Mozart×Wilde

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sits down with Oscar Wilde for ROAST NIGHT. The subject — On the most overrated person of their century.
2. 00:11
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   So, Oscar, we are to discuss the most overrated person of our centuries, yes? I have been thinking about this all day. Well, for perhaps twenty minutes. My attention, you know, it does not last so long.
3. 00:24
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   Twenty minutes? My dear Wolfgang, that's precisely nineteen minutes longer than most people's thoughts are worth. But do go on. I'm already delighted.
4. 00:31
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   For me, it must be Beethoven. Ludwig van Beethoven! Everyone says, oh, he is so serious, so profound, so German. As if being miserable makes you a genius.
5. 00:43
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   You're attacking Beethoven? How wonderfully petty of you. I adore it already.
6. 00:47
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   He was born in 1770, you understand, fourteen years after me. I was already composing symphonies while he was still wetting his bed. And yet everyone acts as if he invented music! He took my ideas, made them louder and longer, and suddenly he is the great revolutionary.
7. 01:04
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   Louder and longer. The motto of every bore who ever lived. Though I must say, Wolfgang, there's something magnificently undignified about a genius harboring a grudge.
8. 01:13
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   It is not a grudge! It is an observation. The man wrote one opera, Fidelio, and it is—how do you say—a moral lecture set to music. Where is the joy? Where is the laughter? Where is the human being?
9. 01:28
   Oscar Wildeshare moment

   Quite right. Nothing is more insufferable than art that insists on improving us. I've always believed that if you wish to be tedious, the first thing to do is to take yourself seriously.
10. 01:37
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Exactly! You understand! My Don Giovanni, he goes to hell at the end, yes, but first we have such fun! Beethoven would have the stone statue appear in the first act to lecture everyone about moral philosophy.
11. 01:52
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    And the audience would applaud because they'd been told it was good for them, like castor oil. Now, shall I tell you whom I've selected?
12. 01:58
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes, yes! Who is the most overrated person of your century?
13. 02:02
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Queen Victoria. I'm not certain she qualifies as a person, mind you. More of a national monument that occasionally sighed.
14. 02:08
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But she was the Queen! For so many years!
15. 02:11
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Sixty-three years of unrelenting disapproval. She elevated dullness to a constitutional principle. The woman wore black for forty years and expected the entire empire to mourn with her. Imagine—a whole age named after one's capacity for joylessness.
16. 02:26
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I think I would have gone mad. We Austrians, we like our emperors, but we also like our wine and our parties and our... well, you know.
17. 02:35
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Oh, I do know. And I appreciate the delicacy. But here's what galls me most about Victoria: she was called the moral center of an entire civilization. The sun never set on her empire, they said, though it seemed never to rise in her sitting room either.
18. 02:49
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    But surely she must have done something important? Something more than just... sitting?
19. 02:54
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    She married a German, approved of things, and disapproved of far more things. That was essentially the reign. And yet the age bears her name! The Victorian Age! As if she'd thought a single thought worth preserving. My age, Oscar, should have been called the Wildean Age, but that's another grievance.
20. 03:10
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ha! But Oscar, the people, they do not name ages after the fun ones. They name them after the ones who sit still long enough to be painted. I tell you, I could never sit still. My wife, she was always complaining.
21. 03:24
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Wives do tend toward that. But you've raised an interesting point about Beethoven. Was he truly overrated, or was he simply rated for qualities you find tedious? There's a difference.
22. 03:34
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No, no, he was genuinely overrated! People said he was a greater composer than me. Than me! I wrote over 600 works in thirty-five years. He barely managed nine symphonies in his entire life. Nine! I could write a symphony before breakfast.
23. 03:50
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    And perhaps therein lies the problem. The world has always confused suffering with depth. Beethoven went deaf and glowered at fate, so naturally he must be profound. You enjoyed yourself thoroughly, so you must be merely entertaining.
24. 04:03
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! This is exactly the problem! Why is being entertaining a crime? Why must genius be unhappy to be respectable?
25. 04:10
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Because mediocre people need to believe that talent requires suffering. It comforts them in their own misery. If you and I are laughing while we work, it suggests that genius might actually be... pleasant. And that would be unforgivable.
26. 04:22
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You know, Oscar, I think we understand each other. Though I must say, at least Beethoven composed music. Your Queen Victoria, what did she compose? Letters of complaint?
27. 04:33
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Oh, she composed plenty. Composed herself. Composed her features into expressions of permanent dissatisfaction. Composed the moral framework that made my life spectacularly difficult, I might add.
28. 04:43
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ah yes, I have heard about your difficulties. The trial, yes? And the prison?
29. 04:49
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Reading gaol, to be precise. Two years of Victorian morality applied with maximum efficiency. All because I had the audacity to be myself in an age named after a woman who'd forgotten how.
30. 05:00
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I think I was lucky to die before such morality became fashionable. In my time, we had morals, of course, but we also had... flexibility. Archbishop Colloredo was a pig, but at least he was an honest pig.
31. 05:15
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Honesty in piggishness is a rare virtue. But tell me, Wolfgang, do you truly believe Beethoven was overrated, or are you simply annoyed that posterity has been kinder to his scowl than to your smile?
32. 05:25
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Perhaps a little of both? I am human, after all. Well, I was human. The grammar of death is confusing. But yes, it bothers me that he is called the greatest composer when I was right there, being greater and having more fun doing it.
33. 05:40
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    The injustice of it is really rather perfect. You created beauty effortlessly, and they held it against you. He created beauty painfully, and they built him monuments. It's almost enough to make one believe in divine comedy.
34. 05:53
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Divine comedy! I like this. Though I think the comedy is that we are here, dead for centuries, still complaining about people who annoyed us. What does this say about us?
35. 06:03
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    That we're consistent? I've always believed that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative, but in our case, I'll make an exception. Some people deserve to be complained about across the veil of death.
36. 06:14
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    You know what would truly horrify both Beethoven and Queen Victoria? That we are here, in the future, on the radio, being irreverent about them. They both took themselves so seriously.
37. 06:26
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Oh, Victoria would be appalled. Not amused, as she was so fond of saying. Though I suspect Beethoven might secretly enjoy the attention. Even the deaf appreciate being heard, metaphorically speaking.
38. 06:37
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    That is very clever! You see, this is why I like talking with you, Oscar. You make the words dance. It is like music, but with more syllables.
39. 06:46
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    And you, my dear Wolfgang, have the gift of making iconoclasm sound charming. It's quite a talent. Most people who attack the great merely sound envious. You sound playful.
40. 06:56
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Because I am playful! Life is too short to be serious all the time. Death too, apparently. Though I will say, being serious got Beethoven more respect than being playful got me.
41. 07:07
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Respect is what people give you when they're too dull to give you love. You were loved, Wolfgang. Your music made people happy. Beethoven made them feel important. I know which legacy I'd prefer.
42. 07:18
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    This is true. And between us, I think happiness is more difficult to create than importance. Any fool can be serious. It takes genius to make someone laugh and cry at the same time.
43. 07:31
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Precisely. Which is why both our centuries got it wrong. They rated seriousness above joy, endurance above brilliance, moral posturing above actual morality. And here we are, the casualties of their confusion.
44. 07:43
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Well, at least we are casualties together. And at least we can say what we think now. Though I suppose we could have said it when we were alive. We both had big mouths.
45. 07:53
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    The biggest. And we both paid for it, didn't we? You died poor, I died disgraced. Meanwhile, Beethoven got a proper funeral and Victoria got an empire's tears. The world rewards the wrong people, Wolfgang.
46. 08:05
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes, but the world also still plays my music and reads your plays. So perhaps we win in the end? Even if Beethoven gets more statues.
47. 08:14
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Statues are just targets for pigeons. I'd rather be read in secret than honored in public. Though, if I'm being honest, I'd prefer both. I contain multitudes, including contradictions.
48. 08:24
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Ha! You are honest about wanting to be honored. I like this. It is very human. Very alive, even though we are not.
49. 08:32
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    Being dead is no excuse for false modesty. Shall we conclude that both our centuries were populated by fools who couldn't recognize genius when it was having a good time?
50. 08:41
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! This is our conclusion! The fools, they only respect genius when it suffers. Well, we suffered too, but we did it with style. And with laughter. And that, I think, is something.
51. 08:53
    Oscar Wildeshare moment

    It's everything, actually. The only thing worth doing is worth doing with style. Even dying. Especially dying. And definitely complaining about the overrated dead. Shall we consider this a successful roast?
52. 09:04
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Oh yes. Very successful. Beethoven would be furious, and Queen Victoria would be not amused. Which means we have done our job perfectly.