Actors - Amadeus

	Actors - Amadeus

Amadeus is the title of both a stage play and an Academy Award winning film written in 1979 by Peter Shaffer, both loosely based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Amadeus was inspired by Mozart and Salieri, a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin (later adapted into an opera of the same name by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov).

The title refers to a name that Mozart often used (he was baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart) as a pen name. It is a Latinization of the Greek Theophilos, which Mozart sometimes also Germanized as "Gottlieb". All three names mean "God-lover" or "Loved by God" and, aside from being a direct reference to Mozart, the title serves as an ironic reference to Salieri's relationship with God in the play and film (see the plot section, below, for more detail).

Shaffer uses English to stand in for German throughout the play and film. That is, whenever the characters are speaking in English, the audience is to understand that they are speaking vernacular German. Indeed, even operas with libretti in German, such as Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) are translated into English, so as to maintain this concept. Italian opera lyrics, on the other hand, are sung in the original to preserve their "foreign-ness" within the story.

The play, and to a much larger extent the film, make use of Mozart's music (as well as that of a few other composers, including Salieri). The film famously opens with the powerful "Allegro con brio" from Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, and reaches its denouement with Mozart's inimitable Requiem. The film's score was performed by The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.

Plot

There are some important differences between the screenplay and the stage play, notably the number and treatment of scenes without Salieri in them, the portrayal of Emperor Joseph II, Emanuel Schikaneder, and Baron van Swieten, Mozart's relationship with the Masons, and the finale.

Shared plot

Amadeus the theatrical production tells Mozart's story from the point of view of the court composer Antonio Salieri, who is presented as a caricature of jealous mediocrity. Salieri speaks directly to the audience at many times during the play, his soliloquies serving to move the timeline forward and back, and to narrate the goings on. In the film, Shaffer employs an interlocutor (a young priest) for Salieri to achieve this same function, but the film is told from a more neutral, third-person perspective and there are more scenes without Salieri in them (especially in the Director's Cut). Most of the film, and much of the play, are presented in retrospective.

At the opening of the tale, Salieri has not met Mozart in person, but has heard of him and his music. He adores Mozart's compositions, and is thrilled at the chance to meet Mozart in person, during a salon at which both of their compositions will be played. When he finally does catch sight of Mozart, however, he is deeply disappointed to find that Mozart's personality does not match the grace or charm of his compositions: Mozart is crawling around on his hands and knees, engaging in an immature dialogue with Constanze Weber (who would later become his wife). As Mozart himself later explains: "I am a vulgar man. But... my music is not."

Salieri cannot reconcile Mozart's boorish behavior with the massive genius that God has inexplicably bestowed upon him. Indeed, Salieri, who has been a devout Catholic all his life, cannot believe that God would choose Mozart over him for such a gift. Salieri rejects God and vows to do everything in his power to destroy Mozart.

Throughout much of the rest of the play and film, Salieri masquerades as Mozart's ally to his face, while at the same time doing his utmost to destroy his reputation and any success his compositions may have. On more than one occasion it is only the direct intervention of the emperor himself that allows Mozart to continue (interventions which Salieri opposes, and then is all too happy to take credit for when Mozart assumes it was he who intervened). Salieri also humiliates Mozart's wife when she comes to Salieri for aid, and smears Mozart's character with the emperor and the court. A major theme in Amadeus is Mozart's repeated attempts to win over the aristocratic "public" with increasingly brilliant compositions, which are always frustrated either by Salieri or by the aristocracy's own inability to appreciate Mozart's genius.

At this point, the film and the play diverge.

Stage version

In the play, only Baron van Swieten (who early in the story inducts Mozart into the Brotherhood of the Freemasons) continues to support Mozart. Indeed, by the end of the play, Mozart is surviving solely because of the charity of his brother Masons. Finally, Salieri convinces Mozart (who by this time is half-crazed from frustration and poverty) to compose an opera based on the mythos of the Masons. As a result, Mozart produces the comedy Die Zauberflöte. Van Swieten is horrified to see that Mozart has, in his opinion, parodied the venerated traditions of Freemasonry. He summarily removes Mozart from the Masons. Meanwhile, Mozart's partner in the production of Die Zauberflöte, Emanuel Schikaneder, cheats Mozart out of most of his share of the ticket proceeds.

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