Kahlo×Mozart

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Frida Kahlo sits down with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for STUDY HALL. The subject — On who deserves to be more famous than they are.
2. 00:10
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   You know what makes me furious, Wolfgang? The way they remember the pretty ones. The polite ones. The ones who didn't bleed on the canvas.
3. 00:17
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ah, but Frida, they remember you now! You are everywhere—your face on bags, on shirts. Though I suppose being dead helps with fame, doesn't it?
4. 00:27
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   They remember the eyebrow. They remember Diego's wife. They don't remember the women who taught me—Matilde Kahlo, my mother, who survived eleven pregnancies and the Revolution. Or the Indigenous women whose faces I painted, whose dignity I tried to show.
5. 00:42
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Your mother had eleven pregnancies? Good God. My mother had seven children and my father dragged us across Europe like performing monkeys. She was the one who kept us fed, kept us alive in those freezing carriages.
6. 00:55
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   Yes, but everyone writes about Leopold Mozart. Your father the teacher, your father the manager, your father the genius-maker.
7. 01:02
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   My father was a mediocre composer who made me his puppet. My mother—she died in Paris while I was there, 1778, and I was too stupid and young to save her. She deserves more than a footnote in my biography.
8. 01:16
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   Who else, then? Who did you work with that they erased?
9. 01:19
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Johann Christian Bach. He taught me in London when I was eight years old. Everyone calls me a natural genius, born from nothing—no. Bach showed me the Italian style, the singing line, how to make the piano speak. He was kind to a child. They remember Johann Sebastian, the grandfather, but Johann Christian? Forgotten.
10. 01:40
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    It's the same in painting. Everyone knows Diego Rivera, the great muralist. But they should know Tina Modotti—photographer, revolutionary, artist. She was there before any of us, making political art that mattered. She died in a taxi in Mexico City, 1942. Forty-five years old. Heart attack, they said. I think it was a broken heart from too much fighting.
11. 02:02
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Was she your friend?
12. 02:04
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    More than a friend. She was the kind of woman who showed you what was possible. She loved Edward Weston, she loved the Communist party, she loved her camera. They remember Weston, the American man. They forget Tina.
13. 02:19
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I think also of the singers. Everyone remembers the operas, but the voices that created those roles? Nancy Storace—she was my first Susanna in Figaro, 1786. She understood comedy, understood how to be clever and warm at once. Without her voice in my ear, I wouldn't have written Susanna the same way.
14. 02:38
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    See, this is what they erase. The collaborators. The ones who gave you the idea in the first place.
15. 02:44
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! And Lorenzo Da Ponte—well, people remember him a little now, but for a century they forgot him completely. He wrote the words for three of my best operas. Don Giovanni, Figaro, Così fan tutte. He was dirty-minded like me, understood women better than most men.
16. 03:00
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Did he?
17. 03:01
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Well, he understood that women are not angels or demons. They are people. Complicated. That was radical enough for 1786.
18. 03:10
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    I'll give him that. But I think of Aurora Reyes—the first Mexican woman muralist. First. Before me, before anyone. She painted workers, she painted children, she was a communist and a fighter. You can see her murals in Mexico City if you know where to look. But they put Diego's face on the money.
19. 03:31
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    It's always the men on the money. Though I never made enough money to be on anything. I died owing money.
20. 03:37
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    I know someone else who deserves more credit. Dr. Henriette Begun—she wasn't famous, she was just a doctor in Paris who studied pain. The kind of nerve pain I lived with every day after my accident. She published papers about it in the 1930s, but who reads medical journals? Nobody paints her portrait.
21. 03:55
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did she help you?
22. 03:56
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    No. I was already in Mexico, already painting my pain. But I read about her work later, and I thought—finally, someone who believes women when they say it hurts.
23. 04:07
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I think of Franz Xaver Süssmayr, my student. Poor man. He had to finish my Requiem after I died because I was too sick, too broke, too dead. Everyone argues about which parts are mine and which are his—but he was there, he heard me work, he knew what I wanted. They should say 'Mozart and Süssmayr.' They don't.
24. 04:29
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    That's the worst kind of famous. Famous for finishing someone else's work.
25. 04:33
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Exactly. He was a good composer on his own. Operas, Masses. Nobody cares. He's just the Requiem boy.
26. 04:40
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Who else? Give me more names.
27. 04:42
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Anton Stadler. He played the clarinet like it was his own voice. I wrote the clarinet concerto for him, the clarinet quintet—those pieces exist because his playing made me crazy with ideas. But you go to a concert and they say 'Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.' Not 'Mozart's Concerto for Stadler.'
28. 05:02
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Exactly. They take the person out and leave the thing.
29. 05:05
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes. And Stadler was broke like me, pawned his instruments, drank too much. We understood each other.
30. 05:13
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    I want to talk about the servants. The nurses. Judith Ferreto took care of me near the end, 1954, when the pain was unbearable and I couldn't paint anymore. She saw everything—the morphine, the anger, the fear. She kept me clean. She held the pan when I vomited. Where is her name written down?
31. 05:31
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    It isn't. It never is. I don't even remember the name of the woman who washed my shirts in Vienna.
32. 05:37
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Then we're talking about a whole category of people who make art possible and get nothing. Not even a mention.
33. 05:43
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    My wife Constanze—well, she is remembered a little. But they say she was stupid, bad with money, didn't appreciate me. She wasn't stupid. She sang beautifully. She kept us alive when I was too proud to beg. After I died she spent thirty years protecting my work, selling it, making sure it was published correctly.
34. 06:05
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    They always say the wives are stupid or cruel. It's easier than admitting the husband was difficult.
35. 06:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I was very difficult. I made fart jokes at dinner parties. I spent money on wine and billiards. She had to manage that chaos.
36. 06:18
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Diego was the same. Impossible. Slept with my sister, slept with everyone. But I stayed. Not because I was weak—because I loved him and hated him and needed him and wanted to kill him. All at the same time.
37. 06:32
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    That sounds exhausting.
38. 06:34
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    It was. But who else are we forgetting? You must have someone else.
39. 06:39
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Michael Haydn. Brother of Joseph Haydn. Very good composer—sacred music especially. He was my colleague in Salzburg, and when he got sick and couldn't finish a commission, I wrote some pieces for him so he wouldn't get fired. Everyone thinks they're his. I never told anyone they were mine.
40. 06:58
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Why not?
41. 06:59
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Because he needed the job more than I needed the credit. He had a wife and not much money. I was young, I could write another piece tomorrow.
42. 07:07
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    That's the first generous thing I've heard you say.
43. 07:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Don't tell anyone. I have a reputation.
44. 07:13
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    I think we should end with someone neither of us knew. Someone who should be famous and isn't.
45. 07:17
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Alright. You go first.
46. 07:19
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Nahui Ollin. Carmen Mondragón was her real name. Mexican artist, poet, painter, model. She painted the sky—hundreds of paintings of clouds and light. Everyone wanted to photograph her because she was beautiful, but she was the artist. She died alone and forgotten in 1978. Nobody bought her paintings. They should have.
47. 07:41
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I choose Maria Anna Mozart. My sister. We called her Nannerl. When we were children, we toured together—she played keyboard as well as I did. Maybe better. But when she got old enough to marry, my father stopped her career. She taught piano students in Salzburg and watched me become famous. She could have been everything.
48. 08:03
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Did you ever tell her that?
49. 08:04
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No. I was too young to understand what was being taken from her. By the time I understood, I was in Vienna and she was in Salzburg and we wrote letters that said nothing important.
50. 08:16
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    That's the saddest one yet.
51. 08:17
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes. Because I could have done something. I could have fought for her. I didn't.
52. 08:23
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    So we remember them now. Everyone we just named. That's something.
53. 08:26
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    It's not enough. But it's something.