*This post contains spoilers
To round off the ‘National Theatre at Home’ series, the National have uploaded their 2017 production of Amadeus, written by Peter Shaffer and directed by Michael Longhurst. Given that Milos Forman’s 1984 film adaptation won eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Sound) and 4 Golden Globes, and Shaffer’s play enjoys a rich performance history, boasting names like Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, Tim Curry, and Neil Patrick Harris, Longhurst’s production had big shoes to fill. Luckily, leads Adam Gillen and Lucian Msamati blaze as Mozart and Salieri respectively. Boasting a large cast and a twenty-piece orchestra, Longhurst’s Amadeus has the opulence and gravitas required for the 1,150-seat Olivier Theatre.
Amadeus offers a highly fictionalized account of a rivalry between composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The play is set in eighteenth-century Vienna – a seething melting-pot, where artists and intellectuals trying to build a career relied on gusts of imperial goodwill, desperate schmoozing, the careful cultivation of master-pupil relationships […] The same size as present-day York, Vienna’s professional networks were small enough for everyone to know everyone who mattered, and the musical scene was dominated by operatic Italians.[1] It is the year 1781. Antonio Salieri is thirty-one years old and married. He is the prolific Chief Composer for the Austrian court and boasts many pupils, including the budding soprano Katherina Cavalieri. Mozart has recently moved to Vienna as a young man. With a reputation that precedes him, he immediately begins to galvanize Vienna with his incredible compositions. However, Salieri cannot comprehend that such a gift was bestowed on someone so conceited, impertinent, puerile, and vulgar. Salieri has the power and influence to make Mozart’s talent known throughout the world. Yet, struggling with his own sense of artistic self-worth and embittered by Mozart’s prodigious virtuosity, Salieri vows to do everything in his power to destroy him.
With no money and virtually no pupils, Mozart begs Salieri to put in a good word for him at court to secure him the position of Princess Elizabeth’s tutor. After blackmailing Mozart’s wife Constanze, Salieri doesn’t recommend Mozart to the Emperor, who then appoints an insignificant nobody to tutor the princess. In addition, Salieri ensures that Mozart’s latest comic opera, The Marriage of Figaro, is staged only nine times. Salieri soon prospers. His operas are played everywhere and are saluted by everyone. He becomes exceedingly wealthy and revels in his glowing reputation. Whilst Salieri is appointed 1st Kapellmeister of the Austrian court, Mozart is appointed as Chamber Composer, earning just a tenth of the salary of his predecessor thanks to Salieri’s string pulling. With such minimal patronage and an ever-increasing family, Mozart becomes impoverished. With just enough money to live off of, he turns to drink as men of influence turn against him. He grows increasingly ill as he burns the candle at both ends in a desperate attempt to finish his Requiem Mass. Exhausted and living in filth, Mozart dies, his Requiem Mass presumably unfinished. Salieri survives Mozart by thirty-two years. During this time period, Mozart achieves posthumous fame whilst Salieri gets forgotten. Destroyed by his own hatred, Salieri realises the only way he can be immortalised is through infamy. As such, he spreads rumours that he murdered Mozart, before ending his own life.
Gillen and Msamati are the beating heart of the production. The role of Salieri is thoroughly demanding, however, Msamati excels in the part. Under Longhurts’s direction, Msamati illuminates every thought of the envy-ridden composer. Msamati’s Salieri is gluttonous, proud, ambitious, and accomplished yet also vengeful, conflicted, spiteful, and cripplingly aware of his own mediocrity when compared to Mozart. Gillen’s Mozart absolutely does justice to Shaffer’s script (which I read during my first year at university). Gillen’s Mozart is an eccentric, provoking, salacious, foul-mouthed young man who bulldozes through polite society, making scenes and enemies along the way. He is at best unpalatable and grating, and at worst repulsive. Or at least that’s what the audience are likely to make of him at first. Longhurst is successful at shifting the audiences’ sympathies as the play progresses. You cannot help but pity Mozart in the penultimate scene. Feverish, living alone, in constant physical pain, and teetering on the brink of madness, he silently sobs on the floor of his filthy apartment, surrounded by empty bottles and scattered sheets of music. He simply cannot muster enough energy to complete his Requiem Mass. Salieri, the primary arbiter of his destruction looks on as he dies in the arms of his grief-stricken wife.
Karla Crome gives another standout performance as Mozart’s wife Constanze – a benevolent, down-to-earth woman who is far removed from the pretentions of courtly life. Tom Edden plays the terse, no-frills Joseph II, who is well supported by Hugh Sachs as Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg and Geoffrey Beevers as the patronising Baron Gottfried Van Swieten.
Music is – quite rightly – at the play’s centre. The orchestra are not confined to their usual sunken pit. Instead, Longhurst ensures that the Southbank Sinfonia are fully integrated into the onstage action. The twenty-piece orchestra and six singers are homogenous with the gossipmongers of Vienna and form a vital part of the storytelling. As well as bursting into life at a flourish of either Salieri or Mozart’s hand, they help to set up props, establish settings, and create atmosphere. Longhurst weaves the musicians and actors together so well it’s nearly impossible to know where the actors stop and where the orchestra begins. Through the Sinfonia’s music, we get to bear witness to Mozart’s genius and to sympathise with Salieri’s feelings of inadequacy.
This production wasn’t completely faultless. I personally wasn’t the biggest fan of the inclusion of a handful of modern props. It felt bizarre to see Salieri gorging himself on Krispy Kreme doughnuts and drinking out of disposable coffee cups, whilst Mozart paraded around Joseph II’s court wearing colourful Dr. Martens. There weren’t enough modern elements for this play to really be considered a fusion so the small number of modern touches felt rather misplaced. I also think this production could have done more to emphasise Mozart’s tragic naivety. In Forman’s adaptation (and in Shaffer’s original script, if I recall correctly), Mozart doesn’t realize pretty much throughout that a large portion of his problems result from Salieri’s meddling behind the scenes. Instead, Mozart views Salieri as a close confidant. In Longhurst’s play, Salieri’s duality is less pronounced. Mozart and Salieri always have a strained relationship, with Mozart suspecting Salieri and sporadically blaming him, which I feel lessens the sense of pathos and paints Mozart as quite switched on, in spite of his frenetic behaviour.
Amadeus is a play about insecurity, subterfuge, the corrosive power of envy, and wasted talent. With two incredible actors at the helm and a wonderful orchestra in tow, in my opinion, this production deserves all the critical acclaim it has received.
4/5 stars.
[1] David Owen Norris, ‘The Viennese Whirl, on Making it in Vienna’ (taken from the programme for Amadeus)
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