F. Murray Abraham gives Mozart an encore with ‘The Magic Flute’
It took F. Murray Abraham over 30 years to come to terms with his Oscarwinning performance in “Amadeus” and the result is Friday’s bigscreen version of Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute.”
Murray was named Best Actor for the hit film adaptation of the stage drama that questioned how God could bestow musical genius on low-class Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart while his God-fearing rival, Abraham’s Antonio Salieri, recognizes that he’s, at best, mediocre.
A critical and box-office sensation, “Amadeus” (’84) won 8 Academy Awards and made Abraham a star. “There was a time after I did ‘Amadeus,’” Abraham, 83, recalled in a phone interview this week, every role he was offered was in that same groove.
“I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I thought, ‘I’m more than that movie. There are other things I can do.’ So I started doing more theater, classical stuff. But after all these years, I’m falling in love with the idea of still being associated with it because it still lives — and that astounds me! ‘Amadeus’ still works for people. And I’m glad to be part of it for that reason.
“So I’m doing ‘Magic Flute’ out of the love for the music, but also I wanted to see Salzburg,” Mozart’s Austrian birthplace. “That’s one of the things about my work that I love so much, I get to see the whole world — and they pay me to do it.
“Salzburg is a really a beautiful city,” Abraham said. “Because I filmed during the pandemic, there was no tourism. Thus, I had access for all these tours in places that were closed — because I was there as their guest. But also because of ‘Amadeus.’ It was the best way to see the city without all the crowds.
“And what knocked me out was how with this film they made the music of Mozart, which is several hundred years old, so accessible because there was modern music as well. I would like as many kids to see this as possible because I think they’d discover that classical music can be a lot of fun.”
In “Magic Flute” Abraham is the demanding professor Dr. Longbow at Salzburg’s fictional Mozart boarding school. Besides the scenery, there was another reason Abraham signed on: Producer Roland Emmerich, best known for sci-fi disaster blockbusters “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”
“The idea of working with someone who has such a love for Mozart, even though he makes these action films, that intrigued me. I thought, ‘This is an interesting person’ — and that’s one of the reasons I did it.”
“The Magic Flute” opens Friday