Word: salieri
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...BOTTOM LINE: Mariah Carey could be a pop-soul great; instead she has once again settled for Salieri-like mediocrity...
...player as a junior, writes about tennis almost as well as Roger Angell writes about baseball. Here's his take on Jean Fleurian, losing a tough one to Pete Sampras: "If the Frenchman could have imagined winning, he would have won." He nails Ivan Lendl's monstrous adequacy: "Antonio Salieri in a sweatsuit." And he quotes a fan's remark about John McEnroe that hits the turbulent center of the man: "He just liked to create chaos. Because he was comfortable with it. With chaos...
...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...
...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...
...protest that a comparison between a low-budget student production and a high-powered professional recording is invidious, I can only respond that budget and musical talent place no limitation on imaginative and thoughtful interpretation. The difference between the two productions is that Eliot Gardiner, like Peter Shaffer's Salieri, sees a transcendent quality, an absoluteness, in Mozart's music, rather than a mine-field of ambiguities, ripe for exploitation with just the right deconstructive impulse. Granted, ambiguity and equivocation are inevitable as long as we communicate solely in words. But when music is joined to them, absolute, inexpressible meaning...