"Well, there it is!" Excellent production! Definitely focusing more on the comedic elements of Shaffer's text, with Salieri (Tom Rooney) in particular having a great deadpan delivery. Very much looking forward to seeing it during the regular run in September!

6. If you've heard me blather on about Peter Shaffer, you know that the man never stopped revising, rewriting, or adding to Amadeus. I recommend the 2001 edition of the play, since it contains essays by Shaffer and director Peter Hall on some (but not all) ways the script changed since 1979.

5. There are many editions and adaptations of Mozart and Salieri (1830) out there. (I even own one published by a Soviet press in the 1970s with an editorial commentary absolutely endorsing the poisoning rumor!) Nancy Anderson's 2000 edition of the complete "little tragedies" commentary is useful.

4 (continued). The Novellos' interview with Constanze is also an early source for the claim (later substantiated by archival research by Bruce Alan Brown and John Rice) that Salieri was originally supposed to write Così fan tutte.

4 (continued). Although their planned Mozart biography never materialized, the Novello's interview notes (published in 1955 as A Mozart Pilgrimage) reflect the aged Constanze's thoughts on a variety of topics, including Süssmayr and Salieri.

4. Alexander Pushkin never interviewed Constanze Mozart, but the English music publishers Vincent and Mary Novello sure did. Chances are, if you encounter a work of Mozart fiction where someone travels to meet an aging Constanze or Nannerl Mozart, the author was slightly inspired by the Novellos.

3. Salieri paying off the audience to riot during Figaro is entirely fictional, but dubious anecdotes about Salieri spending his wife's inheritance on operatic sabotage were circulating by the 1810s. Otto Deutsch discusses one such error-filled source in his documentary biography of Mozart (1965/6).

2. The Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte (1829) are an obvious source for the depiction of the librettist here, especially when it comes to his complicated feelings about Salieri and the eventual circumstances of his leaving Vienna. There are also multiple editions, including in the NYRB Classics series.

1. On Leopold Mozart, the Mozarts' married life, Constanze's time in Baden, and remarks on various musical events: the Mozart family letters, available in various editions and translations. Emily Anderson's The Letters of Mozart and His Family (1938) is probably the best-known in English.

Looking for something to read after watching (the 2025 television adaptation of) Amadeus? Here's a short thread! These aren't necessarily the most reliable sources--I might do a more scholarly thread next week--but they are the things I thought of at specific moments while watching the show.

Me: Mozart fictions really do not do enough with Salieri's more meta operas, probably because they require dealing with questions of comedy and also linguistic identity Both Mozart/Mozart and the new adaptation of Amadeus: so, how do you feel about unexpected references to Der Rauchfangkehrer?

I would pay good money I don't have to watch Ényì Okoronkwo star in a Lorenzo Da Ponte biopic.

I mean, Leopold Mozart is certainly the tireless giver of unwanted advice that he often is in Mozart fictions, but Da Ponte, Süssmayr, Bonno, Theresia Salieri, and others all have their moments of trying to help. Which in a way heightens the psychological tragedy of it all.

The lead characters are also a lot less alone than in the film or some versions of the play. They are constantly giving, seeking, or receiving advice from friends and family. It just rarely comes at a time when it can be taken to heart or with full knowledge of what is going on.

This becomes increasingly clear as Joseph becomes preoccupied with the war, while Salieri and Mozart are concerned with their respective operas and intrigues. There's a great scene where Salieri misses a genuine (and rare) moment of artistic reflection from Joseph because of how it is framed.

Constanze Mozart (as played by Gabrielle Creevy) ca. 1823, accurately describing the experience of watching a production of Amadeus that doesn't make cuts to the monologues.

I have a lot of Amadeus-shaped thoughts, but it is already well after midnight on a Monday. So I will just say that I gasped when Pushkin showed up and also could not stop giggling at Constanze's reaction to him saying he was working on a new play.

One episode left to go in Amadeus and some marzipan-flavored rooibos seemed appropriate.

Rossini (allegedly) asking the difficult questions, possibly because his wife and friends had other things to do after dessert besides sing canons. As translated in The Musical World (December 22, 1855).

Christmas Eve is a great time for Victorian ghost stories, such as Walter Thornbury's "The Old-Chapel Master" (1873), originally published in M.E. Braddon's Belgravia Annual and reprinted in various forms across the UK and North America. 1/?

It's vaguely Beethoven's birthday, which is a good time for pondering how his mythmaking began during his lifetime. This is from J.R. Parker's A Musical Biography, a collection of biographical sketches of "eminent musical characters" published in Boston in 1825.

If you (for some reason) want your #ams24 to contain even more weird things people wrote about Salieri, come to the Mozart Society of America's study session! I'm giving a lightning talk on my work on British periodical The Harmonicon and anxieties about Salieri's canonical status in the 1820s.

From David Weiss's outline for his 1970 political thriller The Assassination of Mozart (part of the David Weiss Papers at Temple University). I definitely need to use HAVE QUOTES ABOUT SALIERI as a paper and/or chapter title.

My articles on Rosa Newmarch and Edward Prime-Stevenson are in the latest Grove Music Online update!

Imagining Musical Pasts spotted at Concordia!

Looking forward to meeting up with new and old friends from the Historical Fictions Research Network today and tomorrow and presenting on gossip, fictional music, and adaptation/revision across Amadeus’s production history!

Please join Shannon Draucker, Fraser Riddell, and me for a roundtable discussion of musical histories, sciences, and fictions in late Victorian queer literature. Hosted by the wonderful Music, Medicine, and History Network on Wednesday 21st February 2024 (1500-1600 GMT / 1000-1100 EST)

Of all the places his work has been alluded to in various programs this week, I was not expecting to see Rudolph Angermüller cited in this confectionary ad/explanation of the history behind the sweets in Amadeus.

So, Google thought I was looking for restaurants near me instead of checking program note citation. I would say it’s the oddest tribute to Salieri I’ve encountered this week, but I saw a marionette production of Mozart and Salieri with a comic prologue and a themed cocktail and floral arrangements.

I wrote a thing for Grove! It expands upon Rudolph Angermüller’s work on Constanze Mozart’s role in reception history to consider gossip, anecdote, and fiction in music biography (something she both contributed to and was the subject of) and the problem of moralizing about composers’ spouses.