Amadeus pro wordpress7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() The reality of the situation was this: an eccentric aristocrat named Franz von Welsegg had the nasty habit of commissioning others to write music that he would later claim as his own. Little does “Wolfie” know that the man behind the mask, and under the three-cornered hat, is his arch-rival Salieri and the mass in question is supposedly for Mozart himself!Īs patently melodramatic as this plot device may sound, there is some basis for it in fact. ![]() Incredible as it may sound, playwright Shaffer and director Forman were right on the mark (well, almost) when, in both the play and the movie, a mysterious masked stranger comes to Mozart’s door to commission a mass for the dead. How the Requiem came to be written has been a matter of conjecture for a number of years. That’s high praise indeed, considering that Bach was one of the most creative musicians who ever lived, with two (count ‘em) two wives to his credit, as well as a boatload of talented offspring. This fabulous choral and instrumental piece, “fueled by a dark and furious energy,” has been deemed by most musicologists as rivaling, if not altogether surpassing, the finest church music that issued forth from the pen of Johann Sebastian Bach. One of his absolute finest, which the film takes great pains to suggest, came near the very end of his life: the unfinished yet spiritually uplifting Requiem in D Minor from 1791. His varied output of sacred works has been described as miraculous, melodious, and this side of heaven - in more ways than might have been imagined. That he was also a supremely gifted artist is a matter of historical fact. Modern audiences take it for granted that Mozart may have been an overindulged, potty-mouthed, devil-may-care fellow who loved good wine and good jokes (but not so good women). A prolific composer, he dabbled in just about every conceivable musical form produced works of astonishing range, depth, beauty, and originality and achieved worldwide fame and recognition in his short lifetime.įrom piano pieces, string quartets, octets, and concertos, to symphonies, sonatas, solo works for individual instruments, cantatas, motets, songs for soprano, dozens of operas (both comic and tragic), and even lofty church music - indeed, there was hardly anything that he could not do once he put his heart and mind to the task. Hulce (as Mozart) with Elizabeth Berridge as his wife ConstanzeĪustrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus (Latin for “to love God”) Mozart (1756-1791), precocious, childlike, and overtly scatological - well documented in his voluminous correspondence with his wife Constanze, father Leopold, and older sister Nannerl - was a true and undeniable genius of his or any other time. Martin in the Fields Orchestra, the Ambrosian Opera Chorus, and the Choristers of Westminster Abbey, as well as a long list of talented opera stars to do it justice, among them June Anderson in the Queen of the Night’s Vengeance Aria from The Magic Flute, Richard Stilwell, Willard White, and John Tomlinson in the final denouement from Don Giovanni, Samuel Ramey and Isobel Buchanan in the opening snippet from The Marriage of Figaro, and Brian Kay and Gillian Knight in the “Papageno, Papagena” duet, also from The Magic Flute. ![]() In addition, we have Mozart’s heavenly music, performed on the soundtrack by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. However, it’s the European backdrop (filmed on location, by cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček, in Prague and Vienna), the richly elegant eighteenth-century costumes (by award-winning designer Theodor Pištěk), the superb art direction (by Karel Černý and Patrizia von Brandenstein), the production’s overall concept and direction (by Oscar-winners Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz), and the charismatic performances that give this picture its vibrant life. The basic fiction of the jealous Antonio Salieri’s alleged poisoning of his rival Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which may have been derived from an 1897 one-act opera, Mozart and Salieri, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (itself based on an earlier play in verse by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin), is retained. ![]() Tom Hulce as Mozart in the movie Amadeus (1984)īritish playwright, author, and screenwriter Sir Peter Shaffer ( The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus) - whose own brother, Anthony Shaffer, was also a noted playwright ( Sleuth) and screenwriter (Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy) - adapted his successful 1979 stage play Amadeus for the screen, both opening up and expanding the drama along the way for cinematic purposes. ![]()
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