Before Amadeus won eight Academy Awards at the 1985 Oscars, it was an acclaimed play, winning a Tony for Best Play in 1981. The series adaptation on Starz is based on the play, and it digs into the subtleties of the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri.
AMADEUS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A courtyard late at night. We hear a window opening, then a thud. Two servants go to help the person who fell out the window.
The Gist: Late on another night, Costanze Mozart (Gabrielle Creevy), the widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Will Sharpe), is called to the mansion of Antonio Salieri (Paul Bettany). She’s holding a note from him that was supposed to only be opened upon his death. But since, despite his best efforts, is still alive, he decides to just tell her about what’s in the note: A confession.
Flash back to 1781 in Vienna. Salieri is the court composer for Emperor Joseph (Rory Kinnear), and he’s excited about a new opera that he wants Joseph to play. But when he presents it to the emperor, Joseph dismisses it as tough to play, and orders Salieri to redo one of his old operas in Italian, so he can present it to other countries’ dignitaries.
In the meantime, 25-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arrives in Vienna from Salzburg, and stays at a boarding house owned by Cecilia Weber (Lucy Cohu). He basically lives with Cecilia and her daughters, the oldest of which is Costanze.
Mozart is definitely a free spirit, perhaps in response to his childhood, which consisted of his father having the musical prodigy play around Europe. His father keeps writing letters demanding that he return to Salzburg.
Salieri’s first encounter with Mozart is when he sees the young composer having his way with Katerina (Jessica Alexander), Salieri’s favorite singer, among the desserts being served for the Baroness’ ball. When Salieri hears Mozart playing, he can’t deny the young composer’s ability. And when Mozart gets an opportunity to play for Emperor Joseph, he demonstrates how he can take a pedestrian-seeming piece of music and make it magical — even Salieri’s music.
Salieri starts to get frustrated with Mozart, though, especially because it seems that arias just seem to swirl in his head, while Salieri stares at a blank page as he tries to write a new opera. Salieri also feels that God speaks through the music from composers like him, but Mozart just considers what he writes to be “mathematical instructions.”
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Joe Barton and Julian Farino adapted Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play for this series. Of course, the first adaptation of the play was the 1984 film, with Tom Hulce playing Mozart and F. Murray Abraham playing Salieri, a role which won Abraham an Academy Award.
Our Take: Taking a property that has been a play and a movie and expanding it to a 5-episode limited series takes some care, in both the writing and casting. As nuanced as both previous versions of Amadeus were, this version needs to be even more layered, with some of the characterizations made a bit more down-to-earth in order to not burn out viewers. It feels that Barton and Farino have done just that with this version, which includes the casting of Bettany and Sharpe in the main roles.
Let’s address Sharpe as Mozart first. Mozart was never considered to be a “mad genius” but he certainly was rebellious and free-spirited. Sharpe communicates both of these aspects without making Mozart look unhinged. If anything, he acts out of a sense of arrested development, having never really enjoyed a real childhood due to his ability to compose and his father’s exploitation of it.
Bettany’s Salieri, at least in the first episode, is more weary and wary than what we saw with Abraham’s version. Even though he considers himself an artist he is also well-versed in playing the political game; it’s why, when Joseph criticizes Mozart’s new opera as having “too many notes,” Salieri agrees with the monarch instead of, as Mozart says, “defending the music.”
Bettany is showing how the older Salieri has put himself in such a comfortable position by playing the game and doing what he needed to do. But what Mozart is going to do is shake up that notion, in addition to how Salieri thinks of himself as an artist. We can already see signs of that happening in Bettany’s performance as he becomes increasingly incredulous of Mozart, with the wheels already spinning of how he’s going to push aside this loose cannon/musical genius.
Performance Worth Watching: Salieri has always been the meatier role in any of the versions of Amadeus, and Bettany fills that role ably.
Sex And Skin: Yes, though there isn’t much skin in the first episode. There is also some imagery that makes this series feel less like the play and movie and more like Bridgerton.
Parting Shot: Old Salieri admits to Costanze that he killed Mozart.
Sleeper Star: Gabrielle Creevy’s character Costanze will play a big role in how the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri accelerates, and Creevy is certainly up to the task of being the woman who keeps Mozart’s more destructive impulses in check.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Meringue? I wouldn’t; they’re a bit tart,” says Mozart to Salieri when the desserts are brought out. We last saw the meringues in close-up and… ewww.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Amadeus works as a series, not just because it looks fantastic, but that the main characters are treated as the nuanced people they were, and there seems to be less filler than one might expect.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
