Amadeus (Theatre Review)
Jul. 20th, 2020 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis week, the National Theatre put their production of Amadeus on Youtube. (Until Thursday.) Directed by Michael Longhurst, starring Lucian Msamati as Salieri, Adam Gillen as Mozart and Karla Crome as Constanze. One of the Masters (from Doctor Who, that is), Geoffrey Beevers (aka Crispy!Master), plays the Baron van Swieten, who has more to do in the play than in the movie. Most importantly, this production got around the problem of the play not being able to do what the movie did - i.e. use Mozart's and a bit of Salieri's actual music as soundtrack - by constantly having 20 musicians and six singers on stage along with the cast (sometimes in the background, sometimes prominently displayed) and incorporating the music where appropriate. It doesn't manage purely cinematic transitions like Mozart's mother-in-law to the Queen of Night (not least because the character isn't in the production), and of course the death scene is quite different anyway, but it really contributes a lot, not least because the play's Mozart, Adam Gillen, was, I felt, the one less than stellar actor.
I had read the play eons ago, not too long after watching the movie, I think, but I'd never seen it performed. So I knew there were some considerable differences, which I find fascinating since playwright Peter Shaffer also wrote the movie script. Some of the differences are due to the change in format - Salieri adressing the audience as the ghosts of the future and telling them the story works in the theatre, but for the movie, they needed something else, and presto, the young priest who hears Salieri's confession came into existence, for example - , but others make for a change in emphasis. The play is firmly Salieri-centric throughout. We hear about Leopold Mozart; he doesn't show up as a character. (Which means Salieri really has to explain to us his Komtur = Leopold theory. There's also a corresponding Leopold = Sarastro realisation later that's not in the movie.) There is no maid paid to spy on the Mozarts, though Salieri employs two spies bringing him rumors throughout the play. Constanze's mother doesn't show up, either; Salieri's wife, otoh, does, briefly. (Her entire existence is never referred to in the movie.) All of these are connected to the big difference between the play's second act and the movie's second part. As I said, the play stays in Salieri's pov; the movie slides into Mozart's, and gives us quite a few scenes Salieri isn't witness to. All of which would still be minor but for the quite different death scenes play and movie climax in, and the corresponding "present day" scenes for old Salieri.
In the movie, Salieri after having his Leopold = Komtur from Don Giovanni epiphany, decides to impersonate the ghost of Leopold and order a requiem, planning to present it as his own work after Mozart's death, becoming the masked man of Mozartian legend; when the dying Mozart dictates to him, Salieri for that brief time finally understands what it feels like to be Mozart-the-composer, until the returning Constanze takes his price away. In the play - well, in this production, I seem to recall in the script Salieri later briefly recounts the story about the nobleman who did order Mozart to write a requiem planning to display it as his own composition - , there is no grey masked man, he only exists in Mozart's feverish imagination. Salieri doesn't get the moment of collaboration; looking at the unfinished Requiem score makes him realise the requiem is for his own soul, which he nearly killed entirely in his relentless jealousy and destruction of Mozart, and he confesses to Mozart, who first doesn't believe him and later seems to be too insane to truly take it in, though they have a brief moment of mutual cradling that Salieri could interpret as absolution were it not for Constanze's return and Mozart telling her Salieri destroyed him. In the play, Salieri's old age accusation of himself of a murder that in literal terms didn't happen (while in both versions Salieri is a huge factor of driving Mozart into a breakdown, he does not physically kill him) - and his attempted suicide are really one last attempt to connect his name with Mozart's, and his punishment is that no one believes him, the suicide doesn't work, and he has to live with this. The blessing of mediocrities happens in both versions - Salieri blessing the audience is another thing Shaffer had to find a different thing for in the movie - but the black humor of it is, I felt, stronger in the film.
The different leading man performance fits the different conceptions. Lucian Msamati's Salieri is more divided into a public and a private self, with the sleekness of the public self never ruffled (except in the Constanze scene), and the way he operates is very much a polished professional performer and courtier. (Watch the scene where Emperor Joseph tells Salieri he intends to make Mozart his niece Elizabeth's music teacher, which is near identical in movie and play, and you'll see a big difference in performance - in both cases, Salieri first assumes he'll be the new teacher, the Emperor clears up the mistake, and Salieri quickly reacts by making insinuations about Mozart's conduct with his female pupils. But in the movie, the moment where Salieri thanks the Emperor for his supposed appointment and the misunderstanding is cleared up feel far more awkward for Salieri until he rallies and counterattacks. Msamati's Salieri is a master schemer not thrown by this accident. On the other hand, Msamati's Salieri's private self is easily as anguished as Abraham about the play's key premise - longing to possess Mozart's talent and feeling rejected and tormented by God for both recognizing and not having it, despite the world celebrating him as the superior composer. And this private anguish culminating into the realisation that he's destroyed himself along with Mozart is an incredibly powerful performance.
Sadly, imo as always, the Mozart he's given is incredibly one note, no pun intended. Adam Gillen starts his scenes shouting and keeps shouting till the end with hardly any modulation. And he's not just occasionally infantile; he's so toddler-like that you don't understand how Mozart has been able to function without someone constantly holding his hand. Now part of it is that the play and this particular production gives us less scenes for Mozart than the movie does, and no quiet ones at all, but part is the acting. Gillen's Mozart really is nothing but an obscene child. Hulce's Mozart can be that, but he also has, say, the scene where he convinces the Emperor to greenlight Figaro ("I am a vulgar man, but my music is not"). The equivalent play scene has Gillen's Mozart shouting the lines about the way opera can do a quartet, sextett, octett etc. at von Strack, Orsini-Rosenberg, Salieri and van Swieten, and it's not convincing anyone. And there's no "one can one say but - Salieri" reply by Mozart in answer to Salieri's question how Mozart liked Les Danaides because that kind of subtle sarcasm is something this production's Mozart would be incapable of. This Mozart really has no positive human quality other than his music, and while the play still gets the horror of destruction across, there isn't really that much difference, except financially, between Mozart at the start and Mozart at the end in terms of acting.
Otoh: Karla Crome really is superb as Constanze, smart, determined, and full of (in this production) incomprehensible affection for her manchild of a husband. Her two big scenes with Salieri where she brings him some examples of Mozart's work, he blackmails her for sex and then throws her out when she decides she'll do it if that gets her husband the job make here for a very different dynamic than in the movie (Director's cut version, because the cinematic cut does have the work sample delivery but not the attempted sex blackmail). Crome's Constanze wisens up to what Salieri is up to far earlier, and after her attempts at deflection (including a pointed question about his wife) don't work, she on the one hand gives in to the blackmail but on the other cuttingly laughs about his attempt at making this a seduction and is coldly determined, not allowing him the illusion that he's doing anything but what he does, so that when Salieri throws her out it's not one more humiliation of Constanze but, despite him telling the audience it's because he doesn't want his revenge on God via Mozart to be so petty, clearly his inability to face up to what she makes him face. Constanze wins by sheer force of actress personality, and considering what a strong Salieri this production has, it is really saying something.
Lastly: not for the first time, I thought that it's ironic Amadeus, either version, in order to pull off its central conflict and premise has to eliminate someone pretty important to the creation of operas - the librettist. Lorenzo da Ponte worked with both Mozart and Salieri, and Pierre Beaumarchais, the playwright on whose drama Figaro's Wedding is based, actually wrote the (original) libretto to the Salieri opera that brings Salieri such constrasted-to-Figaro success. Both were very interesting men in their own right, who, btw, left a lot of autobiographical writings. But, say, suggesting that Don Giovanni might owe more to da Ponte's mixed feelings about his fellow Venetian Casanova, or to his idea of himself as a galant, than about any daddy issues Mozart had would not work with the story Shaffer wants to tell, in either version. Exit poetae.
I had read the play eons ago, not too long after watching the movie, I think, but I'd never seen it performed. So I knew there were some considerable differences, which I find fascinating since playwright Peter Shaffer also wrote the movie script. Some of the differences are due to the change in format - Salieri adressing the audience as the ghosts of the future and telling them the story works in the theatre, but for the movie, they needed something else, and presto, the young priest who hears Salieri's confession came into existence, for example - , but others make for a change in emphasis. The play is firmly Salieri-centric throughout. We hear about Leopold Mozart; he doesn't show up as a character. (Which means Salieri really has to explain to us his Komtur = Leopold theory. There's also a corresponding Leopold = Sarastro realisation later that's not in the movie.) There is no maid paid to spy on the Mozarts, though Salieri employs two spies bringing him rumors throughout the play. Constanze's mother doesn't show up, either; Salieri's wife, otoh, does, briefly. (Her entire existence is never referred to in the movie.) All of these are connected to the big difference between the play's second act and the movie's second part. As I said, the play stays in Salieri's pov; the movie slides into Mozart's, and gives us quite a few scenes Salieri isn't witness to. All of which would still be minor but for the quite different death scenes play and movie climax in, and the corresponding "present day" scenes for old Salieri.
In the movie, Salieri after having his Leopold = Komtur from Don Giovanni epiphany, decides to impersonate the ghost of Leopold and order a requiem, planning to present it as his own work after Mozart's death, becoming the masked man of Mozartian legend; when the dying Mozart dictates to him, Salieri for that brief time finally understands what it feels like to be Mozart-the-composer, until the returning Constanze takes his price away. In the play - well, in this production, I seem to recall in the script Salieri later briefly recounts the story about the nobleman who did order Mozart to write a requiem planning to display it as his own composition - , there is no grey masked man, he only exists in Mozart's feverish imagination. Salieri doesn't get the moment of collaboration; looking at the unfinished Requiem score makes him realise the requiem is for his own soul, which he nearly killed entirely in his relentless jealousy and destruction of Mozart, and he confesses to Mozart, who first doesn't believe him and later seems to be too insane to truly take it in, though they have a brief moment of mutual cradling that Salieri could interpret as absolution were it not for Constanze's return and Mozart telling her Salieri destroyed him. In the play, Salieri's old age accusation of himself of a murder that in literal terms didn't happen (while in both versions Salieri is a huge factor of driving Mozart into a breakdown, he does not physically kill him) - and his attempted suicide are really one last attempt to connect his name with Mozart's, and his punishment is that no one believes him, the suicide doesn't work, and he has to live with this. The blessing of mediocrities happens in both versions - Salieri blessing the audience is another thing Shaffer had to find a different thing for in the movie - but the black humor of it is, I felt, stronger in the film.
The different leading man performance fits the different conceptions. Lucian Msamati's Salieri is more divided into a public and a private self, with the sleekness of the public self never ruffled (except in the Constanze scene), and the way he operates is very much a polished professional performer and courtier. (Watch the scene where Emperor Joseph tells Salieri he intends to make Mozart his niece Elizabeth's music teacher, which is near identical in movie and play, and you'll see a big difference in performance - in both cases, Salieri first assumes he'll be the new teacher, the Emperor clears up the mistake, and Salieri quickly reacts by making insinuations about Mozart's conduct with his female pupils. But in the movie, the moment where Salieri thanks the Emperor for his supposed appointment and the misunderstanding is cleared up feel far more awkward for Salieri until he rallies and counterattacks. Msamati's Salieri is a master schemer not thrown by this accident. On the other hand, Msamati's Salieri's private self is easily as anguished as Abraham about the play's key premise - longing to possess Mozart's talent and feeling rejected and tormented by God for both recognizing and not having it, despite the world celebrating him as the superior composer. And this private anguish culminating into the realisation that he's destroyed himself along with Mozart is an incredibly powerful performance.
Sadly, imo as always, the Mozart he's given is incredibly one note, no pun intended. Adam Gillen starts his scenes shouting and keeps shouting till the end with hardly any modulation. And he's not just occasionally infantile; he's so toddler-like that you don't understand how Mozart has been able to function without someone constantly holding his hand. Now part of it is that the play and this particular production gives us less scenes for Mozart than the movie does, and no quiet ones at all, but part is the acting. Gillen's Mozart really is nothing but an obscene child. Hulce's Mozart can be that, but he also has, say, the scene where he convinces the Emperor to greenlight Figaro ("I am a vulgar man, but my music is not"). The equivalent play scene has Gillen's Mozart shouting the lines about the way opera can do a quartet, sextett, octett etc. at von Strack, Orsini-Rosenberg, Salieri and van Swieten, and it's not convincing anyone. And there's no "one can one say but - Salieri" reply by Mozart in answer to Salieri's question how Mozart liked Les Danaides because that kind of subtle sarcasm is something this production's Mozart would be incapable of. This Mozart really has no positive human quality other than his music, and while the play still gets the horror of destruction across, there isn't really that much difference, except financially, between Mozart at the start and Mozart at the end in terms of acting.
Otoh: Karla Crome really is superb as Constanze, smart, determined, and full of (in this production) incomprehensible affection for her manchild of a husband. Her two big scenes with Salieri where she brings him some examples of Mozart's work, he blackmails her for sex and then throws her out when she decides she'll do it if that gets her husband the job make here for a very different dynamic than in the movie (Director's cut version, because the cinematic cut does have the work sample delivery but not the attempted sex blackmail). Crome's Constanze wisens up to what Salieri is up to far earlier, and after her attempts at deflection (including a pointed question about his wife) don't work, she on the one hand gives in to the blackmail but on the other cuttingly laughs about his attempt at making this a seduction and is coldly determined, not allowing him the illusion that he's doing anything but what he does, so that when Salieri throws her out it's not one more humiliation of Constanze but, despite him telling the audience it's because he doesn't want his revenge on God via Mozart to be so petty, clearly his inability to face up to what she makes him face. Constanze wins by sheer force of actress personality, and considering what a strong Salieri this production has, it is really saying something.
Lastly: not for the first time, I thought that it's ironic Amadeus, either version, in order to pull off its central conflict and premise has to eliminate someone pretty important to the creation of operas - the librettist. Lorenzo da Ponte worked with both Mozart and Salieri, and Pierre Beaumarchais, the playwright on whose drama Figaro's Wedding is based, actually wrote the (original) libretto to the Salieri opera that brings Salieri such constrasted-to-Figaro success. Both were very interesting men in their own right, who, btw, left a lot of autobiographical writings. But, say, suggesting that Don Giovanni might owe more to da Ponte's mixed feelings about his fellow Venetian Casanova, or to his idea of himself as a galant, than about any daddy issues Mozart had would not work with the story Shaffer wants to tell, in either version. Exit poetae.
