I just finished watching ...
Question: I just finished watching Amadeus (I know, I'm 20 years late) and was wondering if you can tell me if that was a true story or a fictionalized depiction of the relationship between Mozart and Salieri?
Answer: Amadeus (1984), which was based on the 1981 play by Peter Shaffer, draws on historical fact but is fundamentally a work of fiction. Shaffer spun a rip-snorting philosophical inquiry from the rumor that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was poisoned by fellow composer Antonio Salieri (1750-1825). Mozart was a musical prodigy — he began composing at age 6 — and toured constantly from the time he was a child, performing for wealthy, aristocratic patrons. He married Constanze Weber against his father's wishes, never learned to handle money responsibly, had fallings out with his patrons and, if his surviving letters are any indication, did indeed have a vulgar and ribald sense of humor. As someone who had no real childhood, it makes total psychological sense that he was a somewhat childish adult, and 250 years ago, as today, people put up with a lot of nonsense from celebrities that they wouldn't tolerate from ordinary people. There was an Antonio Salieri and he and Mozart were professional rivals, though by most accounts their relationship was generally cordial. Though Salieri was older than Mozart by six years, he outlived him by more than thirty. Salieri had a mental breakdown near the end of his life, and the story that he actually killed Mozart seems to have begun circulating around the time he was admitted to a sanitarium. Most music scholars dismiss it as preposterous, but it's a great story and Shaffer put it to great use — to suggest that he simply muddied the names of both Mozart and Salieri is to profoundly misunderstand his intentions. Shaffer used the story to mount a hugely entertaining examination of the relationship between faith and earthly rewards, talent and discipline, the disparity between the advantages some people are given and the use to which they put them, and the way in which the less favored come to grips with life's fundamental unfairness.
