Netflix’s Dracula insinuates that the devious Count Dracula (Claes Bang) turned Mozart into a vampire – a shocking turn of events regarding how the legendary composer died. Created by the masterminds behind Sherlock, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, Dracula aired on BBC One in the UK before streaming internationally on Netflix. Similar to Sherlock, Dracula season 1 is comprised of three 90-minute episodes loosely adapting the classic novel by Bram Stoker.
Dracula episode 1, “The Rules of the Beast”, tells the events of the first chapters of Stoker’s novel from the point of view of Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan), who recounts how he was held prisoner in Dracula’s castle to an unusual nun named Sister Agatha (Dolly Wells). In 1897, Harker traveled to Transylvania to negotiate the Count’s purchase of Carfax Abbey in England, where Dracula plans to relocate, but Harker quickly realized that Dracula is really a vampire feeding off his blood, which grants the monster youth and vitality. As Harker attempts to escape Dracula’s labyrinth-like lair, the Englishman learns that the Count has similar plans to turn Harker into one of his undead servants under Dracula’s thrall. But before Harker escapes from Dracula’s clutches, he learned that the vampire knew Mozart, who was one of his many victims.
Dracula is only loyal to Stoker’s novel to a point before making some intriguing divergences from the source material to further explore Dracula’s legend and mythology. One of the surprising changes Moffat and Gatiss make involves the fate of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The world-famous Viennese composer died on December 5, 1791 at the age of 35, although the cause of Mozart’s death has never been determined. In Dracula, the Count solves the mystery: When Dracula takes Harker to the roof of his castle, he asks the dying lawyer to describe the sun to him, which the vampire hasn’t seen in hundreds of years. Dracula sorely misses the sun because he admits he’s had many artists paint it for him and says “Mozart wrote such a pretty little tune… I really should have spared him, but…” Dracula then digresses, but the implication is clear: the king of vampires drank Mozart’s blood, so he is the musician’s secret cause of death.
Dracula leaves the Count’s encounter with Mozart as a throwaway gag, but it opens up the fascinating possibility that the immortal Dracula traveled to Vienna in the 1790s and turned the maestro into a vampire. Dracula definitely fed off Mozart and he ultimately didn’t spare him or turn the composer into one of his vampire brides. However, one of the new rules Dracula established is that “blood is lives”, meaning that Dracula can gain intimate knowledge about his victims by drinking their blood; the Count perfected English thanks to ingesting Harker’s blood and may have gained other abilities from his solicitor. This means that it’s possible Dracula absorbed some aspect of Mozart’s musical genius from drinking his blood. So, in a way, Mozart could live on through Dracula.
Given how Dracula wants to move to England in order to feast on people who are more worldly and intellectual than the peasants of Transylvania, who barely provide him sustenance, the story of the Count visiting Vienna (and why he returned home) could be one possible story thread to pick up on if there’s a Dracula season 2. It also stands to reason that Dracula encountered (and ate) other famous historical figures besides Mozart, but Dracula season 1 makes it clear that, in this universe, the vampire destroyed Mozart’s life in a way his rival Salieri never could.
