The 'Amadeus' movie............?!
Question:
The 'Amadeus' movie............?
I have just seen the 'AMADEUS' movie for the first time. I am wondering if this portrayal of Mozart's life is accurate. Did the producers take liberties? Was it ever proven that he was murdered? Was he an alcoholic? Your thoughts, PLEASE!
Answers: Mozart had a drinking problem, as have many great men in history. Not alcoholic. Just a problem drinker at times.
Authors of fictional works have found Mozart's life and death a fertile subject of fiction. An especially popular case is the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, and particularly the idea that Salieri poisoned Mozart, as in the movie. Unlikely!
Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. At the age of three he learned to play the clavier, and by five years old he was writing minuets. He toured Europe with his father and sister for two years.
At the age of eleven, already the author of several symphonies, Mozart wrote his first opera. By his teenage years, he had mastered the piano, violin, and harpsichord.
His unbelievably large output of over 600 compositions includes works widely acknowledged as among the greatest masterpieces in history.
Ironically, his music was loved by Hitler, so it was NEVER performed in Israel until recently, and very controversially. Mozart is widely said to have been anti-Semetic.
Mozart had had health problems throughout his life, suffering from a variety of ailments such as tonsillitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, typhoid fever, rheumatism and gum disease.
The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been the subject of much discussion and several conspiracy theories. Mozart died on 5 December 1791 after a short illness, the cause of which has been debated for centuries.
However, the most widely accepted version is that he died of acute rheumatic fever; he had had three or even four known attacks of it since his childhood, and this particular disease has a tendency to recur, leaving increasingly serious consequences each time, such as rampant infection and heart valve damage
The widely repeated claim that Mozart on his deathbed dictated passages of the "Requiem" to his pupil (an incident providing a model for later fictional accounts) is probably untrue. So is dictating to Salieri! yes, they took liberties. To my knowledge there is no evidence that Mozart was murdered by old what'shisname. They did take a lot of liberatites with the movie, but a lot of it was factual. I remember watching it in college in my classical movie class. If you really want to know how truthful the movie was google it .
Great music in the movie. There were a number of liberties taken. There is evidence of a feud between Mozart and Salieri, but probably more of a competitive but friendly relationship. Certainly not the sort of thing that would escalate to murder. There's no evidence of murder, period. He probably died of an illness that was aggravated by stress and Mozart's alcoholism. Movies are NOT the place to learn about people in history. That's why they are called "entertainment."