Maria Theresia Paradis and Blindness as Opportunity

Abstract:Maria Theresia Paradis (1759–1824) was a teenage piano prodigy and one of the very few female composers of any acclaim before the nineteenth century. She was a Wunderkind not only because she was female, but also because she was blind, or at least severely visually impaired. This brief essay argues that the more important Wunder exemplified by Paradis was not her early performance career, but rather the fact that her career stretched well into adulthood. Paradis has traditionally been seen as a pitiable victim of her impairment. I instead contend that she escaped the constraints of middle-class gender roles. Her accomplishments as an organizer of dilettante academies and the director of a private music school deserve far more recognition.