As I recovered from a touch of illness this past weekend, I caught a few superb movies I hadn’t seen in years.
One of them was Ivanhoe (1952), based on Sir Walter Scott’s 1812 that inspired the fictional tale of Robin Hood. It starred Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor in the lead roles of Ivanhoe and Rebecca, respectively. There was also Sergeant York (1941). This film starred Gary Cooper in an Oscar-winning performance based on the story of Alvin C. York, one of America’s most decorated soldiers of the First World War.
The third movie was about the brilliant Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While it’s a great film in its own right, it also contains a historical inaccuracy that has probably confused audiences for several decades.
The late English playwright Sir Peter Shaffer, inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 play , created his own production in 1979. The result was Amadeus, which won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1981. Shaffer’s success led him to adapt the play into a 1984 of the same name, directed by Miloš Forman.
Amadeus focused on the rivalry between Mozart and Italian composer Antonio Salieri. The latter (played by F. Murray Abraham) was residing in a psychiatric hospital and wanted to confess his sins to the fictional Father Volger. Despite Salieri’s previous notoriety as court composer to the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, the priest didn’t recognize either of the two works he played. Volger recognized the third piece, , one of Mozart’s signature compositions.
There’s no doubt in Salieri’s mind that Mozart (played by Tom Hulce) was the better composer. Nevertheless, he’s shocked that this immature, oafish and obstinate musical prodigy has superseded him—and would likely continue to do so in the future. His jealousy of Mozart’s talents and abilities consumed him throughout the film.
Salieri hatched a plan to kill Mozart before his Requiem in D minor was finished. He would take ownership of the Requiem Mass and play it at his rival’s funeral to great acclaim. Mozart ultimately died from exhaustion while composing Requiem and The Magic Flute simultaneously, egged on by Salieri to finish the former.
Volger refused to absolve Salieri, believing that God had acted mercifully in taking Mozart’s life. Salieri is wheeled away in the closing scene, but not before he proclaims himself to be the patron saint of mediocrities and absolves the other mental patients. Mozart’s signature laugh is heard as we fade to black.
Amadeus remains a greatly appreciated film more than 40 years later. It won eight Academy Awards in 1984, including Best Picture, Best Director (Forman) and Best Actor (Abraham, who beat out Hulce). The American Film Institute ranked it 53rd on its AFI’s 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1998, while the movie was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2019.
Every honour was completely deserved. It’s an artistic masterpiece. Here’s the problem: Amadeus’s central premise is based on a complete falsehood.
There’s no evidence that Salieri murdered Mozart in 1791. Rumours began several years after the Austrian composer’s death that his Italian counterpart had poisoned him. It was a popular theory in Europe for an extended period of time. Various books, including Maynard Solomon’s and Stanley Sadie’s , have thoroughly debunked this theory. (Other conspiracy theories, including ones involving Jews and Masons, have been discredited, too.)
Were Mozart and Salieri rivals? This appeared to be the case. It could have been for personal reasons, professional jealousy or the long-standing rivalry between the Italian and German schools of music. Yet there’s also evidence they were friendly and supportive of one another, too.
One of the most interesting examples was unearthed a few years ago. It was revealed that Mozart and Salieri composed a solo cantata, Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia (For the recovered health of Ophelia), in 1785. A third unknown composer, Cornetti, is also listed. Some historians speculate it’s either vocal teacher and composer Alessandro Cornetti or a pseudonym for Salieri or composer Stephen Storace. The composition was long considered lost but was and identified by German musicologist Timo Jouko Herrmann in Prague in 2015.
Why did Pushkin, Shaffer and others promote this theory about Mozart and Salieri? There are a few possible reasons. They could have believed it at the time. The need to preserve and protect artistic license has long been a regular defence mechanism in Hollywood. And a story about musical rivals in which one plotted to murder the other would undoubtedly achieve a bigger audience reaction than two squabbling composers who still respected each other and worked together.
Whatever the reason(s), many people are probably still not aware of this fallacy. It doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of watching Amadeus, but it does shed a very different light on a film that focused on historical facts and characters.
Oh well. It helped pass the time away on the road to recovery. That’s an actual fact, and not fiction.
Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.
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