Amadeus

By Peter Shaffer

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 31 January 2017

Just over 36 years ago, on a cold December morning of 1980, I queued outside the National Theatre in the hope of buying two day release tickets for Peter Hall's original production of Amadeus starring Paul Scofield (Salieri), Simon Callow (Mozart) and Felicity Kendal (Constanze). In those pre-electronic days the limited number of day tickets were only on sale at 9 am from a small booth near the entrance to the building, which was not open to the general public until a later more civilised time of day. Inexplicably, the couple in front of me declined the tickets on offer, and so a friend and I were able to see the play from the centre of the fifth row of the stalls. In this prime position, it seemed as if Salieri was speaking to us alone out of the whole unwieldy amphitheatre of the auditorium as he mused on the appalling mixture of joy, pain, jealousy and betrayal he experienced on first hearing the music of Mozart.

The National has now revived the play in a new production directed by Michael Longhurst with Lucian Msamati as Salieri, Adam Gillen as Mozart and Karla Crome as Constanze, with the participation of the Southbank Sinfonia to provide the musical interludes. Once again, I bought a ticket at the last moment; just by chance there was a return for the evening performance when I asked to the Box Office in the afternoon, this time in the centre of the eleventh row.

Amadeus presents Salieri's recollections of Mozart's career in Vienna where he arrived in 1783 in his mid-twenties having broken his ties with his father and with Salzburg. Salieri, a competent and acclaimed court composer, overhears Mozart and Constanze indulging in childishly obscene conversation, and then is overwhelmed by the beauty of Mozart's composition. Having dedicated himself to God's service through music he feels utterly betrayed, realising his own work is merely mediocre in comparison, and he swears vengeance on the unfeeling deity. He attempts to undermine the younger composer's career, and thinks he has driven Mozart to his death. He survives for another 32 years, his claims to have killed Mozart largely ignored or ridiculed.

It's a powerful and ambitious play, with a sensational story and a decidedly unglamorous exposure of Mozart as a disquieting mixture of genius, banality and uncontrolled obscene verbosity (supported by the evidence of his surviving correspondence). There is also a serious attempt to evaluate his extraordinary music, as we hear excerpts of pieces Salieri might have heard, and listen to his explanations of why they are so special. Though Salieri finally adopts the mantle of the 'patron saint of mediocrity' much of the interest lies in this exploration of the nature of genius.

There seemed to be more anger than pain in Lucian Msamati's Salieri, and more ADHD and less sheer manic high spirits in Adam Gillen's Mozart, than I remember from the earlier production. Both Msamati's rage and Gillen's relentless mannerisms became somewhat wearing. Interestingly Karla Crome's Constanze came across more clearly as quite a common woman who suddenly displays a steely awareness of the way of the world when she is taken for granted, an interpretation less flighty than the original. The technical management of the different registers of the play - domestic drama, court politics, and musical performance - was adroit, with the hint of a proscenium stage doubling as the Emperor's throne room, and members of the orchestra occasionally playing on it, and occasionally collected in an orchestra pit created by lowering a part of the drum revolve.

There were aspects of all his that I am not so sure about. At times the music was pumped up with a throbbing modern drum beat, over-emphasising the idea that court life was decadent. At the close of the interval one of the orchestral players was ostentatiously taking selfies while the stage was being prepared: I am not sure that the intrusion of the modern needed to be quite so obvious even though Salieri explicitly invokes the audiences of the future to hear his confession. Also, as is now customary in the Olivier auditorium, the players and singers had their voices enhanced by electronic means. This is far more subtly managed than on the first occasion I witnessed it some years ago, and for much of the time it seems barely noticeable. However, it leads to a flattening of effect, and is particularly awkward when a character turns his or her back on the audience without any change to the dynamics of the voice. It perhaps helped to explain why the characters seemed too often to be at the same pitch of excitement or distress, rather than modulating it, and at the worst extremity (for example at Mozart's final breakdown in Salieri's presence) it paradoxically became more difficult to understand what the actor was actually saying.

An interesting revival, then, and it is good to see that a major modern play still richly deserves a place at the National Theatre a generation after it was first performed there; but my memories from 1980, though admittedly not sufficiently detailed for a clear comparison, are of a more powerful interpretation.