Word: mozarts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sneering cynic, contemptuous of Mozart's "pretty" music, and the record company huckster, who likes "pretty" music because it sells, offer us two sides of the same worthless coin. They both depend on Forman's film and is assassination of Mozart the genius, the child prodigy whose music was great because it was the work of a great man. The film liberates us from what may be an illusionary image of Mozart, but leaves us with no reason to judge the music as worthwhile. The notion that the "voice of God" resides in the notes of this music carries little...
...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...
...play centers even more closely than the film around Salieri himself and his frustration with God's refusal of his bargain in favor of an immoral brat. Salieri's God is an angry deity, a scornful, faceless presence in the action of the play who mocks his servant with Mozart's high-pitched giggle...
...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...
...music makes the evenings a worthwhile proposition. In spite of dreadful limitations, Teresa Marrin, the music director, has managed to come up with a compelling reading of Mozart's score. Her tempi are brisk throughout (occasionally creating problems for some of the singers), and betray a wager on the comic rather than the mystical. The playing is controlled, and some roughness in the brass is more than forgivable given the splendid delivery of the all-important flute part...