Insights - Squarespace the Playwright: Peter Shaffer By Rachelle Hughes Playwright Peter Levin Shaffer took on the human psyche through humor, satire, and drama in his portfolios of

Insights A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival

Amadeus

The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to bean educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages.The Study Guide is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director.Copyright © 2009, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print The Study Guide, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival351 West Center Street

Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org.

Cover photo: David Ivers as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus, 2015.

Contents

Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880

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Information on the PlaySynopsis 4Characters 5About the Playwright: Peter Shaffer 6

Scholarly Articles on the PlayAmadeus: Talent, Envy, and God 8

Amadeus

The Story of the PlayAs this memory play opens in November 1823, whispers and rumors are rampant that

Antonio Salieri has admitted to murdering Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart thirty-two years prior. Now an elderly man in a wheelchair, Salieri speaks directly to the audience and begins to explain the story behind the rumors.

As a young man, Salieri desired to be a famous composer and made a bargain with God that if this were granted he would dedicate his life to honoring Him through music.

The story then flashes back to 1781 when Salieri is a successful court composer in the court of Emperor Joseph II of Austria. He has not met Mozart but has heard of him and his extraordinary music and is thrilled to learn he in Vienna for a performance. However, his first encounter with Mozart is an accidental eavesdropping on a profane, private moment between him and his fiancée, Constanze Weber.

Salieri avoids meeting Mozart but eventually makes his acquaintance in the emperor’s court where his opinion of him is sealed; Salieri cannot reconcile the man whom he calls the “filthy creature” and the “absolute beauty” of his God-given musical genius. He pleads with God that he, Salieri, may be His conduit. He cannot believe that Mozart would be chosen instead. After a lengthy struggle with his own mediocrity, Salieri forsakes his Maker and vows to destroy Mozart as a way to wage war on God.

As the story continues, Salieri pretends to be Mozart’s ally, when behind his back he does his utmost to ruin his reputation and any chances for success. When Constanze comes to him for help, he tries to seduce her, then humiliates her and throws her out. Mozart con-tinues to produce inspired work, but to less and less aristocratic appreciation. The common people adore him, but his means of earning a living dwindle.

Eventually, both men have fallen: Salieri has become shameful, manipulative, unfeeling and bitter; Mozart is penniless, ill, disheartened and an alcoholic. But the questions still remain: Did Salieri really murder Mozart? Are the rumors and his confession true?


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Characters: AmadeusAntonio Salieri: Court composer and later imperial kapellmeister to Joseph II, emperor of

Austria, Salieri is ambitious and has promised to dedicate his life and talents to God in return for fame as a composer. He found success in the emperor’s court and is part of a faction of Italians who advise the emperor on cultural matters. However, once Mozart arrives on the scene and Salieri hears his exquisite work, he feels betrayed by God and lets his feelings of mediocrity, jealousy, and bitterness consume him. He vows to destroy Mozart as way to get back at God.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A child prodigy from Salzburg, Austria, and a genius com-poser, Mozart is seeking a position in the emperor’s court. He is extravagant, arrogant, juvenile, foul-mouthed, and impulsive in social and political situations, but creates un-believably remarkable music. He eventually loses support in court, and, unable to secure a steady income, becomes a poverty-stricken alcoholic and struggles to survive. But he always remains true to his music.

Constanze (Stanzi) Weber: Mozart’s wife whom he married against his father’s wishes, Weber loves and supports him in his work through every humiliation and hardship. Though both are cavalier and juvenile, she is more responsible and practical and even willing to sacrifice herself for him.

Joseph II: Emperor of Austria and brother of Marie Antoinette, Joseph II enjoys and sup-ports Mozart’s music but is ultimately persuaded by Salieri and others at court to cut him off.

Count Johann Kilian von Strack: Chamberlain of the Imperial Chamber, von Strack is a stiff and proper court official.

Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg: Plump and supercilious, Orsini-Rosenberg is director of the Imperial Opera.

Baron Gottfried van Swieten: Prefect of the Imperial Library, van Swieten is cultivated and serious. He is known as “Lord Fugue” and is ardent Freemason.

Kapellmeister Guiseppe Bonno: The Royal choral director

Two “Venticelli”: Gossips who work for Salieri and provide him with information on Mo-zart’s private affairs

Salieri’s Valet and Cook

Teresa Salieri: Wife of Salieri

Katherina Cavalieri: Salieri’s promising pupil who has affairs with both Salieri and Mozart

Major-Domo: A servant of a prominent baroness

Priest

Servants and Citizens of Vienna


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About the Playwright: Peter ShafferBy Rachelle Hughes

Playwright Peter Levin Shaffer took on the human psyche through humor, satire, and drama in his portfolios of plays produced during his career. Many of his plays tackle the grittier side of mental struggles, and his award-winning Amadeus is no exception as he tells one version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life.

There were whisperings in Mozart’s time that the boy genius had a jealous rival in court composer Salieri. There were rumors of revenge and poison, and, in the play Amadeus, Shaffer capitalizes on this drama as he tells the story as it could have been of a musical genius who in Shaffer’s depiction could be both charming and childlike, genius and immature, and, to his demise, plagued by one who was driven murderous with envy.

Born in Liverpool, England on May 15, 1926 to Orthodox Jewish parents Jack and Reka Shaffer, Peter Shaffer may or may not have grappled with the dark side of his own emotions, but he most certainly ran across people who did in his varied life leading up to his career as a playwright. In an article in Transatlantic Review Shaffer stated “All art is autobiographical inas-much as it refers to personal experience” (“Peter Shaffer: Biography, Critical Essays,” Enotes, http://www.enotes.com/topcis/peter-shaffer). He, however, admits much of that experience came from observing. Shaffer did not find his playwriting groove immediately. Whisperings of his future career began while editing the Cambridge University college magazine. He earned his degree in history in 1950. The history degree would certainly help him flesh out his later plays that often relied heavily on historical research. His first literary works, however were a team effort with his twin brother, Anthony. Their first mystery novel, Woman in the Wardrobe (1951), was published under the pen name Peter Anthony. They collaborated on two additional novels under the name Peter Anthony, How Doth the Little Crocodile (1952) and the Withered Murder (1956). The last two novels were later picked up by publishing house Macmillan. Anthony went on to be a playwright in his own right and both he and Peter saw success in their shared love of writing.

During these first years of writing, Shaffer was trying his hands at different types of work after he moved to New York in 1951. After a brief time as a salesperson in a Doubleday book-store he obtained a job in acquisitions with the New York Public Library. In 1954 he returned to London to work with the music publisher Boosey and Hawkes. Finally in 1955, with the success of his teleplay The Salt Land and radio play The Prodigal Father he settled on playwrit-ing as a career. Turns out it was a good career move for Shaffer. His plays have seen success on both sides of the Atlantic.

His first work for the stage, The Five Finger Exercise (1959) garnered accolades in both London and New York, winning the London Evening Standard Drama Award and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play of the Season in 1960. He continued to build on his playwriting successes with the one-act comedies The Private Ear and The Public Eyes, and The Royal Hunt of the Sun. With Equus, the story of a disillusioned stable boy who blinded six horses, he reached new heights as the play won the Tony Award for the Best Play of the 1974-1975 season along with the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award. Its Broadway run of 1207 performanc-es was matched in London where it had a run of over 1000 performances.


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Of Mozart’s music, Shaffer says in a YouTube video “They are marvelous and inexhaust-ible works” (“Peter Shaffer: Amadeus: Mozart’s music, Feb 15, 2012), In Amadeus, Shaffer took on a character who fascinated him both in the genius of his music and the contrasts Shaffer saw in his personality. In an interview by Anna Tims in the January 2013 edition of The Guardian, Shaffer says this of his inspiration for writing Amadeus:

“I came up with the idea for this play after reading a lot about Mozart. I was struck by the contrast between the sublimity of his music and the vulgar buffoonery of his letters. I am often criticised for portraying him as an imbecile, but I was actually conveying his child-like side: his letters read like something written by an eight-year-old. At breakfast he’d be writing this puerile, foul-mouthed stuff to his cousin; by evening, he’d be completing a mas-terpiece while chatting to his wife” (“How We Made: Peter Shaffer and Felicity Kendal on Amadeus,” Theguardian.com, January 14, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/jan/14/how-we-made-amadeus).

The 1979 play Amadeus once again took a bevy of awards including the Standard Drama Award, the Plays and Players Award, and the London Theatre Critics Award for Best Play. The New York production won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for 1981. In 1984 the film version brought Mozart fame in a way he never would have imagined in his lifetime. Amadeus won eight Oscars in 1984, including Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Not one to rest on his laurels or be typecast as a themed playwright, Shaffer contin-ued to flex his pen and write dramas, comedies, and historically-based plays like Yonadab (1985), the comedy Lettice and Lovage (1987), and the Gift of Gorgon (1992).

Currently eighty-eight years old, Shaffer has crafted a playwriting career spanning almost three decades, bringing with it controversy, intrigue, and perplexity. At least six of his plays were adapted into films, and in 2007 he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.


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Amadeus: Talent, Envy, and GodBy Daniel Frezza

Historical drama is drama first and history second. Playwrights know they have license to invent and to choose how much history to use. Besides facts, the historical record contains opinions, misconceptions, rumors, and lies—all useful to the dramatist. Useful to audiences is some historical context to enhance understanding of the writer’s intentions and inventiveness.

Alexander Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri (1830) and Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (1979) explore composer Antonio Salieri’s reputed envy of Mozart. This has some factual basis. In a letter, Mozart mentioned Salieri’s (unspecified) intrigues against him; in another he described how Salieri prevented an aria of his from being included in a concert (Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life, Ed. Robert Spaethling [W.W. Norton, New York, 2000] 357, 416). Other documents suggest that their relationship was sometimes friendly and sometimes strained, that Salieri both hindered and helped Mozart at different times (The Mozart Myths, William Stafford [Stanford University Press, 1991] 45-6, 55, 246). That’s not an uncommon situation, given two artists, close in age, working in the same competitive environment. But what happens when one of them is uncommonly talented while the other is uncommonly successful?

Antonio Salieri (1750–1825) was born near Verona, Italy. Orphaned at fifteen, he was taken by a family friend to Venice to continue his musical studies. There he met Austrian Court Composer Florian Gassmann. Impressed with Salieri’s talent, Gassmann took him to Vienna, financed his education, and introduced him to Emperor Joseph II, under whose patronage Salieri began a successful career as an opera composer. Upon Gassmann’s death, Salieri succeed-ed him as court composer and director of Italian opera—at age 24! In 1788 he was appointed Hofkapellmeister, the most influential musical position in Austria. By 1804 Salieri’s operas were no longer popular and he devoted the rest of his career to overseeing and composing music for the court chapel, conducting, and teaching. His pupils included Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt (New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Ed. Stanley Sadie [Grove, New York, 2001]). After his death Salieri was largely forgotten—until Amadeus.

The general outline of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life (1756–1791) is well enough known, and Shaffer follows it fairly closely. His main inventions are Mozart’s recurring dream of a menacing figure, rejection by his fellow Masons, and the climactic emotional confronta-tion between the two antagonists (Amadeus, Peter Shaffer [Harper Perennial, New York. 2001], xxiii, xxix, xvi). (Though Salieri did visit Mozart shortly before he died.) The other major events are historical, as are details like Mozart’s skill at billiards and his scatological language. During his last four, troubled years, Mozart composed his greatest works including two that are prominently featured in Shaffer’s play: The Magic Flute and the work he didn’t live to finish, the Requiem. Weary and sick, Mozart came to feel he was writing it for his own funeral. In late November 1791 he took to his bed but continued work on the Requiem. It was completed by his pupils (New Grove Dictionary).

Pushkin and Shaffer both make Salieri’s psychological and emotional conflict the center of their plays; Mozart is the catalyst. Pushkin’s brief, concentrated play opens with Salieri declar-ing that there is no justice on earth or in heaven. He has devoted his life to music, laboring to master his art. He never envied Gluck or Haydn, but he envies Mozart. He considers the man unworthy of the sublime talent bestowed on him because he doesn’t take it seriously enough. He tells Mozart “You . . . are a god, and you yourself don’t know it. I know it” (The Little Tragedies, Alexander Pushkin, Trans. Nancy K. Anderson [Yale University Press. New Haven,


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2000] 59). For years Salieri has contemplated suicide and keeps poison for that purpose. Now he feels his destiny is to kill Mozart—“or else we all will perish.” Pushkin doesn’t make the point explicit, but this reasoning hints at madness: killing Mozart only frees Salieri from envying new masterpieces, plenty remain as evidence of Mozart’s superior talent.

Shaffer deepens and connects Pushkin’s themes. Peter Hall, who directed the original 1979 Amadeus and the revised 1999 version, calls the play a “celebration of Mozart and his music” (Amadeus, viii). It is gloriously that; Shaffer skillfully incorporates the music to heighten emotion. While Amadeus depicts the descending arc of Mozart’s life, it is primarily about Salieri’s moral and psychological disintegration. Heaven’s injustice, only briefly stated by Pushkin, becomes a principal theme in Amadeus. Music is Salieri’s passion and his means to serve God. As a young man, he vowed to lead a virtuous life devoted to music if God would make him a good composer. That happened. Then Mozart arrived. When Salieri describes Mozart’s music he sounds like someone gripped by love’s fever. Thunderstruck by Mozart’s genius, Salieri devalues his own work and blames God for not helping him to cre-ate better music while He lavishes supreme talent on one who is infantile, foul-mouthed, and (Salieri believes) a libertine. He cannot hate Mozart’s music so he hates the man—and God. Salieri had been “God’s beloved”; feeling spurned, he responds like a jilted lover. His address to God near the end of act one is shockingly vehement. By thwarting Mozart, Salieri feels he is defying God (Amadeus, 110). Throughout the play, Shaffer releases ten-sion after big emotional moments with an undercut. Following this particular outburst, Salieri leads into the intermission by announcing that he needs to relieve himself.

In act two, Salieri pretends friendship while devoting himself to crushing Mozart, all the while marveling at the power of his music. The internal conflict unmoors him. To fully appreciate Shaffer’s intention to portray Salieri as “unbalanced” (Amadeus, xxi, xxvi) one must know that he was no mediocre holder of a court sinecure. Salieri was a fine com-poser; many of his operas were immensely successful in a highly competitive field. He was a sought-after teacher and respected administrator. Mozart, though more talented, posed no threat to Salieri’s position but in the play Salieri keenly feels Mozart’s threat to his posthu-mous reputation. Mozart’s phenomenal genius annihilates Salieri’s sense of worth; the acco-lades he receives mean nothing to him. Shaffer intensifies the historical Salieri’s self-criticism to a level suggesting neurosis.

Perhaps what Salieri envies most is Mozart’s supreme self-confidence. During their final meeting Mozart uncharacteristically doubts the quality of his Requiem. That doubt and the music’s overwhelming power awaken Salieri’s remorse. Realizing he has destroyed himself in destroying Mozart, he confesses and begs forgiveness. “We are both poisoned,” he says. “With each other” (Amadeus, 107). Mozart, uncomprehending and bewildered, recoils into himself. Following that climax Shaffer builds a dénouement from selected historical facts capped with his own satisfying invention, giving Salieri a plausibly pathetic motive for a false confession. Shaffer intends audiences to recognize themselves in his protagonist (Amadeus, xxxi). Fundamentally, Salieri is someone who has been given much yet wants more. That’s very human.

A brief summary of the poisoning rumor may be helpful. It first appeared in print (without naming a culprit) about a month after Mozart died. It lay dormant for many years, then late in Salieri’s life it resurfaced, naming him as the poisoner. When Rossini visited Salieri in 1822, he felt comfortable making a joke about the rumor, an indication he didn’t take it seriously (Antonio Salieri: a Documentary Biography, Edward Elmgren

Swenson [University Microfilms International: Ann Arbor, Mich., 1979] 353). Others did, though. In spring 1823 Salieri fell and injured his head; his physical and mental condition deteriorated and he was hospitalized that October. In November, the com-poser/pianist Ignaz Moscheles, Salieri’s former pupil, visited him in hospital. Salieri asked him to tell the world that the rumor he killed Mozart was untrue. Moscheles believed him but wrote that Salieri’s intrigues had no doubt “poisoned many an hour of Mozart’s existence” (Life of Moscheles vol. 1, Charlotte Moscheles, Trans. A.D. Coleridge [Hurst & Blackett: London, 1873. Google book] 88–89). During his hospitalization it was reported that Salieri confessed to poisoning Mozart. The source of that report remains unknown. Salieri’s two hospital attendants attested that they never heard him say it (The Mozart Myths. 31, 44). Xenophobia may have played a part in the report: after living in Vienna for nearly fifty years, Salieri was still considered a foreigner.

Postscript: Though fond of undercuts and historical detail, Shaffer doesn’t include history’s ironic twist to Salieri’s story: a year after Mozart died, young Beethoven came to town!


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Insights - Squarespace the Playwright: Peter Shaffer By Rachelle Hughes Playwright Peter Levin Shaffer took on the human psyche through humor, satire, and drama in his portfolios of

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