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Antonio Salieri: Composers
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"Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) was a thoroughly competent professional composer, despite his unfortunate fictitious reputation, perpetuated by Rimsky Korsakov and Peter Shaffer. His Falstaff is frankly populist in its aim, but has quite a few special effects in the orchestration, with solos for cello and clarinet. After a slowish start one gradually becomes involved in the considerable subtlety of the text, which is available in subtitled translations in several languages.
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As mentioned previously, the academic community believes the myth that Antonio Salieri poisoned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to be false. Beginning with authors such as Alexander Pushkin and continuing with famous composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, the myth of Salieri's guilt was retold again and again in different settings. The controversy was revived once again in the late 1900's with the release of a play and later a very popular movie titled simply, Amadeus. Although all of these re-tellings are fictional accounts, they each rekindled the myth in the popular media of their day. Unlike the men themselves, the myth of Mozart being killed by Antonio Salieri simply will not die.
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Review: Based upon the play by Peter Shaffer, Amadeus is a fictionalized biography of Amadeus Mozart as told by a rival composer, Antonio Salieri, who apparently confesses to murdering Mozart. F. Murry Abraham (Scarface) lit up the screen with his jealously, hatred, and oddly his admiration of Mozart. As the eccentric Mozart himself, Tom Hulce (Animal House) did a very good job. Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The People vs. Larry Flynt)earned a well-deserved second Oscar. Amadeus ... took home Oscars for art direction, costume design, makeup and sound. Tom Hulce earned an Oscar nomination for his performance and F. Murray Abraham justifiably won the Oscar for his performance as Salieri.
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Peter Shaffer's Amadeus is a partially fictionalized account of the relationship between Antonio Salieri (Tony Abatemarco) and Wolfgang Mozart (Harris Doran). The play debuted at the National Theatre in London in 1979, later transferring to the West End. A Broadway production opened in 1980, winning five Tony Awards, and a film adaptation was well received in 1984. Amadeus is named for Mozart, but the play's core is with Salieri, a popular and respected composer, conductor and teacher who was Austria's Kapellmeister for over thirty years. Salieri enjoyed his social position and the admiration of his peers. Though the complete facts of their relationship are unclear, Schaeffer depicts Salieri as extremely jealous of the young, emerging composer - to the point of attempting to sabotage Mozart's success and livelihood, not to mention a desire to have him dead.
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There is indeed no evidence to support the idea that Salieri killed Mozart. In Salieri’s last years, he suffered a physical and mental breakdown. He was admitted to the Vienna general hospital and the rumor spread that Salieri accused himself of killing Mozart. However, there was no concrete evidence of this. It would have been very unreasonable to think that Salieri killed Mozart. For during the times that the two great composers were both alive they were, for the most part, friends.
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This is partly due to the characterizations of Salieri and Mozart themselves, played by William Elsman and Steve Burns, respectively. Although both men begin to capture the essence of their roles, neither manages to fully explore the depths and complexities of the men. Elsman's Salieri is, by turns, either declamatory or angry; ironically, it is his work as the elderly composer that is more captivating and real than his portrayal of Salieri in his prime. Burns nicely grasps the intensity that drives Amadeus in both work and play, as well as his physicality. He knows just how long to hold an irreverent pause to get a laugh, but he does not quite develop the vulnerability that makes Mozart sympathetic to the audience.
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