Amadeus play full#

Theatrical gesture typical of Shaffer, soon throws aside his threadbare robe to Salieri narrates the play, starting as a decrepit nonentity who, in a The plot, however, allows few of the subsidiaryĬharacters to develop beyond the central trio. Rightly, as they were expert and enthusiastic and in the case of Nicholas KeprosĪs the Emperor, outstanding. UK, where producers tend to live with their mistakes, but in New York we all Cast replacements are almost unknown in the They were told by the director, knowing that their contracts allowed them to be Initially they were all very nervous and did what Ian McKellen (Salieri) applauds stage right.Īpart from Tim and Jane Seymour (as Constanze), the cast was American, Nicholas Kepros (centre Emperor Joseph 11) welcomes Tim Curry (Mozart) toĬourt. Ian McKellen (Salieri) starts his seduction of Jane Seymour (Constanze) Mozart (Tim Curry) and Salieri (Ian McKellen) Salieri (Ian McKellen, stage right) into his own music. Mozart (Tim Curry, stage left) wittily transforms a pedestrian piece by All in all I was looking forward to being back with old friends on Broadway and found myself a spacious apartment above a bank in then-unfashionable Union Square, where drugs were dealt in the park outside Andy Warhol's Factory premises. I had known Tim long before he struck stardom with the original stage production Tim Curry was cast as Mozart, replacing the ebullient Simon Callow, who has written about the first production ofĪmadeus in his autobiographical Life in the Theatre. Perhaps it was significant that I had been a friend of Peter Shaffer ever since the West End revival of his witty double-bill Scofield's not wanting to play on Broadway was my good fortune although I was surprised that Hall asked me, as we had not worked together-although he had once invited me to join him at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1960's. Paul Scofield was the first to play Salieri and for his spry, wry and elegant performance effortlessly won the London Evening Standard Drama Award, although as the Tony and Oscar later proved, Salieri may be just one of those award-winning roles. The drama centres on the rumour first dramatised by Pushkin in his 'Mozart and Salieri': Antonio Salieri, the court composer, admired and much-decorated by the Emperor of Austria, is jealous to the death of Mozart's genius, and claimed in his old age that he had murdered Mozart.Īmadeus thrillingly explains why and how.

Amadeus play full#

The play is full of music with a large cast, and Peter Hall's production, decorated by glamorous eighteenth century costumes and wigs, displayed a drama that is also a show and just the thing for It was inevitable that, like its predecessors, Peter's latest sensation would transfer to New York. (1964) and Equus (1973) had also been first performed. Theatre in London, where his Royal Hunt of the Sun (1979) was one of the most popular new plays ever produced by the National Even by his own standards, Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus