Peter Shaffer (1) (1926–2016)

What a fun reimagining! Maybe it's because I also watched the recent Australian Story with TwoSet that I very much enjoyed the way this brought classical music to life, infusing it with evergreen themes of jealousy and beauty and identity. Sometimes I feel like people demand a lot from historical fiction, to be accurate to the absolute minutiae whilst being entertaining. However this play was just so fun that Shaffer can get away with his wild central premise. It did take me a while to get into the written play but perhaps the best tribute to the play I can give is that immediately after to reading it, I went on a rabbit-hole binge of Wikipedia articles on everything and everyone related to this work.… (more)

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3550090.html

The biggest difference between film and play is the framing device. The film is told as a flashback from Salieri's time in a mental hospital, immediately following his suicide attempt; the framing for the play is set immediately before. Also the stage Salieri talks much more to the audience, and is attended by the Venticelli, two characters who seem to dance in and out of the margins between Salieri's imagination and the real world. And I think the idea that The Magic Flute critically annoyed the Masons is soft-pedalled in the film. It's a gripping script, though I think challenging and expensive to perform.… (more)

Full-cast LA Theater Works. This is a fanciful recreation of Mozart's life that has distorted popular perceptions of Mozart as an infant-man genius who composed complete opera masterpieces in his head, and who was hounded by a sinister foe echoing Les Miserables. None of this is true, but it makes a good story. Mozart in this telling is memorable character, it's most powerful aspect. Indeed the last time I saw this was the early 1980s and my perception of Mozart was shaped by it, the story-line faded but not the (incorrect) impression of Mozart. Some day I will read a proper biography.… (more)