No. She has insanely good pipes and a carefully crafted public persona. But Mozart - not even in the same universe.
I said "close", not a full manifestation. Stevie Ray Vaughan would be closer.
I beg to differ. Being a somewhat amateur "learned" musician, I enjoy music on a technical, rhythmic level first, although sometimes lyrics can be especially effective, such as Hotel California. Her public persona or "image" do not matter, nor do her looks. I'm listening for mastery of songwriting, harmonization, progression or "flow", and lastly, the ability to vary and color "the same thing". It also took me about 30 years to come to the revelation...through an intermediary who can follow Mariah's style to a tee(that would be Jojo).
She won't be doing any counterpoint. But in terms of laying the notes down into a compelling song, I have come to the believe that she has the "intuition".
She also makes numerous modifications to her songs when singing live are that not immediately noticeable. Such liberties are not for the faint of heart; it's a constant with Mariah. "Hero" live at Madison Square Garden starts off with a different note than the original record. Higher, but I can't tell how high because my sense of pitch is poor.
And of course, there's always some sort of inspiration that led to the conclusion. The Clarinet Concerto is a prefiguration of Mariah's style.
A Mariah solo is a like concerto for voice and instruments. Rather handy to use in understanding Mozart's Concerto works, which the closest thing you will get to the "live improvise" and soloist he was. Luckily, some things were written for more typical mortals like Barbara Ployer, who had musicality but not the full breadth of Mozart's abilities, and thus 17th Piano Concerto is important because he had to write out the "spice" to the progression of harmony and melody that he could improvise.