I used to have a blog called “Soprano in the City” where I published artist interviews and reviews of concerts about town in NYC. One of my favorite interviews from that era was the one I did with Sylvia Milo, actress and playwright, whose hit production, The Other Mozart, continues to make waves today. I decided to republish it here for your enjoyment.
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On December 29, 2014, I sat down with Polish-born playwright and actress, Sylvia Milo, at Sweet Revenge, and talked about her critically-acclaimed play, The Other Mozart. A one-woman show depicting Nannerl Mozart's life and struggle to assert her musical gifts in a male-dominated, repressive society, the show takes you on an enchanting journey through the protagonist's life, and leaves you wondering what our world would be like today if historically, women had been enabled to nurture and express their creative potential. Perhaps we'd have two Mozart geniuses instead of one.
As an artist, what led you to your project, The Other Mozart? I was a musician first. Then I switched to acting. I performed in different theaters in New York. Because I have an accent, the parts and auditions offered to me were extremely limited and narrow. I was hoping to find something and this story came to me, and I thought “Someone should do this. Why hasn’t somebody done it?” But nobody was doing it, so I thought, maybe I should do it. And it took me many years to research, to write, to find the right team around this project. If I were going on auditions all the time and doing little parts, I probably would not have done this play. So, it’s a blessing that I was pushed, out of frustration, to create my own show.
It first started as a duo: Nannerl and her mother. But because of economics and the ease of it, it became a solo show - which makes absolute sense to me now, because as a musician, I played in mostly rock and jazz bands for a while, and I love that connection with the audience: As a musician, you stand and face the audience, and you connect that way. There’s no fourth wall, as in a lot of theater. So I rediscovered that connection with the audience that I loved as a musician. And in my solo show, there is no fourth wall; It is Nannerl talking straight to the audience.
What was it like researching Maria Anna Mozart’s life? Did you feel you were getting to know her personally or did it feel more distant? I never heard of her before I saw this portrait of her and her family at the Mozarthaus in Vienna. It was a tiny picture of her portrait, which is huge and in Salzburg. It said underneath, “Portrait of the Mozart family.” It shows Amadeus and Maria Anna seated together at the keyboard with his hand covering hers, and she had this hair that drew my attention. But I didn’t know her story at all at the time, and so I started researching, but there wasn’t much in English. In Polish there was nothing. So I started reading the letters of the Mozart family and found that unfortunately, there aren’t many letters written by her that have been translated or that survived in the first place. So, it was really mostly just getting my hands on the letters that were written to her, that she kept. She saved all these letters from her father and from Amadeus and from her mother. So, it was kind of the other way around: How did they respond to her? What might have been her letter to them? And what actually happened in her life?
There’s a quote, a review, that she got in Paris and in Augsburg - two reviews. So besides the letters in which her father praises her first above Amadeus, there are also these two amazing reviews praising her musical abilities. She was listed first above her brother in the posters for their tours — but then it switched at some point. Both children only had lessons for two years before they started touring as wonderkids. So from that I gathered that she was something special.
Of course you could argue that she was just the sister of the genius, but in her case, it was not so. With her being as talented as we can infer, her life has a deeper meaning for us.
There are about 5 of her letters that are translated. In one of them she talks about the “Erection on her head.” (Laughs) She doesn’t share much though - there’s some pages of a diary she wrote, but she was also very private. There are some notes that Amadeus wrote on the pages of her diary - so her diary wasn’t so private. Every day she quotes the weather. It seemed like it was just mostly notes to remind her of things: “We saw/met this person today.” There were no personal thoughts of her own. They are more like triggers for her own memory, so she’d remember that these things happened.
Did you feel you were getting to know her personally or did it feel more distant? I think so, mostly through playing her though. As a writer, it was hard for me to get the facts. I mean, the main facts are there, but I really had to draw from my life as a musician for a lot of the personal points of her character. I grew up as a little girl playing piano, and I have an older brother who was considered a genius, and my family always wanted to leave Warsaw, just like the Mozarts always wanted to leave Salzburg. So I could draw from my personal experiences as a musician, a musical child, and then also as a woman to fill in those gaps about Maria Anna’s life.
I was really trying to understand how her story unfolded and how her fate was shaped by both her own will and the will of her family. What were the thoughts of these people and their times? I did a lot of research about the era in which she lived and its customs: What were the proper things to do? What were the beliefs about women? What was considered the best way to raise a daughter, and what dangers did the parents face? There were so many dangers at the time for young women. If she became disreputable she would never marry and then financially, she’d have nothing. Coming from the middle class, she would have had to become a maid.
I also researched how musicians were perceived.
There was a reason she was stopped at 18 from touring and performing from outside the home - it would have diminished her chances of a good marriage.
It was considered inappropriate for a woman to be a working performer. On the other hand, for a man it was fine. Her brother’s financial outlooks were good because he would have had the opportunity to get a position somewhere in order to have an income. It was taboo for a woman, on the other hand, to be making money. She was allowed to teach little kids piano, however. If she’d have gone to a major city, teaching would have given her some financial stability. But she married and went to a tiny village. She gave birth to three children, of which only her son survived to adulthood. Her eldest daughter died at 16 and her youngest daughter died after only a month or two. But she had five step children immediately upon marrying, because her husband was a widower.
As a musician, I was astounded to find a list of literally hundreds of women composers on Wikipedia and even more shocked to think that I only know of a handful. There are less women on the list the further back in time you go, but nonetheless, none of them have made it into the historic realm inhabited by the recognized genius composers people acknowledge as household names today. When I was doing my research I encountered some books that talk about women composers and mention their names and the names of their major works. But all the entries end with, “None of the works survived.” And Marianna von Martines, the composer who I mentioned in the play who Nannerl met as a little girl, was extremely popular in Vienna at the time. She had big works performed all the time, but soon after, was forgotten. There’s a book about the history of composers written by a Viennese critic in 1920 who actually had an entry about women in whichMarianna Martines is mentioned, but with the statement, “None of her works survived.” There was a library in Vienna, however, that actually had all of her works. He didn’t even bother to fact-check. So now in the last couple of decades there’s been a resurgence in finding and reporting her music, but it’s still just a very few people doing the research.
I imagine that most of the people looking into it are probably women. Oh yes, absolutely. The thing with Nannerl is that she really embraced the female in her. She was so successful that she could have had a more male oriented mentality of "work work work." There are many women who turn away from femininity for many reasons, whether conscious or unconscious, or because they happen to simply be less inclined towards it. But Nannerl was very feminine. She loved fashion and she was so creative with it. She was always the best dressed with the most imaginative hair. She would incorporate things she’d find from all over the world into her style. But aside from her musical and inventive capabilities, she was also equally talented in the so-called “feminine arts.” She learned to run the house. She was the woman, the mother, the daughter, the sister, who helped with everything, who was the servant and the cook and the teacher and the caregiver - eight kids. There’s strength in that. And I don’t think she ever gave up on her art. I think she was forced to put it aside when marriage and motherhood came. She had to educate the children and tend to her husband. Living in a small town, her clavichord broke during the winter because of the weather, and she had to wait five months to get the strings replaced. But I believe she was a real fighter despite the constraints. She waited until she was 33 to get married, which was unheard of at the time. Her husband didn’t even expect her to have children because she was thought to be too old. He initially believed he was just getting a mother for his five children. And her father was fighting the same fight with her. There are many books that portray him very badly and being very controlling with Amadeus, and Amadeus finally breaking away and establishing himself as a freelancer, which his father would never approve of. So they make Leopold out to be a kind of tyrant who never let go or let his children grow up. But I see him being an excellent father towards Nannerl for that time. He could only do so much within the constraints of the culture. He let his daughter wait until she was 33 to get married because there was hope that they might be able to leave Salzburg and go to Vienna, where she could have had a rich artistic life. The cities provided that opportunity- even for women. In the big city, she could have been teaching, making good money, and performing in what at the time was known as “amateur concerts,” which permitted women. She would have been extremely happy. Leopold let her wait that long - 17 years. When she was 16 and came back from the tours with her bother, people were already saying she was marriage-able age. After she turned 18 she was stuck in Salzburg with her mother, while Leopold and Amadeus were traveling around trying to get Amadeus a court position, because then the whole family would have moved to that city. But it just never happened.
So none of her works survived? A couple of years ago it was discovered that two composition exercises in her notebook that were originally attributed to Wolfgang were actually composed by her, which is proof that she was being taught composition by her father. But it’s just an exercise - one phrase with a figured bass and that’s it. So that’s all we have. But further proof that she did compose is in Wolfgang’s letter to her, praising a composition she sent him and encouraging her to compose more.
I wonder if he suffered any guilt over not helping his sister more. I think he tried to help her, and he did at some point after getting married send letters saying, “You and father should move to Vienna.” Basically, just risk it and come. But he couldn’t provide for them. He’d often end these letters saying, “Or let’s wait another year and I’m sure I’ll do much better financially.” In the meantime, he wanted them to take the risk and come. But they couldn’t take this risk. Just before he died he did get a position at court in Vienna. It wasn’t paying sufficiently. They paid him much less than his predecessor for whatever reason. Perhaps it was because he was from the middle class and not already from wealth or the nobility.
But before he died, he became popular again, and people were playing his music. There was an earlier point within his lifetime when he fell from popularity. When his career revived, he gave all the finances to his wife, Constanze, to manage, because he spent too much money. Constanzefinallystraightened out all the finances and they were on the up, but then he died. By then, Anna Maria had a family, so she could not move to Vienna. This is the moment in the play when all the letters rain down on her and she is pregnant - when she receives those letters from her father, who is in Vienna, writing about Wolfgang’s success as a freelancer, while she, on the other hand, is stuck. He actually has all this money now. Wolfgang was doing incredibly well for a while. Nobody else before him was a successful freelancer. He was really a genius in business as well, it’s just that he was spending way too much money, and lending too — he was very kind-hearted. At the time when she received those letters, had she been single, perhaps she would have been able to move to Vienna. But it was too late. She was already married and pregnant. There was absolutely no way.
What about your artistic personality drew you to the project? The way you brought her character to life, with all her nuances and movements, and the hair and the dress. What part of yourself as an artist brought that out? Well that was also my team. I have a team of 8 artists working with me. Two designers for the dress and the stage corset sculpture. I have a creative style choreography coach who helps me find the sensibility of the body in Nannerl’s time, which is really beautiful, especially because Nannerl was a musician and pianist. I imagined because of this, she had life brimming through her hands, and that’s why in the play, her movements are so stylized and expressive. I grew up as a pianist and violinist, so a lot of my life is also in my hands, so to add the gestures and that kind of expression is really beautiful. We also had to have a designer for the hair, which was the thing that struck me in the first place and began this whole journey. Courtney Bednarowski built the hair for every show — and it’s not a wig, it’s my real hair. She is a genius of that art. And it moves, and sometimes it disintegrates. It’s part of the show.
How did she keep it up? It’s all just curling and spray. (Laughs)
You said it took you a number of years to get from the inception of the idea of the show to where it is now. As an actor, what were you doing in the meantime before the show launched? I stopped. I was so frustrated with it, that I just stopped. There’s just so much work you can do running around, trying to find those casting calls, showing up, trying to get the agent, and once you have an agent trying to get them interested in actually getting you some work. And it’s always the same. You just get stuck doing the same auditions. And I’m not interested in playing Russian prostitutes, for example. (Laughs) Typecasting actresses and actors flattens the art. The great casting directors of any time don’t think like that. They make crazy choices. They look at the actors as individuals, who they really are, and they cast in a way that is not predictable. The industrial approach, on the other hand, is to look at superficial reasons to place people in boxes.
That does not interest me. So I stopped. And I really just focused on creating my show. The research was huge, and then the writing, and then finding the people. So once we had the director, we spent six months improvising using some of the written text. He came from the perspective that he would not do any research and instead let me tell him the story. He was going to be a member of the audience. We asked questions like, what were the interesting things about her story? Why? What did I find out? What do I know about how things happened to her? Improvising these scenes in front of him brought out her thoughts, her experiences. I wrote down lots of material through this process and eventually threw a lot of things away before coming up with the script.
Were there any moments during these improvisational rehearsals with your director that you’d hit a wall and not know what to say? No because he’s really good. He’d say, “You know what to say. Don’t hold back. Don’t stop.”
Were you always in character? Yes, we’d do it in character. Sometimes we’d do it just about me, because I had a very strong connection to her story and her frustration with not being able to be an artist. I had the same frustration. What’s ironic is that if someone was shooting my play as a movie, they’d never cast me. They’d say “No, you’re the Eastern European prostitute - you cannot be Mozart’s sister.” (laughs) At one point when I was so frustrated about not being able to do the projects I needed in order to be fulfilled artistically, I realized that if I didn’t show up to the auditions, there were hundreds if not thousands of other actors who would be there and could do what I was trying to do.
I was studying to get rid of my accent and trying so hard to fit into the system, while meanwhile, there were innumerable other actresses who could play an American without an accent better than me because they actually were American! I asked myself, “Why am I trying to do something that is not helping anybody, that’s not really contributing anything?” Because there are endless replacements for those parts.
My show on the other hand was unique. No one else was doing it.
I’m not sure someone else could play your show quite like you. Well I have an understudy who has already performed the show a few times. (Laughs) And we’re also expanding to have it in German, so the production is absolutely growing, because I really believe in the story. It’s not just a vehicle for me to be an actress and to be out there. Of course, it’s been amazing for that too, but I really believe in the importance of the story, and I see it in the audiences whenever we talk afterwards. People are so moved. They need to hear the story. And people still don’t know that she existed. And it’s very current. I’ve done the show in Austria as well, in English, and have found that even though people there do know about her, many think it’s just ancient history and not relevant to them today. Then when they see the show they say, “I was so surprised. It is so relevant to women now.” It’s a part of their history that they didn’t really know or think about. And even today, there is still such prejudice against women and not just in the arts - even towards women doctors, for instance. My cousin is a painter in Venice, and her professor asked her why she works so hard, since there have never been any great women painters. So, I think the play’s message is still very much needed.
I know as a woman in New York, a good number of unpleasant experiences out in public have been getting either harassed or bullied by aggressive men. I wonder why even today some individuals feel it’s acceptable to behave this way towards women. Yes, there is the discussion about cat-calling on the street, and as a woman, you do shrink. I shrink all the time and don’t even notice it anymore. I don’t want confrontation, so when someone is cat calling or pushing I move away or don’t react or walk the other way. You kind of just do it as an instinct, but why, why, why does it have to be this way?
You studied at NYU’s Lee Strasburg Theatre Institute and the Stella Adler Studio. How did your training influence your acting and artistry today? Michael Chekhov has also been hugely influential. I started with Strasburg, so I had all the sense-memory training - basically experiencing things through your sense memory, which really opened me up as an actor to other techniques. Stella Adler was more about imagination. And then Michael Checkhov worked beautifully with the introduction by Strasburg, because you become things, just by your will and through your imagination. It makes use of everything, so it’s my favorite technique. But I’ve also studied Grotowski in Poland and other techniques. I’ve done a lot of workshops looking for my own technique. And my director, Isaac Byrne is a Meisner teacher, which is a technique I never studied. But we did Meisner exercises during our rehearsals, and he has a way to free you as an actor and allow you to be really in the moment.
What is the objective of an actress? What is it really about? Some people say that acting is lying. But I disagree. That’s a really good question. Sometimes you’re channeling. Michael Chekhov, for example, talks about the collective unconscious - how we all know everything from the human experience because we are all connected and we can draw on that. I feel I’m doing my best work when I lose control, when I just am onstage. Of course you have to do a lot of research and know the character. You have to figure out who this person is. But when you drop everything and just are in the moment, not trying to force something and are connecting with the audience, something happens with every performing art - you just ride the wave. And it’s exhilarating. And you really feel some energetic connection. The energy changes in the room. You are really magically connected, and that’s powerful. I think it’s a transformation that happens to the viewer, to the story, and to you, as an actor.
Grotowsky, for instance, had many different phases in his work with actors. One phase became all about just the growth of the person - of the actor. The actors would take a year to go to India and study with some master and come back transformed, glowing with energy. It was some transformation, and you wouldn’t even have a need for the audience anymore. I do have the need for the audience - I think it’s very important to share with the audience. It is about a transformation that happens to the audience and to the actor. That’s the thing that makes it out of this world. And it’s not just intellectual. I don’t like intellectual theater. (Laughs) I mean, I can enjoy it sometimes, if it’s really great. But, I don’t get satisfied when I get out of the play and it was just working on my mind. I need a spiritual transformation. And it’s not just about being emotional either. It’s just something transformative that happens with theater that is very much magic, that lifts us up.
Is that why you switched from primarily being a musician to acting, theater and writing? As a musician, I felt great when I played on stage, but in the moments when I just had to stand there and not play while other people were soloing, I’d feel very uncomfortable and unconnected. The connection came primarily through my instrument. Then I took an acting class at Stella Adler just to improve that feeling of awkwardness, and that’s when we did Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. I did Blanche’s monologue, and it gave me the satisfaction of music. Tennessee Williams writes so musically.
But there was more there for me somehow with the character and with the story and with the body - actually using your body, because prior to that I was really hidden with my instrument. Then all of a sudden, I was standing there, showing all of me, and that somehow felt much stronger than playing music, and I started switching.
When did this happen? I was 22.
You are originally from Poland. At what age did you come to the U.S.? I came to this country as an exchange student when I was 18.
Which art form is closest to your heart? Acting.
Does writing go hand in hand with that, since you are a creator and a performer?
I think I really enjoy writing, and I really enjoy being able to tweek my lines. (Laughs) Because there are also things which I’ve written that I’ve had to rewrite once I started acting them out because words didn’t feel right in the mouth or the rhythm was off. So being able to tweek it once you actually do it is amazing, if it’s not written right. But yes, I do enjoy having that much more to say. Being an actor, you are dependent on so many other things if you are only an actor in a production. But with this project, I am also the writer and the producer and I choose my team. I choose the direction. Of course, I work with others, but being so involved changes the experience.
How many years total did it take from the inception of the idea to where you are now with this project?
I found the picture in 2006, but then again, I’ve done some other things in between. I was acting on some other productions, which I did not write or produce.
Who are your favorite composers? Writers? Artists? Actresses?
Well, I have to say Mozart. (Laughs) I am absolutely in love with him and his music.
Yes, I agree. As a classical singer, I am constantly listening to the greats: Massanet, Gounod, Handel, Strauss. But when I hear Mozart’s work, I feel it lifts me into a better world. His music actually makes me happy, even if I’ve had a bad day. I imagine he may have had a very nice soul.
Yes, I think so. I think so. He was loved. He was loved. After he died, there were all these debts that he still had and all the debtors forgave all the debts. And his wife was great. She went touring with her sister. They made a lot of money. She was a singer. She gave that up when she had her family, but her sister, who was very well known as a great opera star, toured with her all around Europe performing Mozart’s music after he died. And because they were very savvy, they made a lot of money. (Laughs)
I’ve read that Constanze actually co-wrote a biography about Mozart with her second husband. Yes, but supposedly it was very biased and controlled. She was trying to portray him in a very specific way. Her second husband actually died before it was published, but they tried really hard. Nannerl even contributed and gave them all her letters to help them write it. But Constanze oversaw what information got published. She, for example, blocked out some of her husband’s more romantic words to her. (Laughs)
I find one of the amazing things about Mozart’s music is that even when it’s about something sad, like Pamina’s suffering over Tamino’s rejection in The Magic Flute, it still has the ability to uplift the listener. It has a powerful beauty.
Yes, and even when it’s happy, there’s a touch of sadness in it.
But in terms of performers - I was always fascinated by performers - I love Elvis, Prince, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Nick Cave. I love the performance aspect. Maybe I should say I am a performer when you ask me who I am as an artist, because that’s what I love doing the most, even with music.
I also love Maya Angelou’s work. It’s very unusual. She makes very unexpected turns, and it’s so full of wisdom and depth, and poetry and beauty. But it’s very complex. It’s not on the surface. Letter to my Daughter is a great book. It’s really deep, and it shocks you sometimes, but it always comes back. You can trust her. I’m currently reading Why The Caged Bird Sings.
I also love Tennesse Williams. I read a lot of biographies. I’m really fascinated by people, and I started with Elvis. That was my first fascination, when I was 12. I really love knowing people from different sides. And there are so many books about Elvis. You can get so many sides to the same story. He was the first person I researched in depth - and then Nannerl. I love getting at the complexity of another person and how others perceive them. Also, I could not put Brando’s autobiography down.
What do you listen to for fun and what do you listen to for inspiration, learning? Well, Prince and Elvis are still there. Mozart, Nick Cave. My husband, Nathan Davis, is a composer, and he was one of the two composers on my project - him and Phyllis Chen. I listen to Phyllis quite a lot. She does work with music boxes and toy pianos. Very twinkly. I also listen to my husband’s music. There are no words to describe his work. It’s incredibly deep and unusually beautiful. He and Phyllis are both contemporary composers, so I go to a lot of shows pertaining to that style - so that is the challenging and opening and educating force of music in my life. I like to hear all this experimental music.
What’s it like being married to another artist, a composer? Lovely, amazing, harmonious. Being married to a composer, I’ve been able to learn more about the musical aspects of what Mozart accomplished, and I’ve learned that there are some truly amazing, experimental things in his work. He really played with sound, and you ask yourself, Did he really just do that?
Did you imagine you’d be doing what you’re doing now ten years ago? No. (Laughs) I never thoughtor expected I could do all this. Even when I decided to start this project, I didn’t think that I was going to write this. I just thought I would gather a group of people around me and I could just step back and come back in again as an actor and do the show. But that’s not how it had to go. There was probably some reason why I saw this picture and it connected to me. There was a reason why it resonated with me, and I had something to say from my perspective, because it is coming from my life-filter. It’s been a crazy learning experience. It’s lifted me up somewhere. There was an incredible amount of producing involved. I self-produced everything, with some help, of course, but I’m constantly learning on the job.
Where was the first performance of The Other Mozart? The first performance of this script was in Alabama, in my husband’s hometown, Auburn, at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. We had one performance there, and it was amazing because the audience was very moved. We had a wonderful after-show conversation with everybody, and some people really choked up. But the show does leave you with elation.
We go through her story with her, and it’s cathartic. There is sadness of course, and lots of emotions, but then there’s also this elation. Here is this woman, finally telling us her story, aftertwo hundred years of silence.
What’s your vision for your art? I’m trying to start a new project but (Laughs), it’s been so much producing still and trying to book the show, because I do feel it should be performed in many many many places. So, I do want this to continue with other actresses as well, and in Germany and Austria for sure, cause even though they know the story, I’ve seen what happens when they see it. I would also love to do a film, and it could be more experimental. I’d love to make a film with the dress. And I think Maria Anna also deserves her own feature film, just like her brother got with Amadeus.
I’d like the next project to again be based on somebody’s life. I love real stories, and I would like to work with my husband again for the music. I think I’d like the next one to be more experimental in presentation. I do want it to be a solo show, and I want that same experience of connectedness with the audience, to create something really beautiful in terms of set and music and costume. I know of many women’s stories out there that are very powerful. There are many stories I’d like to tell that I could not play, and I would like to develop those stories for someone else in the future. But I’m very much interested in creating this kind of experience again.
Do you identify as a feminist? Yes.
You mentioned your show will be running in Europe. I’d like to establish a recurring show in Salzburg, one that happens once or twice a year, for a couple of weeks at a time. It would be played by me and another actress, and the goal is to have both an English and a German version. I want Nannerl to exist in Salzburg. We brought the show to Salzburg last May and performed it in what was once Mozart’s home, which is now a museum. It was incredibly well received, and an amazing experience for me to be in that space. We went back this October and performed the show at the University of Salzburg to partake in a women’s studies conference on Nannerl. The conference was made as a result of the show because members of the university saw our May show and said, “Why don’t we have a conference on Nannerl Mozart?” They had scholars talk about her life, and then we performed. So, there is great interest in Salzburg.
There are many people who travel there because of Amadeus, of course, but when we went back in October, the Mozart Museum had one room devoted to Nannerl. Obviously, I can’t take credit for this (laughs), but it was amazing to see.
We are performing at the Mozarthaus in Vienna in 2016. I’ll perform the show in English and Polish, and another actress will do the German version. We’re doing the show at a private club in New York in February for its members, but I’d really love to bring the production back as an off-Broadway run. We need to find investors for that. We’d also like to do a run in Chicago and are currently looking for venues.
In the midst of all this, I’m also researching my next project, which is about a more modern and well-known story, the actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. She was the originator of WiFi technology, which she called frequency hopping. She created it for the American army during World War II to help deflect enemy torpedoes. But, people started using her technology, which she had patented, without asking or giving her credit, and she actually had to sue people much later in life. Today she’s remembered as a beautiful Hollywood movie star, but not everyone knows she was also also a brilliant inventor, whose contribution to science and technology helped the United States win the Great War and helped provide the foundations for the wireless world we live in today.
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It's been a real pleasure for me to revisit this interview, which took place over a year ago. Sylvia Milo is not just a brilliant, intelligent creator; she is also a warm, friendly presence. The Other Mozart is indeed playing in Vienna's Mozarthaus later this year, as well as in other venues throughout Europe and the U.S. This critically-acclaimed, highly meritorious work of art has achieved wider recognition since its inception, and deservedly, its audience continues to grow. Check out www.theothermozart.com for more information.
Thank you Sylvia Milo, for bringing Nannerl's story alive for us, and for being the positively inspirational artist you are!
Sylvia Milo as Maria Anna Mozart, otherwise known as "Nannerl."
