COMMENT POSTED TO A THEATER REVIEW IN THE GUARDIAN
While I loved the Miloš Forman movie, I do wish people would
stop producing Amadeus.
The story is simply wrong in all its essentials and deserves
to die a quiet death.
Salieri was not anything like the man the play portrays, and
he most definitely did not kill Mozart or even attempt to do so.
Mozart almost certainly died as the result of poison
administered in some food by the husband of a beautiful singer with whom Mozart
had had an affair.
That is why his funeral was such a somber and insignificant
thing and not Joseph II's enlightenment rules about funerals.
As for Salieri, he was actually quite a significant composer
in opera, although he fell out of favor with the public's changing taste.
He admired Mozart's work, and Mozart admired his talents
which were widely regarded then as great.
