Born on 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, the son of a musician, teacher and minor composer, Mozart showed such musical talent from an early age that his father Leopold gave up composing to focus on his son’s musical development. The coin’s obverse features a wonderfully enigmatic portrait of Wolfgang from that period, painted in 1763. Although from a bourgeois background, Mozart is dressed in aristocratic clothes that were a gift from Empress Maria Theresa. The word ‘Wolfgang’ lies beneath the portrait so that, when placed alongside the other two coins in the series, the three coins together spell the composer’s full name. The coin’s reverse shows a scene from Bastien und Bastienne, a one-act comic opera written by the twelve-year-old Mozart in 1768.