Posted on 02/24/2015 2:31:28 PM PST by Borges
It is 30 years since Amadeus swept the board at the Academy Awards. Miloš Forman’s 1984 film of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, took home eight statuettes that night, including best film, best director, best actor and best adapted screenplay. Arguably the finest movie ever made about the process of artistic creation and the unbridgeable gap between human genius and mediocrity, it has taken its place in motion picture history and is invariably described as a masterpiece.
All this is despite the fact the film plays shamelessly fast and loose with historical fact, taking as its basis a supposedly bitter rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his counterpart Antonio Salieri, court composer for Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, that may have been nothing more than a vague rumour. Alex von Tunzelmann, writing in the Guardian, is one of the many historians frustrated by the glittering success of a film that is so inaccurate, historically speaking. She describes it as “laughably” wrong – “a deadly rivalry that never was, a dried-up bachelor who was actually a father of eight, and flops that were hits in reality” – and reckons nothing about the film can redeem “the fact that the entire premise – that Salieri loathed Mozart and plotted his demise – is probably not true”.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Mozart is unaware that he has just humilliated Salieri; he honestly thought he was helping him.
In spite of taking, ahem, liberties with the biographies, it remains an enduring, always enjoyable film.
I guess this was to be expected. Hollywood remakes old moveis. Critics rehash old critiques.
When the movie came out, everyone from musicians, historians, and even Siskel & Ebert pointed out that that much license had been taken in creating the film and especially with regard to the creation of Salieri’s obsession/antagonism. Nothing new here.
Mozart really was rather callow towards his fellow musicians. His letters are filled with accounts of other musicians coming up short in some way and him describing how he ‘laughed till I fell over’ or ‘could have died laughing’. He was not a good colleague.
I can't get the link to work right now, but maybe it will soon: www.astroamerica.com/mozart.html. The theory is that Nissen, Mrs. Mozart's second husband, was actually Mozart, who faked his own death in order to avoid the politics of Vienna that were about to have him killed anyway, then engaged in identity theft by "becoming" Nissen. One of the pieces of circumstantial evidence is that Nissen spends most of the rest of his life writing Mozart's bio, and let's admit it, who spends decades writing the bio of one's wife's previous husband?
Beethoven would have been behind the throne ... whispering in God's ear. And Bach would have been replaced by Haydn.
There are documentaries on Mozart for those who are inclined.
You think Haydn was a greater composer than Bach?
Rock me Amadeus. I’m actually listinening to Gustav Holst
Gee, what did Murray Abraham ever do to you? ;)
Excellent.
Ya got a point there, can't argue against it.........
Bingo! That’s the money line!
My ears tell me Telemann was father to them all.
“You think Haydn was a greater composer than Bach?”
Yeah...I don’t get it either.
Have your ears checked.
LOL
Have you watched any "Documentaries" from the History Channel lately?
These are almost as historically accurate as Von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods."
(where's the photo of that wild haired guy?)
:-)
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