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Mozart hometown leads worldwide birthday party
Thousands of visitors have booked into hotels for the highlight weekend of year-long festivities celebrating the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Austrian "Wunderkind" born at 8 p.m. on January 27, 1756.
The city has become a winter wonderland of Mozart, with souvenirs spilling out of shops, Mozart banners and posters hanging from walls and his portrait filling the front page of the Salzburger Nachrichten newspaper.
"I think the music of Mozart is like a universe of human feelings, sentiments and fragility, and ... that's why it's so 'actual' in a way, so modern," said Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, who will sing at a gala concert in the evening.
"Performing this music here, where he was born, in a way you feel 'Oh, this is what Mozart saw, this is what Mozart was breathing -- the air, the atmosphere'. I think this is very contagious," she told Reuters in an interview.
Mozart stunned the courts of Europe with his brilliance as a child pianist and violinist and began composing at age five, but he fled to Vienna 20 years later when he felt the provincialism of Salzburg was cramping his style.
Vienna will hold three days of street festivals and concerts to celebrate the flowering of a genius who came into his own and wrote his most enduring masterpieces in the city.
Elsewhere, the Paris Opera will stage a new production of "Don Giovanni," directed by avant-garde filmmaker Michael Haneke, while the New York Philharmonic launches three weeks of events devoted to the maestro.
The selling of everything from Mozart liqueurs to thimbles featuring his portrait is overwhelming, but visitors braving sub-zero temperatures seem amused, Salzburgers take it in their stride and musicians and artists generally ignore it.
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