The Mozarts, Who They Were Volume 2. Diego Minoia

lovers who worked simultaneously and without jealousy or reciprocal inhibition or for the countless meteors that quickly passed between the curtains of the royal bridal bed; Louis XV could count on about fifteen recognized lovers, plus the passing ones. And don't think that the High Clergy did no less.

      For Carnival in every corner of the city there were dances, often with just a couple of musicians playing, according to Leopold, old out-of-date minuets. Approaching the time of departure for London Leopold is also thinking of relieving part of the gifts and purchases made in the previous stages of the journey by sending them to Salzburg and at the same time avoiding possible thefts or breakages due to the next loads and unloadings from the carriage with relative move to the inns.

      A novelty that caused a sensation on Leopold were the so-called "English toilets" which in Paris were present in every private aristocratic palace. These are actually the first bidet models, equipped with cold and hot water sprayed upwards, which Leopold describes very briefly, not wanting to use inelegant terms. Even the bathrooms of the noble palaces are luxurious, with walls and floors in majolica, marble or even alabaster, equipped with porcelain chamber pots with gilded rims and jars with scented water and fragrant herbs.

      Personal hygiene and bodily needs

      We have previously seen how the use of terms related to bodily functions and the parts of the body involved was common in the Mozart family, in particular in the habits of Wolfgang and his mother.

      But it is nothing to be shocked by!

      At the time in Salzburg, but also in the rest of Europe, if we exclude the aristocracy (who lingered a little longer in the language to respect the alleged superiority over the lower classes) the use of trivial language was common.

      After all, the habit with the natural functions of the body was much more "public" than it is today.

      The bathrooms were practically absent in the vast majority of houses, if we exclude the noble palaces, and the bodily functions were not hidden as today but quietly carried out wherever nature had made its needs felt.

      How to consider defecation a vulgar activity to be hidden at the time of the Sun King (Louis XIV) when it was actually considered a privilege reserved for the highest degrees of the court nobility to attend the "lever du Roi", the awakening of the King, including him sitting on the "throne" (equipped with a majolica vase and a table for reading and writing) that the sovereign used every morning to carry out his bodily needs?

      And so, cascading from the King down, the activities of the body were considered natural and were carried out, if one was at home, in the chamber pot which was then emptied by throwing its contents out of the window.

      The result of all this, added to the animal manure and the habit of throwing all kinds of garbage or processing waste on the street (there were no sewers or sanitation systems, except for some rare washing of the main and central streets of the cities ) was filthy streets and putrid cities.

      If, on the other hand, you were out of the house, things got more complicated, not so much for the men who, thanks to the more practical clothes and the favorable physiology were able to find a secluded corner to relieve themselves, as well as for the women.

      The aristocrats wore complex and overabundant dresses, with skirts, petticoats, bodices with strings and buttons, not to mention the "panier", a frame with concentric circles in wicker or whalebone, tied together by ribbons and fixed directly on the corset . How then?

      A solution to every problem: the Bourdaloue was invented, a portable chamber pot equipped with a handle and formed according to the female shape, which was placed under the skirts by the maid and which allowed the grand lady, thanks to the fact that it had a strategically placed opening, to free themselves in public while respecting the concept of decency considered acceptable at the time.

      However, it seems that at the beginning of the 1700s only three aristocrats out of a hundred wore underpants, either for convenience or because they were still considered a sinful garment by the Church (in the previous century they were worn and flaunted above all by prostitutes, as in Venice, where they were called "braghesse" and were imposed as an obligation for girls who were "working girls"). In public, it is said.

      Of course, bourdaloue was used without problems, in the 1700s, on every occasion: during walks, during carriage rides, in the middle of a dance and, yes, even in church.

      The term bourdaloue derives from the surname of Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), a very famous preacher who, thanks to his extraordinary oratory art, was called to Versailles to give his sermons in the Royal Chapel, in front of the King and the courtiers.

      The sermons, however, were very long and, in order not to miss a single word (and not to leave their place, which represented a precise hierarchical order within the courtiers), the ladies resorted to bourdaloue, which allowed them to solve the problems of incontinence. without abandoning their place in church.

      Leopold then communicates to Hagenauer the hope of a collection of 75 Luigi d'oro for the first Parisian concert of the young Mozarts, scheduled for March 10 at the Teatro del Signor Felix, which actually yielded 112. During their stay in Paris the Mozarts have way to also attend "shows" that were very rare in Salzburg, while in Paris were almost daily event: the hangings of criminals in Place de Grève (the current Place de Hotel de Ville, the Town Hall).

      It is not known whether for having witnessed it or by hearsay, the story of the hanging of three servants (a cook, a coachman and a maid) who in the service of a rich widow to whom annuity payments were sent home every month, had stolen the astonishing sum of 30,000 Louis of gold. Such facts did not cause a sensation and it could happen that servants were hanged for even minimal thefts, even for only 15 sous. Leopold, a well-meaning bourgeois, thought it was right to make people feel safe.

      On the other hand, it seems that it was not considered a theft to "skim money" at the expense of the masters: Leopold says that this is to be considered profit and not theft. Then as today, if the law was very hard on the poor, it was not so hard on the rich and powerful. Thus a notary, taking advantage of the sums of money entrusted to him and no longer able to repay them, went bankrupt and disappeared from circulation. They, therefore, had to be content with hanging his portrait.

      In the last letter sent to Hagenauer from Paris on 1 April 1764, Leopold Mozart refers to an infrequent episode: an eclipse of the sun. For days the Parisian glassmakers had collected all the glass fragments left over from the work to prepare for the event, and had colored them blue or black for sale to those who wanted to observe the eclipse without having any damage to their eyesight. Those who were not satisfied with observing the eclipse from the road could go to the Observatory built by Louis XIV in 1667 and entrusted to the Italian astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Cassini (later naturalized French, as had happened, again under Louis XIV with the Florentine musician Giovan Battista Lulli who became Jean-Baptiste Lully). Unfortunately for the Parisians who had bought the colored glass, a heavy rain fell that day and the vision of the eclipse faded.

      In compensation, however, the anticipation of the event had unleashed the superstition of those (and there were many since the churches that morning were stormed) who believed that the eclipse would poison the air or even cause plagues. Having scraped together a lot of money from the performances of the boys, Leopold writes to Hagenauer (who, remember, was his lender / administrator / banker) that he wanted to deposit 200 Luigi d'oro, at the Parisian branch of the Tourton and Baur bank, waiting to have them transferred to Salzburg. He also looks forward to collecting the proceeds of the next concert, scheduled for 9 April, with which he hopes to replenish the reserves with at least another 50 or 60 Luigi d'oro, without excluding the hope of obtaining more.

      But how did the organization of public concerts work at that time? For private individuals, kings and aristocrats, they presented themselves, obtained an invitation, the performance was carried out and then waited (even for some time) for a gift in money or precious objects (if all went well). Public concerts with payment of an entrance ticket were not yet widespread at the time when the Mozarts were in Paris. The main organization dedicated to the proposal of musical concerts was the "Concert spirituel" which, since 1725, had the royal permission to have music performed in competition with