Amadeus

Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, which premiered at the London Royal National Theatre in 1979, presents a fictionalized history of the renowned composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of Antonio Salieri, a composer whose lackluster artistic legacy has been all but buried by time. The play begins on the eve of what Salieri, now an old man, believes will be the last day of his life. Salieri narrates and reenacts the story of his tumultuous and acrid relationship with the famous composer, for whom he has cultivated a deep hatred based on his envy of Mozart’s talent. With the aid of other members of the court who find Mozart distasteful, Salieri works to systematically destroy Mozart. This prompts false rumors that Mozart’s eventual death was the result of poisoning by Salieri’s hand. At the end of the play, Salieri confesses to murdering Mozart and attempts suicide to secure his place in history, but he ultimately survives, and no one believes his confession.

Although there is some evidence that Mozart and Salieri may have shown occasional dislike for one another, the intense hatred and obsession at the center of the play is largely fictional. In conjunction with the enduring popularity of the play, scholars have criticized Shaffer for inventing this mythos around these two figures that takes such creative license.