Rock me, Amadeus.

[hippie_chick]

I'm in love with the movie version of the Peter Shaffer play "Amadeus" and had a hankering to watch it so I put it on last night and dozed off to it toward the middle. Woke up again right at the Commendatore scene from "Don Giovanni". :)



I never did get to see the stage version, which makes me very sad; (Tim Curry portrayed the composer on Broadway!!) but the movie is wonderful, for what it is, a movie.

I love it for the wonderful music first and foremost. It's beautifully performed. And the set pieces are glorious, quite nice to look at and lavish. As well, the acting on all accounts is top notch. F. Murray Abraham grabbed himself a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Salieri and the film won Best Picture as well as several other awards at the Oscars in 1988.

But. Should one watch this film or see the play and take it as historical fact? No. If you do that, you will be believing many inaccuracies. What inaccuracies you ask? Here are but a few I learned in reading up and looking around the internet etc. I'm no scholar, I'm quite the amateur actually, I'm only going here by what I DO know about the man that was Mozart, and what the movie suggests to me as opposed to what the actual facts were.

* Salieri did not commission the Requiem from Mozart, nor did he aid him in writing it.

* Mozart's funeral took place on a very mild day with no snow or storms. In the movie it's raining buckets. As portrayed correctly, he was buried in a common grave. This was indicative of the times in Vienna... not indicative of the fact that he was a pauper. He was not as poor as people believe, in fact, Mozart stayed solidly middle class even in the midst of some debt and financial difficulty in his final couple of years.

* Also? Mozart died in the middle of the night, around 1am. Not in the morning around 8am as the film depicts. His wife was there the entire time. She did not just appear from a coach and walk in to the house to find him dying.

* Constanze did not attend her husband's funeral as she did in the movie. She was said to have been too grief stricken to do so.

* Mozart and Constanze had six children in actuality. There is only one portrayed in the film, and even then, he's the wrong age at the time of the composer's death.

* Salieri did NOT kill Mozart. I repeat, Salieri did NOT kill Mozart. Nor would anything have led him to believe that he might have had something to do with the composer's death. They were not the bitter rivals the film / play would portray. Merely aquaintances, and Salieri was very much a respected composer in his own right. It was believed at the time that Mozart might have been being poisoned, in fact the composer convinced himself of this very thing. That turns out to not be true. All accounts point more strongly to natural causes, not anything more. Possibly rheumatic fever. Salieri's "confession" was made only after he was completely insane from the dementia of an old man. Held no basis in fact.

* Who was the mysterious "man in gray" who appeared to commission the Requiem from Mozart then if it wasn't Salieri or someone working on his behalf? This man is said to have been an anonymous intermediary of Count Von Walsegg.

* Immature, conceited brat? Vulgar? Was Mozart these things? He is said to have loved a bit of "toilet humor" and could be brash, but one can be sure he knew how to behave himself in court, and no, probably was not acting like the movie would suggest in the face of cardinals and emperors.

* Who finished the Requiem, as it was incomplete at Mozart's death? I'm not aware, and there are many myths around this. Mozart could NOT write, his hands way too swollen to do so, and it's said, probably by Constanze, that he left detailed directions on it's completion. Sussamyr? Maybe. Another student?

In the end, what is the story? Greatness in the face of mediocrity. Salieri. Was he the champion of mediocrities everywhere? "Mediocrities of the world, I absolve you!" No, not completely. He was talented, as many of the composers of the time were. Salieri actually did very well for himself. Certainly NOT the work of a mediocrity.

That's just a few, I'm sure there must be more but yeah, these are the important things. *wink*

Watch this movie, enjoy its richness, but don't believe everything. I leave you with the most gorgeous aria, "Der Hölle Rache" from "The Magic Flute", which is my favorite Opera by Mozart, as seen in the movie. Don't piss off The Night Queen.

"U2 - Ordinary Love (From Mandela OST) Lyric Video" (Watch on YouTube)

It's actually very impressive, though should be performed like this, there should be a Pamina for her to sing to, yo.

"Pharrell Williams - Happy (Official Music Video)" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[dianthus-pink.livejournal.com]

I saw this on stage a couple weeks back and it was WONDERFUL! I loved the movie when I first saw it and just couldn't imagine it as a play (I hadn't known it was a play first before a movie). It was interesting and I appreciated that the playbill listed the inaccuracies that you posted about. *wishes to see the movie again*

[hippie-chick.livejournal.com]

I want to see the play. It worked so well as a film that I couldn't imagine it being a play first myself. :)

I just thought of another one. Remember the scene when they're at the party and Mozart is playing, mocking other composers? The one lady asks him to play Handel which Mozart dismisses with the wave of a hand saying "I don't like him!" when in actuality, he greatly admired Handel's work.

[dianthus-pink.livejournal.com]

That scene was in the play also. And what I don't remember from the movie, the play had Salieri admitting he was well-known as a composer but he still felt that God snubbed him for a child. The play didn't really have him as the caped and masked figure who commissioned Amadeus to write the Requiem. But he still felt he killed Amadeus. It was really interesting.