salzburg, three trips to Italy followed: from December 1769 to March 1771, from August to December 1771, and from October 1772 to March 1773. During the first of these trips, Mozart met Andrea Luchesi in Venice and G.B. Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. A highlight of the Italian journey, now an almost legendary tale, occurred when he heard Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere once in performance in the Sistine Chapel then wrote it out in its entirety from memory, only returning to correct minor errors; he thus produced the first illegal copy of this closely-guarded property of the Vatican [source documents].

On July 3, 1778, accompanied by his mother, Mozart began a tour of Europe that included Munich, Mannheim, and Paris, where his mother died.

During his trips, Mozart met a great number of musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other great composers. A particularly important influence was Johann Christian Bach, who befriended Mozart in London in 1764–65. Bach’s work is often taken to be an inspiration for the distinctive surface texture of Mozart’s music, though not its architecture or drama.

Even non-musicians caught Mozart’s attention. He was so taken by the sound created by Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica that he composed several pieces of music for it.