Can Mozart and Salieri Work It Out?
Poor Antonio Salieri. In other circumstances, history (or, at least, classical-music buffs) would remember him as Kapellmeister to the Emperor of Austria, a skilled court composer of some forty operas, and a mentor to Beethoven and Schubert. But he had the rotten luck of being eclipsed by a younger rival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Despite evidence that the two got along well enough, rumors spread in Vienna after Mozart’s death that Salieri had poisoned him. In 1979, the myth of Salieri’s malicious envy inspired Peter Shaffer’s play “Amadeus,” which cast Mozart as a spunky wunderkind and Salieri as the scheming “patron saint of mediocrities.”
Salieri’s bad rap was solidified in 1984, when Miloš Forman turned “Amadeus” into an Oscar-winning film. Now comes a sumptuous five-part miniseries, which aired on British television last year and has just come to Starz, with Will Sharpe as Mozart and Paul Bettany as Salieri. The other day, both actors found themselves at the Morgan Library & Museum, in midtown. Sharpe, known for his roles on “The White Lotus” and “Too Much,” had his hair gelled into a rock-star shag; Bettany, a fixture of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wore hip glasses and a leather jacket. Their stop in New York happened to coincide with the Morgan’s exhibition “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Treasures from the Mozarteum Foundation of Salzburg.” Many of the artifacts were visiting the United States for the first time.
The actors were greeted by the exhibition’s curator, Robin McClellan, who led them to Mozart’s childhood violin, encased in glass. “We had a nine-year-old prodigy from Juilliard come and play it,” he said. Across the hall was Mozart’s clavichord, on which he wrote the Requiem. “He was composing on his deathbed,” McClellan continued.
“Is it true that he swelled up like a balloon at the end of his life?” Sharpe asked.
“That’s your favorite bit?” Bettany teased. Both actors mimed inflating like balloons.
Past the violin was an oil painting of the child Mozart entertaining nobles at the Maison du Temple. “Is this really annoying, that there isn’t a Salieri exhibition?” Sharpe ribbed his co-star.
“I’m hoping to undermine this one,” Bettany retorted.
They paused by a portrait of young Mozart at his keyboard, in a bright-red jacket. (“He loved fancy clothing,” McClellan said.) In “Amadeus,” Sharpe wears lots of red, while Bettany wears cooler colors. “There was one red look I liked in particular,” Sharpe recalled. “At one point, I was, like, ‘Can I just wear this all the time, for simplicity?’ ”
“Laziest actor you’ve ever met,” Bettany deadpanned. Nearby were manuscripts of nine symphonies that Mozart wrote within two years, in his late teens. Bettany snapped photos. “My son’s a composer”—Stellan Connelly Bettany, his older child with the actress Jennifer Connelly, is at the Royal College of Music—“and he’s only written one symphony this year!”
They passed the clavichord, which still had ink stains on it, presumably from late nights at the keyboard. Neither actor has had much musical experience. Bettany, as a London teen, used to busk by Westminster Pier. “You would get very adept at profiling people,” he said. “Oh, they’re French. I’m going to play the Cure! Because the Cure was huge in France.”
Sharpe, also a native Londoner, was in a garage band with his brother, originally called Phosphene—the term for sparks of light you see with your eyes closed. (“Awful name,” Sharpe admitted.) For “Amadeus,” the actors practiced piano for months before filming, in Hungary. “Then, when we got to Budapest, we were playing on fortepianos, where the keys are quite a bit smaller, so suddenly it got doubly difficult again,” Sharpe recalled, eying Mozart’s keys.
Viewing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, from 1785, McClellan said, “I’ll just mention my quibble with your series, for what it’s worth: the manuscripts didn’t look like the actual manuscripts.” He turned sheepish. “I’m not trying to be a jerk.”
“To clarify, Will and I didn’t make them,” Bettany said.
They reached a tiny, oval-shaped engraving of Salieri. Finally! “So, you couldn’t find a smaller one?” Bettany said. He was feeling defensive. Salieri’s own Requiem was “pretty good,” he noted. “He was also a mensch. He really supported young musicians.”
“I confess to a slight Mozart bias in the choice of materials in the show,” McClellan offered. Past Mozart’s wallet and walking stick, they arrived at a display addressing the Salieri myth. There was an illustrated edition of Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 play “Mozart and Salieri”; the score of a Rimsky-Korsakov opera based on it; and an “Amadeus” poster signed by F. Murray Abraham, who played Salieri in the film. “We had him here for a private event, and he made sure to let everyone know that he did not kill Mozart,” McClellan said.
“What makes Salieri a great antagonist is that he’s eminently relatable,” Bettany said. “There are few geniuses, but there’s a lot of mediocrity around. Every office in the world has a Salieri.”
“We should have an exhibition celebrating mediocrity in all its guises,” McClellan proposed.
Bettany grinned: “I’ll host it!” ♦