Created, written and performed by Sylvia Milo, and now also performed by Daniela Galli, THE OTHER MOZART had a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run in NYC at HERE Arts Center, earning Drama Desk and Off Broadway Alliance nominations, and 8 New York Innovative Theatre (NYIT) nominations, including Outstanding Full Length Script, winning Outstanding Solo Performance and Original Music.

The play is set in a stunning 18-foot dress (designed by Magdalena Dabrowska of the National Theater of Poland). Directed by Isaac Byrne, THE OTHER MOZART is based on facts, stories and lines pulled directly from the Mozart family’s humorous and heartbreaking letters.

Along with music composed by her famous brother and Marianna Martines (a female composer who inspired Nannerl), original music was written for the play by Nathan Davis and Phyllis Chen – featured composers of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, BAM and the International Contemporary Ensemble – for the instruments Nannerl knew intimately, such as clavichords, music boxes, and bells, as well as teacups, fans, and other ordinary objects that might have captured her imagination.

Period style movement directed by Janice Orlandi creates a world of opulence and elegance through articulate delicacy of expressive balletic gestures, reverent court bows, and fan language.

With the opulent beauty of the dress and hair design, the sweet smell of perfume, and the clouds of dusting powder rising from the stage, the performance creates a multi-sensual experience and transports the audience into a world of outsized beauty and delight — but also of overwhelming restrictions and prejudice. There, in communion with the audience, this other Mozart at last tells her story.

Our history is made of the stories we choose to tell. In “A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf imagined if Shakespeare had an equally talented sister. But with Nannerl Mozart we can actually trace what happened, what were the forces that silenced and erased her. Nannerl’s story has been relegated for centuries as a footnote in her brother’s story.
It is important today because it is not a tale of a singular villain thwarting and oppressing a female genius: rather it is but one example of a systematic tragedy happening innumerable times throughout history, and it is symbolic of so many Other stories.
Her story shifts the perspective, bringing this other Mozart, a female genius, into the history of the great – inspiring us to question the history we know and to search for more untold stories.

The play continues touring worldwide, with over 350 performances to date, including 30 US States, in London at St. James Theatre, in Munich at the Pasinger Fabrik, and in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Cultural Center, and just last November it opened in China at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center. It was presented in Vienna at the Mozarthaus Vienna (the “Figarohaus”, Wolfgang’s home on Domgasse) and in Salzburg at the invitation of the Mozarteum Foundation (inside the Mozarts’ Wohnhaus apartment). The play inspired the creation of an annual symposium on Maria Anna Mozart and women composers at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, and was performed as part of its first edition.

The play inspired the creation of a documentary film on Nannerl Mozart, “Mozart’s Sister“, which features THE OTHER MOZART and interviews with the play’s creator, Sylvia Milo. The film had its European premiere in Salzburg and in London at the Royal Society of Arts in 2024, and was broadcast in the US on PBS. It continues to be screened internationally.

A Chinese production also premiered in November 2024 in Shanghai.