Therefore, these events shown on stage are seen through Salieri’s eyes, i.e. He also functions as the ‘narrator’ of the subplot, the events at the Viennese court in the 18th century. But Salieri is more than just a main character. Antonio SalieriĪlthough the title of the play is Amadeus, the Italian composer Antonio Salieri is the character in the centre of Shaffer’s play. For the comparison of the different Amadeus versions not only the texts but also Shaffer’s reflections on them, Amadeus: The Final Encounter, will serve as a source. The basis for the discussion of Salieri’s and Mozart’s last meeting will be the analyses of the figures’ characteristics that all versions have in common. The versions of 19 will be treated as a single one because there are only slight differences between them. The 1997 version will be excluded as well because it is merely a provisional result for the following ones. A comparison of play and film that does justice to both forms is impossible within in the scope of this essay.
#Amadeus play movie
There are losts of changes made for the movie that meet with the conception of presenting a story on screen. They work with different techniques and offer different opportunities of presentation. The 1984 film version, directed by Milos Forman, will not be taken into considerations because theatre and film are very different forms of art. Therefore, the 1979 original version (published 1980) of Amadeus, the 1981 revised version, which has long been the basis for all presentations around the world, and the recently published 1999 version will be analyzed and compared. This essay shall investigate the alternations of the last confrontation between the two characters and their impact on one of the major motifs of the play, Salieri’s struggle with God. It is especially this scene of their last meeting that Shaffer felt hard to get right, because he considered it as the play’s structural climax whereas the historical truth – Salieri survived Mozart 34 years, retired, replaced and essentially rejected - was anticlimactic. The most prominent alternations can be seen at the end of the second act, the final confrontation of the two main characters, Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Writing and, mainly, re-writing Amadeus has been a process of 20 years in which Shaffer changed not only some aspects of the plot but in the first place of characters and their meaning.
The latest version of Shaffer’s play was published in 1999, after being revived and staged in London and New York. There are six different versions of his play Amadeus which have been produced on stage and screen since 1979, when Amadeus made its first appearance in the National Theatre of Great Britain, London. Peter Shaffer is certainly none of those writers who do not feel the desire to alter their work. And sometimes, too, I envy their seeming certitude – or even their indifference, which may be a form of instinctive wisdom! Indeed, sometimes I wonder at those writers who display no desire to alter anything when work is revived.
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