Mozart went on tours of Italy as a teenager, accompanied by his father. During the first of these, Leopold and Wolfgang visited Rome (1770), where Pope Clement XIV conferred on Wolfgang the Order of the Golden Spur, a kind of honorary knighthood. Mozart earned his official insignia the next day, consisting of "a golden cross on a red sash, sword, and spurs," indicative of honorary knighthood.
Mozart began working on his recitations in October 1770, The opening night at the Teatro Regio Ducal on 26 December, with Mozart conducting himself, was an even better experience, The opera was called Mitridate, rè di Ponto. It is now overshadowed by the later operatic work of Mozart, and is rarely performed today as a result.
Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven (1712–1773), a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Austrian Duchy of Brabant (in what is now the Flemish region of Belgium) who had moved to Bonn at the age of 21. Ludwig was employed as a bass singer at the court of Clemens August, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761, Kapellmeister (music director) and hence a pre-eminent musician in Bonn. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained displayed in his grandson's rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann (1740–1792), who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment and gave keyboard and violin lessons to supplement his income. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Heinrich Keverich (1701–1751), who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; however, the registry of his baptism, in the Catholic Parish of St. Remigius on 17 December 1770, survives, and the custom in the region at the time was to carry out baptism within 24 hours of birth. There is a consensus, (with which Beethoven himself agreed) that his birth date was 16 December, but no documentary proof of this.