Salieri speaks...
Abraham on the role of a lifetime
Before winning the part of Salieri, I had never played an instrument, though I liked music very much. I had been contracted to do the movie Scarface before my involvement in Amadeus, so I was shooting both films at the same time. I was flying from Prague to Hollywood, back and forth, and consequently, I couldn’t spend as much time with the music as I would have liked. But it was a real revelation. In preparation for the film, I listened to the same passages over and over again, so they became second nature. And what I discovered was that no matter how many times I listened, the music was always fresh. That was a surprise and I thought, ‘Well, this is great art. This is what we try to accomplish, even as actors; it’s that surprise.’
I was living in Brooklyn at the time and had lessons with the conductor of a local orchestra. He suggested that I conduct in a very staid way, because he was pretty sure whoever played Mozart was going to be flamboyant. Since Salieri was so conservative, he taught me to be very strict about my movements and keeping time. He also let me conduct his orchestra to see what it was like and that was thrilling.
Miloš Forman insisted that any music had to be played correctly during filming, even though the soundtrack was pre-recorded. He had a nose for the truth, and you trusted him. They arranged piano lessons for me, and I went over and over it. There’s quite a bit of music I learned on the piano that was never used in the film, and that was a heartbreaker because I worked so hard. But what that did do was impress me with the fact that people can actually play with both hands!
The film’s script by Peter Shaffer is brilliant. Frankly, I don’t know how any actor could fail with such wonderful material. The character as an old man, particularly, has such wicked humour, but Salieri’s love and appreciation of music remains the centre of his humanity throughout, and that humanity resonated with me. I made the conscious decision to keep my distance from Tom Hulce and the crew during filming, however, as Salieri’s character in the film is quite solitary. I wanted to preserve that natural antagonism between Tom’s Mozart and my Salieri.
These days I do a lot of work with orchestras because of Amadeus. I narrate during concerts all over Europe and the US, so I meet a lot of musicians, and I also love jazz. It doesn’t matter what discipline the musician is from; they are deeply affected by this movie. They stop me in the streets sometimes to tell me how much the movie touched them.
I do think that Salieri’s music is unfairly treated in the film, however. In fact, I have put together two concerts where the orchestra played a piece of Salieri and a piece of Mozart without identifying them. Then we asked the audience which they thought was which and they never got it right! I actually have a portrait, a silhouette, of Salieri on my wall of portraits at home. I am beholden to him, as you can imagine! Do you remember what Salieri is doing in the film when we first meet him as an old man in the institution? Even after all he’s gone through, he is at the pianoforte composing music. I love him for that, for never giving up, for never losing faith.
Since Salieri is so conservative in the film, I was very strict in my conducting movements
5.30pm had recorded a Haydn symphony. So, we were well set up to complete the sessions amazingly efficiently. And because the music for this project wasn’t a servant to the visual side, we were able to perform without restrictions.’
Meanwhile, the mammoth task of casting was underway, involving close to 1,400 auditions, due in no small part to Forman’s insistence on the importance of even the smallest roles. Although ‘every major star wanted to be Salieri in the film’, according to Forman, he wanted ‘people to see Mozart and Salieri, not big stars’. Even so, he was surprised upon meeting F Murray Abraham: ‘He was wonderful, and Salieri became so real and alive. I told him, I will fight for you to play Salieri, and it was a fight. But he didn’t believe me and accepted another role!’ Later Forman told producer Zaentz: ‘Murray thinks he could be a great actor if he didn’t have breaks against him. He is Salieri, on and off stage!’
Principal filming took place over seven months in Communist-era Czechoslovakia, Forman’s homeland and a country to which he had never expected to return following the banning by the authorities of his 1967 satire The Firemen’s Ball. Despite the perpetual presence of secret police, Prague in the early ‘80s had one advantage: it was relatively untouched by modern development, due to years of infrastructure neglect. ‘It was wonderful to walk down those streets in those fabulous costumes,’ says Abraham.
Forman wanted ‘people to see Mozart and Salieri, not big film stars’
‘Everyone else was an anachronism. It was like a painting come to life.’
The Count Nostitz Theatre, where several operatic scenes were filmed, was central Europe’s last remaining wooden opera house. Here, some 200 years previously, Mozart himself had conducted the world premiere of Don Giovanni. ‘Everyone was affected by the spirit of the place,’ recalled Shaffer, ‘but it was in danger of burning down at any moment, so we had 30 or 40 firemen on standby every day, in addition to 500 extras!’ ‘We had fire everywhere and could so easily have burned down that historic opera house,’ choreographer Twyla Tharp confirmed in a 2015 interview with the Hollywood Reporter. ‘We had live fire in the chandelier. We were lighting people on stage, and the dancers were whipping those torches around. It only worked because the crew were so devoted to Miloš.’
Historically accurate settings, costumes and recorded music aside, the film’s credibility would always be in question were it not for the ability of its leads, Tom Hulce and Abraham, to convincingly portray the musical skills of Mozart and Salieri respectively on screen. For his part, Hulce, who had only previously played guitar, set about practising the keyboard for three or four hours per day, and as Lady Marriner remembers, stayed on his own in the Marriner’s London flat over the Christmas weekend before principal filming began, ‘just practising and practising, as he was so keen to get it right’.
‘There’s no way I was going to be able to act that without being actually able to do it,’ Hulce explained in the Director’s Cut documentary. ‘The keyboards I played in front of the camera were all silent. All the music was recorded before we started. So, the sequence was either done with
music being played out loud or in my ear if there was dialogue going on. I began, as filming went on, to believe the illusion a little bit, so it was always distressing to go back to my practice room and hear what it really sounded like on a working keyboard!’ Clearly the illusion worked, however. ‘Tom never hit the wrong key, even when he played it backwards,’ Neville Marriner commented with astonishment upon seeing the finished film.
For Abraham, the already recorded music and Shaffer dialogue was an invaluable inspiration. ‘The words of Peter Schaffer have to be the most beautiful descriptions of music ever written, whether on film or in literature,’ he says. ‘And that the music accompanies the words… what more can you ask?’
Perhaps the most technically difficult sequence was the dictation of the Requiem by a dying Mozart to the desperate Salieri, who hopes to take down the precious notes and pass them off as his own. Sheen confirms that this sequence was patiently recorded by the ASMF prior to filming, so that Hulce and Abraham – who had spent much of the production apart to preserve ‘a slight antagonism’ between their characters – could synchronise their dialogue to the music, played through earphones on set. Two separate cameras were set up to capture their performances simultaneously, meaning the sometimes-overlapping dialogue could be captured naturally, as if in the theatre. ‘I would leave out certain information that I knew Murray needed to go to the next place,’ Hulce remembered. ‘So, we would have to stop, and it would seem like he wasn’t quite smart enough. The scene is a superb partnership between two players.’
And what of the film’s impact? ‘We were invited to a private preview in Hanover Square,’ says Sheen, ‘and at that point I was knocked out by this amazing production. The music had such a central space, and it was all done so beautifully and tastefully.’ Neville Marriner had a similar experience: ‘I remember the stunned silence when the end titles came up and the Piano Concerto No. 20 was still playing,’ he recalled. ‘The extraordinary thing was that people waited until the end of the main titles
‘Shaffer’s words are the most beautiful descriptions of music ever written’
and then erupted in applause as if it had been a concert. You got the first sense that this was going to be an unusual movie and perhaps the music had won.’
And it certainly had. The legacy of Amadeus is best encapsulated in the film’s Original Soundtrack, recorded separately to the film sessions and showcasing full works and movements. Following its release, the soundtrack reached Number 1 in the Billboard Classical Albums Chart, Number 56 in the Billboard Popular Albums Chart, and has sold a staggering 6.5 million copies to date, making it one of the most popular classical music recordings of all time.
For Marriner, the risk had paid off handsomely: ‘We came in for quite a lot of punishment in the beginning because they questioned how an orchestra as respectable as the Academy could become associated with a film that makes Mozart into a buffoon,’ he said in a 1989 interview. ‘But I would say that we have had more reaction from both the movie and the record of the movie than from any other music we’ve ever been involved in. And if there is any justification for being part of such a patently commercial enterprise, it is that millions of people have heard bits of
Mozart they might never have heard if we hadn’t involved ourselves.’
Within the classical community, the ramifications were no less significant. Under Marriner, the ASMF had developed a fresh, technically brilliant, chamberfocused approach to the works of Vivaldi, Haydn and Mozart, far removed from the heavier, solid and, at times, ponderous approach of the past 20 years. ‘I think Neville’s approach was, to a certain extent, a bit of a revolution,’ says Sheen. ‘He was changing the style and formulating something new; a very colourful and articulated approach that can certainly be seen as a precursor to the period movement that is so dominant today.’
And in the end, the film breathed immediacy and life into the figures of Mozart and Salieri. Yes, some might complain that Hulce’s Mozart became a bawdy, immature caricature, and that Abraham’s Salieri was uncharitably portrayed as cynical and far less talented than the real composer, but the film’s tragicomical message is surely one for all time: ‘I speak for all mediocrities in the world,’ concludes Salieri. ‘I am their patron saint. Mediocrities everywhere, now and to come: I absolve you all!’
‘The audience erupted in applause, and you got the sense that the music had won’