Disappointed, heartbroken, and still hopeful, playful, sexy and utterly serious, Mozart's quicksilver music transmutes the violence and injustices of the world into a
dance of reconciliation, regeneration, and unaccountable mercy that is both divine and deeply human.

It is rarely acknowledged, but in his time Mozart was a politically engaged intellectual, a radical figure joining the Freemasonry movement, whose numbers included the instigators of the American and French revolutions. Fearing revolutionary contagion, Emperor Joseph II closed every Masonic lodge in Vienna, only to relent and allow a single lodge to re-open. Mozart's last public appearance was to conduct the cantata he had written for the re-opening ceremony. The name of this lodge was New Crowned Hope.

For Mozart's 250th birthday in 2006, the city of Vienna boldly commissioned more than twenty new works from artists around the world in a visionary project curated by
Peter Sellars, entitled New Crowned Hope. Several of the most ambitious of these were co-commissioned by the Barbican Centre. Artists were invited to respond to the
themes of Mozart's last year: Piano Concerto No 27 – 'longing for spring' (the hope for a political thaw in a time of arbitrary authoritarianism); The Magic Flute –
'magic and transformation' (the trials by fire and water of a young generation); La Clemenza di Tito – 'Mandelastyle truth and reconciliation' (an unexpectedly humane
response to 'terrorism'); and finally, Requiem – ceremonies for the dead in an age of genocide, civil wars, mass graves, and the disappeared. Where Mozart ended is where we must begin.

Peter Sellars – director, New Crowned Hope