But Mozart’s cosmopolitanism was broader than this. He was but six years of age, gifted with a marvellous power of absorption, and impressionable to a degree, when his father began with him and his eleven-year-old sister, also highly talented and already an accomplished pianist, the three-years’ journey--or concert tour, as we should say to-day--which took them to Munich, to Vienna, to Mannheim, to Brussels, Paris, London, and The Hague. They played before the sovereigns in all these capitals and were acclaimed prodigies such as the world had never seen. How assiduously young Mozart emulated the music of all the eminent composers he met is seen from the fact that four concertos until recently supposed to have been original compositions were simply rearrangements of sonatas by Schobert, Honauer, and Eckhardt.[41] Similarly, in London he carefully copied out a symphony by C. F. Abel, until recently reckoned among his own works; and a copy of a symphony by Michael Haydn, his father’s colleague in Salzburg, has also been found among his manuscripts. But the most powerful influence to which he submitted in London was that of Johann Christian Bach, who determined his predilection for Italian vocal style and Italian opera. Already, in 1770, when he and his father were upon their second artistic journey, he tried his hand both at Italian and German opera, with _La finta semplice_ and _Bastien und Bastienne_, and it is significant that during their production he was already exposed to the theories of Gluck, who brought out his _Alceste_ in that year. But it must be said that neither of the two youthful works shows any traits of these theories. The first of them failed of performance in Vienna and was not produced until later at Salzburg; the other was presented under private auspices at the estate of the famous Dr. Messmer of ‘magnetic’ fame. But in the same year Mozart, then fourteen years of age, made his debut in Italian _opera seria_ with _Mitradite_ at Milan. This was the climax of a triumphal tour through Italy, in the course of which he was made a member of the Philharmonic academies of Verona and Bologna, was given the Order of the Golden Spur by the Pope, and earned the popular title of _Il cavaliere filarmonico_.