Word: mozarts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Wolfgang Amadcus Mozart began his musical career at age three. By five, he was famous for his performances on the harpsichord and violin. At 26 he arrived at the court of Emperor Joseph II where he would write his greatest music, and forever change the life of court composer Antonio Salieri. For the decade that Mozart lived in Vienna prior to his death at 36, the two musicians were locked in an unspoken rivalry for the favor of both the monarch and the Viennese public...
...story unravels in the confessional of the aged Salieri, an infirmed, half-mad man confined to a mental institute. In the opening scenes, Salieri, who has both attempted suicide and confessed to murdering Mozart, scorns the attentions of the young priest who is sent to absolve him. But perverse pride overcomes derision, and the musician cannot resist recounting the role he played in Mozart's demise...
...this illusory compact is shattered in 1781, when Mozart arrives at the court of Emperor Joseph II. The older musician is at once disgusted by Mozart, who seems a spoiled self-important adolescent. When Mozart chase a giggly female companion into a room where Salieri is sneaking pastries, Italian composer inadvertently overhears the two exchange infantile jokes. "Say 'say I'm sick backwards," the musical prodigy insists, his words punctuated by an obnoxious high pitched giggle...
...first, Salieri redoubles his own musical efforts in an effort to equal the younger man's work. But Mozart's brilliance, coupled with his rudeness, proves too much for Salieri. Salieri becomes obsessed by his own inadequacy: "All I ever wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing, then made me mute." With his rival's music never far from his ears, Salieri's frustration soon hardens to rage. Convinced that God has chosen Mozart as his voice on earth, Salieri vows to undermine the God who betrayed him by destroying the musical prodigy...
...commercial risks, though, is to take a Hapsburg Emperor's narrow view of art's bottom line. Amadeus may be a popular film for the same reason it is a good one: it paints, in vibrant strokes, an image of the artist as romantic hero. The textbook Mozart, embalmed in immortality, comes raucously alive as a punk rebel, grossing out the Establishment, confuting his chief rival, working himself to death in an effort to put on paper songs no one else can hear. Who among us cannot sympathize, even identify, with such an icon of iconoclasm? In real...