When it comes to Mozart, separating the man from the myth is tricky business.
The Denver Center Theatre Company’s “Amadeus,” opening Thursday, provides the opportunity for theatergoers to get up close and personal with the musical genius and discern for themselves what makes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arguably the most enduringly popular and influential composer in history.
And it is also a story about how genius is refracted in the lives of those hovering in its orbit.
“Peter Shaffer’s play is really the story of Salieri told through Mozart’s music,” said Kent Thompson, artistic director of the DCTC. “When Salieri first hears Mozart’s music, he’s overcome by its beauty. He believes he’s heard the voice of God.”
Antonio Salieri was a significant 19th-century composer and conductor in his own right, enjoying the prestige of serving as Emperor Joseph II’s court composer in Vienna.
But in his life and death, he was overshadowed by Mozart’s greatness – a fact that has spurred speculation about the supposedly contentious and competitive relationship between the musical contemporaries. Both in Shaffer’s fictionalized play and in the Oscar-winning 1984 film that it inspired, Salieri is portrayed as a man consumed by awe and envy of Mozart’s talent.
“Salieri is discerning enough to recognize that Mozart is a musical genius and that his own music falls short in comparison,” Thompson said. “How he deals with that makes for a very interesting psychological study.”
Thompson describes Mozart’s music as pivotal in the play’s development of the characters.
“Throughout, Salieri is overwhelmed, enraged or jealous of the various pieces he hears by Mozart,” he said. “He believes that he alone perceives Mozart’s music as transcendent and enduring forever although, historically, it’s sure that others perceived Mozart the same way.
“Salieri is also at odds with Mozart’s boorish behavior on the one hand and his obvious gift on the other. Not unlike Richard III or other great villains in history, there comes a turning point in the play when Salieri becomes psychotic or evil or both, when his obsession turns destructive.”
According to Thompson, Shaffer harbors a profound appreciation of the so-called “Mozart Effect” that he reveals in a dramatic, and not necessarily flattering, interpretation of Mozart as a man.
“There are plenty of references to Mozart’s inappropriate social behavior and profane sense of humor,” explained Thompson, referring to the welter of letters and diaries that expose Mozart’s occasional arrogance, moral indiscretions and juvenile tendencies.
“But mostly, the play gets at the genius lurking in the bad boy and a dramatization of Salieri’s struggle to reconcile his mediocre talent in the face of true greatness,” Thompson said. “It’s a struggle that most artists can relate to … when you know you’re good, but not great.”
While the play is rife with historical inaccuracies, it is overall reliable in capturing the sensibility of Mozart, his music and his artistic staying power.
“Shaffer’s play is extremely effective in extracting a sketch of the truth from anecdotal evidence,” said Peter Russell, president and general director of Opera Colorado, which will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth by staging “The Magic Flute” at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House beginning on Nov. 10.
“There is a fair and effective representation of Mozart’s operas in the play,” Russell said. “As Shaffer builds on each dramatic scene, the emotions he captures in words are enhanced by his selections of Mozart’s music.
“Mozart is portrayed as a silly character in the movie, less so in the play,” he said. “He’s presented as a case of arrested development, an idiot savant exploited by his father, Leopold, and we’re ultimately very sympathetic toward him.”
Yet detractors contend that the play and the movie “Amadeus” perpetuate useless stereotypes for shock value – including the circumstances of Salieri’s attempted suicide and the false rumor that he confessed to murdering Mozart – and that there is far more evidence of cooperation between Salieri and Mozart than hostility.
“What’s so striking about Mozart is that almost none of the musical forms in his oeuvre have gone out of fashion for terribly long,” Russell said. “Like it or not, the play captures the emotional immediacy and the originality of Mozart’s voice that set him apart from Salieri and other great composers. When Mozart was in his teens, he’d already eclipsed the best of Salieri.
“In common with the greatest of art, Mozart’s music speaks to you at the most basic, human level,” he said. “You don’t need to read a book or study a doctoral thesis to understand his music. And yet it’s rich enough, if you take it apart bit by bit, to spend an entire lifetime and still not exhaust what it is about Mozart that makes him an unparalleled genius of art … not just music, but art.”
Russell and Thompson point to Mozart’s enduring impact on all kinds of artistic media and musical forms. Centuries after his death, his influence can be found in jazz, heavy metal and the visual arts.
“To me, Shaffer’s poetic license is credible,” said Thompson. “Not that the events presented in the play actually happened, but in the sense that Mozart’s humanity is evident in both his music and his misbehavior. There is something childlike and imaginative about his character that comes through in his music.
“Shaffer’s play gets at the gist of the truth about Mozart, not the absolute truth, but about the creative truth,” he said. “In the end, you marvel at Mozart’s obsession with music, Salieri’s obsession with Mozart, and the real challenges of living with a genius.”
