The famous rivalry between Mozart and Salieri is an arch, wry romp in this adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play
Who knew that Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 play Mozart and Salieri would be the gift that kept giving? It fictionalises the famous rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his lesser-known contemporary, the court composer Antonio Salieri, and in 1979, Peter Shaffer adapted it into his play Amadeus. That was turned into the 1984 film of the same name. Now, almost two centuries later, it’s a TV drama.
This new Sky adaptation of the story is tremendous fun: a romp full of swearing (plenty of “f***”s, and even a “c***” just a few minutes in) and arch acting. The playful anachronisms (references to “self-sabotage” and “s**tting my britches” are wry rather than jarring) manage to remain on the right side of Bridgerton.
Will Sharpe stars as the prodigious Wolfgang, an overconfident upstart and top shagger who is, as his love interest Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy) puts it, “nothing but character flaws”. Paul Bettany is the tense, devout Salieri, court composer to the Emperor, who is in a creative rut when the young Wolfgang arrives in Vienna and who cannot bear to witness his success.
In real life, Salieri was extremely successful, but the story paints him as a rather tragic figure whose successes were dwarfed and who was doomed for middle management in the Viennese courts.
We begin at the end: a wisened Salieri – Bettany in prosthetics – has tried to throw himself out of the window but survived, and has left a written confession. We are soon sent back to 1781, 10 years before Mozart’s untimely death. The vibes are colourful, powdery, light – all beautiful rooms and puddings and costumes – but with the background stench and filth of the 18th-century heavily implied.
Salieri is trying to maintain the façade, while Mozart’s raw, God-given talent disrupts it. When Salieri is teaching a beautiful young opera singer, Katerina (Jessica Alexander), she mentions the arrival of Mozart and he reaches for a tiny, lurid macaroon to calm down; Mozart soon arrives in Vienna, falls out of his carriage and has a hungover chunder onto the street.
Unabashed, Wolfgang settles into life at his landlady’s with her four daughters, all of whom want to be opera singers, but one of whom – Constanze – is mourning her lack of soprano range. She piques his interest, and lingering looks begin apace, but we’re quickly whisked away into the main action.
Mozart meets Salieri and asks him for an introduction to the Emperor. Salieri, sour after a morning of having his F sharps criticised by the same Emperor (a curt Rory Kinnear), obliges, but already we feel tensions starting to rise. It’s not long before Mozart is shagging Katerina in the back room, Salieri watching on in envy and horror from behind a table of desserts.
Amadeus shows Mozart as having a kind of figurative Brat era – getting “absolutely smashed” before an important concert, drinking in applause and praise, and showing off in an adorably irritating way. His music comes alive when we understand how thrilling and novel it was to hear; there is electricity in the bars we know so well when his genius is not merely taken as a given.
He takes part in a pianoforte duel with Italian composer Clementi and wipes the floor with him. “Oh yuck, who wrote this?” he says when presented with Salieri’s new piece, before improving it on the hoof.
Sharpe is delectable in the role, precocious yet understated, and with an ambition both formidable and naïve, masking the pressure he’s under from his father, who wants him to move back to Salzburg so he can manage him. Bettany, meanwhile, is brilliantly restrained, seething with jealousy and repression.
We end the first episode with Mozart fulfilling his dream, and getting his opera commissioned and performed in Vienna – but the Emperor is only mildly impressed, troubled by there being “too many notes”. Salieri backs him up – and their rivalry is well and truly born. Obsession, reputation, drama, romance, and with music – literally, in this programme’s eyes – to die for.
Add to that a heavy dose of period intrigue and you’ve got the perfect drama for the Christmas holidays.
Amadeus continues tomorrow at 9pm on Sky Atlantic. The full series is streaming on Now
