Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Salieri Essay

Milos Foreman’s "Amadeus" is not about the genius of Mozart but about the envy of his rival Salieri, whose curse was to have the talent of a third-rate composer but the ear of a first-rate music lover, so that he knew how bad he was, and how good Mozart was. The most moving scene in the movie takes place at Mozart's deathbed, where the great composer, only 35, dictates the final pages of his great "Requiem" to Salieri, sitting at the foot of the bed with quill and manuscript, dragging the notes from Mozart's fevered brain. This scene is moving not because Mozart is dying, but because Salieri, his lifelong rival, is striving to extract from the dying man yet another masterpiece that will illuminate how shabby Salieri's work is. Salieri hates Mozart but loves music more, and cannot live without yet one more work that he can resent for its perfection. True, Salieri plans to claim the work as his own--but for a man like him, that will be one more turn of the screw strategy of portraying Mozart not as a paragon whose greatness is a burden to us all, but as a goofy proto-hippie with a high-pitched giggle, an overfondness for drink, and a buxom wife who liked to chase him on all fours.
The key precursor is "Hair." He sees Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a spiritual brother of the hippies who thumbed their noses at convention, muddled their senses with intoxicants, and delighted in lecturing their elders. In a film where everybody wears wigs, Mozart's wigs do not look like everybody else's. They have just the slightest suggestion of punk, just the smallest shading of pink. There is something about Mozart's Vienna apartment, especially toward the end, that reminds you of the pad of a newly-rich rock musician: The rent is sky-high, the furnishings are sparse and haphazard, work is scattered everywhere, housekeeping has been neglected, there are empty bottles in the corners, and the bed is the center of life.
The flower child Mozart tries to govern his life, unsuccessfully, by the lights of three older men. His father Leopold trained the child genius to amaze the courts of Europe, but now stands aside, disapproving, at the untidy mess Mozart has made of his adulthood. His patron, Emperor Joseph II passes strict rules (no ballet in operas!) but cannot enforce them because, God love him, he enjoys what he would forbid. Then there is Salieri who poses as his friend while plotting against him, sabotaging

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