The huge reference library in the music division of Lincoln Center has almost nothing in English about the Italian-born composer. There is one in German and one in Italian. Where there are hundreds of books about Mozart, there is virtually nothing about Salieri. Poor Salieri! He was so admired in his time, is so forgotten today. Shaffer is frank to admit that his play is an interpretation of what might have happened. Shaffer apparently has assimilated every last word and the total picture is not not always flattering to what may have been the most prodigious musical mind ever to walk the earth.īut about Salieri there is far less material, and Mr. There is an enormous amount of material about Mozart, and Mr. Shaffer has written is historically true. Yet anybody who knows anything about Mozart will immediately realize that much of what Mr. Here is Mozart, the perpetual adolescent, the analfixated child, the bad colleague, the creator with a genius for making enemies, turning out masterpiece after masterpiece. Shaffer also indicates that the character of a man does not necessarily have much to do with his works. Shaffer has created a play that has to do with the nature of genius, the relationship of man to God, the reaction of mediocrity faced with genius. And yet there was the rumor that Salieri had poisoned Mozart to get rid of him.įrom these facts, Mr. Salieri was the court composer in the Vienna of Mozart's day, internationally famous, a prominent teacher, a man universally respected. The name of Antonio Salieri is very much in the air these days, thanks to Peter Shaffer's ''Amadeus.'' In case you are living in Ch'pyangong and missed the news, the Shaffer play is about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his rival Antonio Salieri, and much of it is based on fact.
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