The play dramatises the consequences of the momentous impact that hearing Mozart’s sublime music made on the “patron saint of mediocrity”. In modern black mufti, they can easily become a chorus that comments on the action in wheezing anachronistic discords or in clambering mime. The Southbank Sinfonia are integrated into the world of the play to stunning effect in this regard. The anti-hero's conscious awareness of posterity is built on here in ways that brilliantly amplify our sense of what he went through and of the emptiness of his temporally parochial pyrrhic victory. A highly fictionalized account of the relationship between these two real life composers, Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus takes us on a wild ride through the trials and tribulations of genius, jealousy and revenge. Salieri invokes us as “Ghosts of the future” to hear a saga wherein he foresees the warped immortality he will achieve as the nemesis of a genius. It takes the form of a fictionalised confession in which the dying Salieri, court composer to Joseph II of Austria, relives through extended flashbacks the story of his envy of Mozart and his furious quarrel with God. What a terrible pity that the author, who died in June at the age of 90, did not survive to see Michael Longhurst’s thrillingly fresh and imaginative revival of the piece. This is the first time that Peter Shaffer’s play has returned to the scene of its original triumph in 1979.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |