Millions across the world watched cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason play at Megan and Harry’s wedding. But only a tiny fraction of those viewers would have known the haunting Sicilienne with which his performance begun, or the composer believed to have written it. Maria Theresia von Paradis, once the darling of the Viennese court, a blind piano prodigy, singer, composer and music professor who performed for royalty throughout Europe, has since been erased from history.
“She was deeply respected by her contemporaries – Mozart, Salieri and Haydn,” says Selina Mills, co-librettist of a new chamber opera about her life, with music by Errollyn Wallen. “They all wrote for her – and they most likely shagged her too.” Blind from the age of five, Paradis studied with Antonio Salieri, who composed an organ concerto for her, and established a successful career as a pianist and singer. She was so proficient at the keyboard that Mozart, by some accounts, wrote his Piano Concerto No 18, K456 for her, and her concerts in London saw her hailed as “the blind enchantress”. When she died in 1824, contemporary catalogues recorded that Paradis had written at least five operas, two cantatas, 15 keyboard works, songs and a piano trio. But, like Sophocles and Aeschylus, she was fated to have much of her oeuvre lost to future generations.
