Milking Mozart

JOHN VAN HASSELT / CORBIS

CASHNG IN: Souvenirs, such as Mozart Kugel praline chocolates, with motif.

Austria's weekly newsmagazine Profil recently ran an illustration on its cover of an agonized-looking Mozart squashed beneath his father's leather britches and spewing out gold coins. The message in the headline: Mozart has been "brutally marketed for 200 years." And this year, during the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, the accompanying article concluded, "the threat of total marketing looms." Nowhere is that commercial exploitation more evident than in Salzburg, the quaint Austrian city where Mozart was born, which hopes to cash in on the anniversary with an incongruous mix of kitsch and high culture. "Salzburg without Mozart is hardly...

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