Amadeus was Mozart’s middle name, which he liked in its French version, Amedee, and preferred to Wolfgang. It is the title of a famous play by Peter Shaffer, later triumphantly filmed by Milos Forman, and of a Deutsche Grammophon DVD of operatic excerpts, starting with the sight of Wilhelm Furtwangler conducting the overture to Don Giovanni but thereafter degenerating into something of a ragbag.
Amadeus has been the title, moreover, of many a Mozart essay and the occasional book. You cannot escape from it, any more than from a box of Mozart chocolates, but was it Mozart’s fault?
In the case of the 1984 film, it would undoubtedly be the falsest of accusations. Despite the statement on the front of the DVD version that “everything you heard is true,” the film is known for its inaccuracy, and the “director’s cut” - not an abbreviation but a twenty-minute extension - has not improved matters, though this is the version now most readily available on Amazon.
The sight of an open-mouthed Mozart exuberantly conducting The Seraglio - though in fact he would have directed it more modestly from the keyboard - may or may not be an irritation but it is certainly a trivialising element. Films, however, are films, and in order to make an impact - as this one does - they can be, as we say, economical with the truth.
Yet watching Amadeus again, and re-encountering all its extravagances, as I did the other day, I thought that it continues to make at least one valid point. The dialogue may be embarrassingly Americansed. The personalities of Mozart and Salieri, and their relationship, may be distorted. “Known truths” may seem less and less trustworthy - not least because, since the film was first issued, the truth about Mozart has been increasingly clarified.
But one fact, on which Peter Shaffer’s original play depended, is still important, which is that great artists are not always as nice as they seem. Though Shaffer and Forman dressed up their biography in a mantle of glossiness, signifying that too much dramatisation was not nearly enough, their point was nevertheless worth making.
The basic premise, on the one hand, was that Salieri, Vienna’s distinguished court composer and Mozart’s senior rival, was not a great composer but believed his inspiration came from God, whereas, on the other, the raffish Mozart was a self-centred, foul-mouthed, lascivious, whinnying little squirt who happened to be the genius Salieri was not.
But the contrast, while vividly portrayed, fails to convince. The religious Salieri, much respected in his day, was hardly as bad as he is made to seem. Nor, for that matter, was the irksomely irreverent, spendthrift young Mozart, whose fate was a pauper’s grave - a recommended form of burial at the time, as we now know.
So the premise, in this case, is a falsely cinematic one, something we can regard as a theatrical fuss about nothing.
Yet it does, as we have to admit, make a good and very credible story, as it has always done, right down to the composing of the unfinished Requiem, and it certainly resulted in a celebrated - surely over0celebrated - film, winner of forty awards. Seeing it again, I liked it even less. What mattered, however, was the music, and we did hear quite a lot of it, more cherishable than ever, in spite of its dramatised surroundings.
Applied to someone else - Wagner if we must name him but there are plenty of other contenders - the premise could be more satisfactorily made to stick, reminding us that great composers are not necessarily saints.
20 May 2016
Amadeus has been the title, moreover, of many a Mozart essay and the occasional book. You cannot escape from it, any more than from a box of Mozart chocolates, but was it Mozart’s fault?
In the case of the 1984 film, it would undoubtedly be the falsest of accusations. Despite the statement on the front of the DVD version that “everything you heard is true,” the film is known for its inaccuracy, and the “director’s cut” - not an abbreviation but a twenty-minute extension - has not improved matters, though this is the version now most readily available on Amazon.
The sight of an open-mouthed Mozart exuberantly conducting The Seraglio - though in fact he would have directed it more modestly from the keyboard - may or may not be an irritation but it is certainly a trivialising element. Films, however, are films, and in order to make an impact - as this one does - they can be, as we say, economical with the truth.
Yet watching Amadeus again, and re-encountering all its extravagances, as I did the other day, I thought that it continues to make at least one valid point. The dialogue may be embarrassingly Americansed. The personalities of Mozart and Salieri, and their relationship, may be distorted. “Known truths” may seem less and less trustworthy - not least because, since the film was first issued, the truth about Mozart has been increasingly clarified.
But one fact, on which Peter Shaffer’s original play depended, is still important, which is that great artists are not always as nice as they seem. Though Shaffer and Forman dressed up their biography in a mantle of glossiness, signifying that too much dramatisation was not nearly enough, their point was nevertheless worth making.
The basic premise, on the one hand, was that Salieri, Vienna’s distinguished court composer and Mozart’s senior rival, was not a great composer but believed his inspiration came from God, whereas, on the other, the raffish Mozart was a self-centred, foul-mouthed, lascivious, whinnying little squirt who happened to be the genius Salieri was not.
But the contrast, while vividly portrayed, fails to convince. The religious Salieri, much respected in his day, was hardly as bad as he is made to seem. Nor, for that matter, was the irksomely irreverent, spendthrift young Mozart, whose fate was a pauper’s grave - a recommended form of burial at the time, as we now know.
So the premise, in this case, is a falsely cinematic one, something we can regard as a theatrical fuss about nothing.
Yet it does, as we have to admit, make a good and very credible story, as it has always done, right down to the composing of the unfinished Requiem, and it certainly resulted in a celebrated - surely over0celebrated - film, winner of forty awards. Seeing it again, I liked it even less. What mattered, however, was the music, and we did hear quite a lot of it, more cherishable than ever, in spite of its dramatised surroundings.
Applied to someone else - Wagner if we must name him but there are plenty of other contenders - the premise could be more satisfactorily made to stick, reminding us that great composers are not necessarily saints.
20 May 2016
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