Wolfgang Mozart was not the wigged automaton of popular imagination. He was a foul-mouthed, gambling, hard-drinking rebel who told the Archbishop of Salzburg to go to hell, got literally kicked out of court, and became one of the first major composers to attempt a freelance career — a decision that produced some of the greatest music ever written and left him buried in an unmarked grave at thirty-five.

This episode traces Mozart from his child prodigy tours across Europe through his break with aristocratic patronage, the Vienna freelance years that produced The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and the Requiem, and the mysterious illness that killed him before he could finish his final masterpiece.

• The child prodigy years and the grueling European tours his father orchestrated
• The dramatic break with the Archbishop of Salzburg and the kick that launched his freelance career
• The Vienna years — the operas, the piano concertos, and the struggle to survive without a patron
• The mysterious final illness, the unfinished Requiem, and the pauper’s burial