Word: amadeus
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...what is missing is a creative re-evaluation of our understanding of the composer himself. The immensely popular Milos Forman film Amadeus effectively destroyed the image it set out to falsify: the delicate porcelain infant seated at a porcelain keyboard. But as the child prodigy gives way to the giggling imp, the relationship between the reprehensible or at least unremarkable man and his great music becomes paradoxical. And, ironically, the popular conception of Mozart has been shaped by a film in which the composer is a supporting actor...
...AMADEUS AT THE LEVERETT OLD LIBRARY...
...Salieri of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, from which the film was adapted, sees the transcendent in Mozart's music, and, inevitably, the immanent in his own. And his own barrenness torments him. He despairs that he can only hear, and not create, the absolute music that flows from his rival's pen. In this sense, Amadeus is brutally relevant, as it engages the quintessentially post-modern problem of creative importence. More coherant and more powerful than the film it spawned, the play presents itself as a speculative exercise rather than a revisionist biography...
...Leverett House Arts Society production of Amadeus (directed by Grace Fan) effectively exploits this difficult but potent script, and presents an earnest reading of Shaffer's Salieri. Arthur Wu dominates the production with his impressive control of both voice and gesture, and makes the psychological portrait of Salieri's anguish convincing. Jessie Cohen plays an irrepressible and eminently likable Mozart, and the casting of a woman in the role of the composer-child emphasizes the youthful and effeminate side of the composer's character as Shaffer interprets...
...Amadeus dir. Grace Fan at Leverett Old Library Through April...