Peter Shaffer's Amadeus is a very smart play. Not particularly distinguished in its style, rhetoric or organisation, it might have been a spectacular debacle when it was released. After all, presenting the legendary composer as a wilful, vulgar buffoon with scant regard for royalty or decorum and an equal lack of perspective in the matter of his talents, was a choice that flirted dangerously with instant rejection. To be sure, the device is not entirely successful, at least within the framework of the play, which demands that Mozart go from crass to genius without missing a beat, be thoroughly earthy and yet emotionally suspect, naive and yet possess fleeting moments of unbridled hubris (deserved?), and forge routine connections with the divine in his compositions.
The veracity of the facts in the play has been declared inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, which is as it should be. Authenticity would drain the production of all drama. Would a Mozart who is industrious, mannered(in public, as he actually was) and modest, and not, famously, the 'voice of God', be as dynamic a leading man? Shaffer recognises the vast divide between an average man and his conception of genius, and astutely fords the gap by, quite simply, infusing the mundane, the repugnant, even, into the character of the Master. He goes from an icon or a proud bust to a living, breathing person with exaggerated, every-day failings that allow us to condone his creative brilliance (can you imagine that?!).
When Salieri moans that God unjustly patronises the cad, while shunning the saint, we pity both. Mozart may be disproportionately endowed, but then, he is an uncouth, arrogant, weak, childish wastrel, with a free-ranging concupiscence for women and spirits. Surely it cannot get any worse! But then, Salieri is seen to be glaringly dispossessed of his rightful dues. He is chaste, pious, charitable, has no fun whatsoever, and to rub salt into the wound, deplorably untalented, while his profligate contemporary evinces that touch of inspiration he covets so.
Shaffer gives the brooding Salieri several impassioned and acerbic monologues, ranting against God, declaring war, vowing vengeance, and so on, while softening considerably in the musical segments. His mediocrity as a composer doesn't undermine his appreciation of his deficiencies, something everyone perceives with a warm glow of satisfaction and empathy. When he wheezes, ridden with desperation and self-pity, "He planted the desire, like a lust in my body, and then made me mute..", one feels a frisson of recognition traverse one's spine, far from involuntarily, mind you. To that end, his denunciation of God's motivations appears to justify his character arc, only illustrating how deep-seated the theme underlying the identification of the audience with Salieri is meant to be.
The play crafts a handful of characters orbiting Salieri, and each one, without exception, is a broad and unapologetic caricature. Shaffer makes almost everyone but the feuding duo 'musical idiots', thus keeping the spotlight firmly on them. Added to isolate the action, the framing sequences are clumsy and unnecessary, and constitute mid-grade soap, really, punctuated by Salieri's assorted grimaces and declamations. It possesses, besides, a pronounced ribald tone whenever Salieri is(briefly) not speechifying, which swings to unremittingly gloomy when he is. To spice up things a bit, German-Italian politics is unsubtly woven into the exchanges: the principal language is obviously German, with the 'foreign' Italian dialogues popping up now and then.
This is the kind of play that would make for a fine film. And has. The 1984 award-winner makes several changes in the script(Shaffer tinkered with it himself), and adds some much needed humour, mostly self-decrying, but F.Murray Abraham, as Salieri, is simply magnificient. His opening scenes show him revelling in even his obscurity, and his avowed love for music rings genuine. The production is lavish, garish, sumptuous and entertaining. And the scenes of Salieri virtually 'driving the man to the grave' are more persuasive and less abrupt than in the play.
Does 'Amadeus' work? Is it heartfelt or merely manipulative? The answer to that stems from primarily, one's appreciation for Mozart's work, and the fact that we all feel, rather selfishly, that we have in some sense been shortchanged in life, that perhaps the balance tips over, more often than not, on the greener end. That, in a nutshell, is the play's rather tenuous raison d'etre. And the fear of being forgotten, 'extinct', and being championed by a Salieri.......
3 comments:
tis one of the better plays i've come across.
the interpretation of a play matters as much as the play itself. meaning, the performance affects one's opinions of the script.
this is amadeus. beyond mediocrity. guess it should last a few generataions. As long as mozart's music plays on.
Amadeus is a brilliantly-written play, mostly because Shaffer has a knack for working things out with an actual stage in mind, rather than just conceiving intelligent dialogues and plot-threads, both of which also he does. And what was even more astonishing was the way Shaffer re-worked his own script to create a screenplay that - again - most suited its purpose. And only Shaffer could have fashioned the tortured monster of Salieri without an overkill. He must have been extraordinarily focused on his writing desk.
@Naresh:
I kept confessing to you throughout the performance that the movie surfaced in my mind often. In that sense, my assessment is hardly objective, I concede. But it also means that the performance failed to do anything special. Most of the motivations lacked conviction beyond that woven into the narrative.
@ Manasi:
Hi there. Were you involved in the MetroPlus festival too?
Like I pointed out, Shaffer has done his job admirably. He strikes right at the heart of Salieri's anguish, and clearly, this is one play that has the audience down pat, as well. Putting one's wretched ambitions in the spotlight makes for supremely uneasy viewing, and you could almost anticipate the words from Salieri's lips. But it is a play born of a diseased, collective sense of self-worth, and is therefore, far from a noble effort. If he had stuck to the central character alone, though......
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