Reviews

Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Only show reviews with written explanations

The movie adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” by Milos Foreman is one of my all-time-top-5-favorite-movies. It is powerful, breathtaking, hilarious, deeply touching and thought-provoking. I went looking for the original play a few years ago, because I loved the story and the dialogue so much.

Shaffer’s play about talent, jealousy, faith and guilt is an incredible work of historical fiction. Antonio Salieri, the court composer of Emperor Joseph II of Austria, is the only one capable of truly understanding the genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music. Salieri has dedicated his life to music and has vowed to God to live a good, devout and chaste life if He would only give him the gift of musical talent. So when he realizes that the miraculously gifted composer Mozart is a vulgar, arrogant, over-indulging buffoon, he is understandably appalled, and begins to hatch a horrible plan to get this musical rival out of his way.

Shaffer’s pen turned an old theory about Mozart’s tragically premature death into an extravagant, poetic and devastating play. I would love to see this on the stage someday: in the meantime, I will simply watch the director’s cut DVD of the Foreman movie, laugh and cry myself silly and be awed at the beauty of this very crass man’s art.

juushika's review against another edition

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4.0

I adore the suggested staging, and the fluidity with which Salieri moves across the stage, through time, between action and audience address. It's been a while since I read a play, and this was a gratifying way to break that fast; it's kinetic and apprehensible.

I chased this down right after rewatching the film, and I can't help making comparisons. The film is better, the central dynamic more mutually informing, and it's a dynamic I adore (I spent the last hour repeating "you can hate and love someone at the same time!" - can't beat that intensity). The play is messier, thornier, everyone comes off worse and I like that; this Mozart is such a mess that Salieri's hatred is uncomfortably persuasive. But it's less magnetic, and as such it's less memorable.

brandonpytel's review against another edition

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5.0

Certainly not the most flattering portrait of Mozart... a childish figure with dirty jokes,no sense of formalities or manner, and an obnoxious presence overall. Antonio Salieri, the court composer, is introduced to Mozart, the vehicle in which God has a voice, and is utterly disgusted. Salieri has committed himself to living an ethical life in complete devotion to God, until he sees what God has delivered him: a child-man genius capable of composing the most beautiful music he has ever heard. Salieri gives up his moral life to combat vengefully against this unjust God, doing all in his power to prevent Mozart, and thus God, from climbing the steps of the music world, ultimately sending him to his own demise. What is the rationality and meaning of life if God should choose such a creature to be his vehicle? In this lofty and ambitious play, set what feels like a classic Greek tragedy structure of fatalism, Shaffer sets to tackle themes of divinity, legacy, and morality in a showdown between God and Man, mortal and immortal. we are left wondering how we are all will be remembered for our time on earth and how that memory ages, and in the case of Salieri, fades.