Word: salieri
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Mozart's death has been variously ascribed to rheumatic fever, uremia and even murder by poisoning. Alexander Pushkin wrote a play that pinned the guilt on Mozart's musical rival Antonio Salieri, and Rimski-Korsakov turned the literary libel into a miniopera. Playwright Peter Shaffer recently gave the Salieri legend a new stage life with Amadeus, in which Mozart has the sex habits of a randy poodle and the court manners of John McEnroe...
...better to capture the essence of the young musical prodigy with the libertine air than a child actor turned acclaimed adult director with a sometime taste for the reckless moment. Polanski, who will direct the play, which stars Francois Périer, 62, as Mozart's nemesis Antonio Salieri, and Actress Sonia Vollereaux, 22, as Mozart's wife, has been taking crash diction courses to smooth the Polish lilt from his French. "I have no problem directing myself because I am a very obedient actor," observes Polanski. "It's much easier to direct while acting than...
During working hours, McKellen can be found deploying this same unique combination of high art, low cunning and surreptitious showmanship. His incarnation of Play wright Shaffer's antagonist, Antonio Salieri, owes much to the offhand technical virtuosity McKellen displayed in that restaurant and even more to an analytic actor's intelligence that is restless and ruth less at once. "If I couldn't defend a performance intellectually, I'd be very un happy indeed," McKellen remarks, and his Salieri is a seamless reconciliation of paradox. It is a portrait in depth of a shallow...
...also sure to continue his link with the R.S.C. His undiminished joy and interest in all theatrical enterprises, from the circus to a rock concert, travels easily. As Salieri, he addresses the Broadway audience directly, sometimes like a ringmaster, sometimes like a stand-up comic and sometimes, too, like a penitent. "It's not enough just to say I'm this character," McKellen insists. "The reality approach limits you." When an actor like Ian McKellen brings it back from a spin around the block, reality stands revealed for what it should be, a humble beginning...
...Salieri, Ian McKellen is less secure than Paul Scofield, who played this role in London. He lacks Scofield's ability to make a syllable wince or engorge a phrase with acrid humor. More important, McKellen does not make Salieri's early vows of purity plausible. Thus his desired revenge against both God and Mozart verges on lago's malign spirit. No cast under Peter Hall's direction ever fails to glisten with finesse, force and impeccable timing. Jane Seymour plays Mozart's wife Constanze warmly and fetchingly. Nicholas Kepros must also be singled...