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Movie amadeus essay summary
Amadeus mozart movie summary
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Amadeus Review
Amadeus, the Tony-Award winning tale of 18th-century court composer Antonio Salieri's envy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is a mighty challenge for actors.
The nearly three-hour drama is told from the viewpoint of Salieri, who frequently comes to the front of the stage to explain himself in lengthy and passionate detail. It takes a dedicated performer to memorize the lines and a skilled actor to keep them interesting.
Perhaps that's why the director of the production opening Friday at the Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center started rehearsals with the actor who plays Salieri, Anthony Casale, six months ago.
"Anthony and I began working on his (Salieri) character last April," said Diana Forgione, founder-director of the Avenue Players, the semi-professional troupe doing the show. "We've all studied the period and the people until we feel we know them. We've worked hard to make those characters real and believable, parading around in those elaborate costumes, getting accustomed to how the material moves and feels."
At a recent dress rehearsal, the effort seemed to have been rewarded.
Many scholars have protested playwright Peter Shaffer's version of the relationship between Salieri and Mozart (played by Rick Bronson). They say that Shaffer's play distorts the customs of the era by unfairly comparing them with today's, overblows the rivalry and does a disservice to Salieri.
Even so, both scholars and theater critics praised the dramatic structure and impact of the play itself, and audiences have received it enthusiastically. The drama isn't intended to be a biography; it's a powerful story of envy, obsession and betrayal, using historical figures and anecdotes as springboards for timeless messages.
The play opens as Salieri, old and senile, sits hunched over and raving in his wheelchair as his servants scurry about, gossiping. He claims to have poisoned Mozart decades earlier, not with a potion, but with cunning and deceit. He then rises and transforms into his youthful self to tell the tale.
In the play, the devout Salieri bargains with God for the ability to compose great music, in return for pious behavior. He feels betrayed by God when the foul-mouthed, libertine Mozart outdoes him with little apparent effort.
The characters address the audience; the fast movement from scene to scene juxtaposing past and present and prevents us from identifying with particular characters, forcing us to assess their points of view; there are few characters who fail to repel us, as they display truly human complexity and fallibility. That fallibility is usually associated with greed and a ruthless disregard for the needs of others. Emotional needs are rarely acknowledged by those most concerned with taking what they maintain is theirs, and this confusion of feeling and finance contributes to the play's ultimate bleak mood.
the play. It looks at the person he is and the person he becomes. It
Alfieri is the narrator of the story, setting the scene, and helping the audience understand the story better. He tells us more about the characters and also provides background information that we might not have known. In the play, Alfieri also provides characters with the insight they could need, which is also a characteristic of the chorus. He does this with Eddie, persuading him to stop quarrelling with Marco when they were jailed. Alfieri as a narrator also makes the audience become more involved while he p...
One of the most interesting challenges in operatic composition , is composing for all the specific characters. A composer has to distinguish between characters through his music. Jan can’t sound like Fran , and Dan can’t sound like Stan. Each character must have his or her own traits. Mozart’s opera , Don Giovanni , provides us with many different characters to compare and contrast. One scene in particular lends itself to the comparison of Don Giovanni , Leporello , and The Commendator. Scene fifteen of Act two, places all three characters in close interaction with each other , making it easy to compare and find out how Mozart and his Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte brought them all to life.
Also in the movie it shows that Mozart was more experienced at music than Salieri and proved that he could have a spot to work for Salieri’s boss Emperor Joseph 11. Once Salieri heard that the Emperor
One solution is to approach an actor at the beginning of their training, and see where knowledge of "commedia dell'arte" and its performance can expand a performer's range. The contemporary young actor's most familiar performance role model is that of televisi...
Amadeus is a movie based on the career and the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Viennese during the 18th century. Throughout the film Antonio Salieri tells his story of his growing hatred for Mozart that eventually led to his ?murder?. Through out the rest of the movie you can see where Salieri is getting even more jealous of Mozart.
...n do now is to die. And so he does. Although Mozart does suffer loss, the loss of his life and career, and is somewhat responsible for his downfall, he does not evoke sympathy or recognition. However, it is Salieri who contains all four elements of a tragic hero. Salieri loses practically everything he has faith in before Mozart appears. He suffers from the loss of dignity, esteem, and honor. Salieri also recognizes something he has never felt before, that is the “pain as I had never know it,'; (1,5), the pain from the beauty and delight of Mozart’s music. Thus, recognizing the limitations of his own talent, the mediocrity of his talent compared to the genius works of Mozart. He grows an awareness of disharmony in the universe that he has never encountered. Salieri clearly is culpable of his own tragedy. He is the Court Composer, his works are respected throughout Europe, and because he is not stupid, he does not say he is the better composer. Instead, he is the minority who actually appreciates Mozart’s music. There is definitely sympathy for Salieri, in that all human beings can work as hard as they want to at something and can still fail miserably.
Cliff Eisen, et al., "Mozart," Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press), accessed December 15, 2012, http://www.oxfor...
...criticism. Thence, the Opera achieves an immense degree of complexity and artistry, which helps to explain why the play was so popular for so long. The Opera is entertaining for the masses, complex enough to engage the critic, and it was (in its own way) peculiarly patriotic during an age of immense English pride for native culture.
Salieri like everyone else also had a bad side. He was really jealous when Mozart took over his dreams. Mozart was also a composer and he became well known in Vienna through his music. When Salieri first saw Mozart he thought how can such a vulgar man create such great music. Salieri was really mad at God for making such a disgusting and a dirty minded person such a great composer.
Another example in Amadeus is the final scene in which Salieri helps a bedridden Mozart to write Requiem. Competition here again shows Mozart’s incredible talent in comparison with even the head court composer of Emperor Joseph II’s court. Mozart is dictating the notes of a musical arrangement so complex that it leads Salieri to admit he doesn’t even understand what Mozart is trying to say. When he finally understands, the scenes that follow plays the Requiem in the background and ends off with Mozart dying after seeing his wife and child for the last time and leaving the Requiem unfinished.
Mozart and Salieri are both great composers. Salieri pretended to be Mozart’s friend, he was jealous and people thought he killed Mozart. Salieri felt threaten by Mozart and frequently put obstacles in Mozart way.
In the mid-1763, Mozart’s father, Leopold, decided to leave his position as deputy Kapellmeister (which was quite well paying) , so he and his family could set out on a prolonged tour across Europe. Not surprisingly, soon the Mozarts’ set out on the tour, where Amadeus and his sister played at almost all the main musical centers of Western Europe: Munich, Stuttgart, Augsburg, Mannheim, Brussels, Frankfurt, Mainz, Paris, and London (where the Mozart’s spent 15 months). They returned to Salzburg only in November 1766, being ...
The Classical Period brought forward new musical innovation. The sudden change in emotion and contrast in the music from the classical era is one of the many fascinating topics. However, the topic most talked about to this very day is Mozart’s Requiem. The mystery of which parts were composed by Mozart puzzles many. Even the rumor that surrounds Mozart’s cause of death is fascinating. Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, added more controversy to this intriguing mystery.