The world’s most famous opera composer of the late Baroque period was born in Prague. His work inspired many other composers, including Mozart, his turbulent fate became the subject of books, operas and films, and a street in Prague and a planet in the solar system were named after him. He shone like a star of the first magnitude, yet he died under a mask. Josef Mysliveček was born in a water mill on the Vltava River, currently the site of which the private Kampa Museum gallery. He spent his childhood and youth with his parents in the charming Baroque house U Modré lodi (At the Blue Boat) at Melantrichova Street No. 13 in Old Town, which is wedged into a narrow gap between the surrounding houses on the site of a former alley. Together with his identical twin brother Jáchym, he studied at the Dominican School of the Church of St. Giles in Old Town, later at the Jesuit Lycée in the Clementinum, and finally at the Philosophical Faculty at Charles University. However, both Josef and Jáchym abandoned their university studies after a year, preferring to learn their father’s trade. Ceiling fresco in the Baroque library at Klementinum | Photo: Prague City Tourism Although Josef Mysliveček successfully passed the exams and became a master of the millers’ guild, he longed to devote himself fully to music. He had been playing the violin since childhood and now began to study musical composition. In order to further develop his talent, he travelled to Italy at the age of twenty-six. At first he made his living as a violinist, but soon he established himself as a composer of operas. Within a few years he became one of the most famous musical composers of his time. The Italians simply called him “Il Boemo” – that is, “the Bohemian”. Josef Mysliveček managed to captivate the spoiled Italian audience with his charming melodies, strong emotional charge and dramatic impact. A real triumph was the performance of Mysliveček’s opera Il Bellerofonte at Naples’ Teatro San Carlo in 1767, the most prestigious European stage at the time. The enthusiastic reception of this work opened his way to commissions in other important Italian cities, such as Rome, Venice, Florence and Bologna. Mysliveček’s operas were performed at major court and royal celebrations and were sung by the greatest singers of his time. The V Kotcích Theater | Period drawing by Leo Gerber Mysliveček, who was already world-famous at the time, briefly returned to his native Prague after the death of his mother Anna Theresa in February 1768. He settled his debts and handed over the family mill to his brother Jáchym. He also personally conducted a performance of Il Bellerofonte on the stage of the now defunct V Kotcích Theatre, which stood in Prague’s Old Town near the Carmelite monastery at the Church of St. Havel. Upon returning to Italy, Mysliveček’s star continued to rise and he reaped one success after another. In 1770 in Bologna, he met for the first time Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was a generation younger than him and considered Mysliveček his friend and an inspiring role model. For example, in his opera Mitridate, re di Ponto, Mozart borrowed musical motifs from Mysliveček’s opera Nitteti. Mozart continued to visited his older colleague even later, when Mysliveček was dying in hospital. Towards the end of his life, Mysliveček struggled desperately with debt and an incurable disease, and his last operas failed to impress the audience. He lost his nose to the disease, obliging him to hide his face under a mask in public. He died in Rome on 4 February 1781 as a beggar with the hideous face of an old man. Yet in reality, he was only 43 years old. His identical twin brother Jáchym died seven years later in Prague as a respected master miller. Throughout his life, Jáchym could be sure that he would have something to grind flour from, while Josef garnered fame across Europe at the cost of immense pain and suffering. Who was better off? Rather than pondering the eternal dilemmas of human destinies, one should listen to the aria “Sarò qual è il torrente” from Mysliveček’s opera Antigone while biting into a thick slice of hearty Czech bread.