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【Abstract】Peter Shaffer is one of the leading dramatists today, his famous work Amadeus became the most successful play in theatre''s history as long as it was shown in 1979. Its depiction of the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his contemporary, Antonio Salieri makes the entire audiences think deeply. This paper emphasizes on the artistic features of this play, besides a detailed analysis of the author’s techniques of dealing with the characterization, structures, and theme and so on, the film adaptation is also talked about. By listing some of the plots in this play, we can see the author’s exploration of perfection and how a play is translated into a film.
【Key words】Salieri; Mozart; artistic; music; film; audience
【中圖分类号】H315 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】2095-3089 (2012)02-0050-02
1 Introduction
Amadeus is the most famous play wrote by Peter Shaffer, one of the leading dramatists today. Unlike his contemporaries, Shaffer took neither colorful path: he kept himself to himself, not particularly secretive, but evidently taking the reasonable attitude that his plays were the thing, and any information about his intellectual history and private life that he might care to vouchsafe was strictly coincidental to judgment of the work, and anyway not particularly interesting in itself. And this play gained appreciative audiences due to its compelling depiction of the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his contemporary, Antonio Salieri. In this fictionalized version of the two composers'' relationship, Shaffer explores the mystery of creative inspiration, the search for spirituality, and the consequences of success and failure. ［2］
2 Literature Review
Although this play has been enormously popular, it also received high critical acclaim. Winning five Tonys in New York, this play also created controversies, particularly regarding the character Salieri. Michael Hinden, for instance, objects to Salieri''s "static character," and suggests that the shift in Amadeus is chiefly thematic. Hinden notes the uncompromising pessimism of Salieri. And also Janet Larson insists that Shaffer has replaced his "God-hunting" with "contempt for his audience" and sympathy for the harsh cynicism of Salieri. ［3］
And for the domestic study, few people had done researches on this play, although we are also familiar with the genius musician Mozart, this play is undoubtedly the first to write about the musician’s romantic life. With such a great achievement, there must be more and more Chinese scholar to notice it. 3 A Brief Analysis
3.1 Characterization。 When dealing with the characters, Shaffer does not abandon his "God-hunting" as he has done in his earlier plays. Like the Spanish commander Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun and the child psychologist Dysart in Equus, Salieri is:
1) a hollow man;
2) confronted by someone who represents the idea of God;
3) deeply moved by visions of a greater spiritual awareness;
4) trapped in a predicament at the end of the play. ［1］
Although Salieri seems to be deeply religious, he is as hollow as Pizarro and Dysart. Ironically, Salieri has the bitterness and spiritual aridity of Pizarro and Dysart, and the hypocrisy of some of the religious figures of the earlier plays.
As a citizen of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Vienna, Salieri appears radically different from Pizarro and Dysart. At the beginning of the play, Salieri tells us how in his youth he bargained with God, offering to live a life of virtue, a life honoring God through music, in exchange for fame as a composer. But then in the end, failing to achieve lasting fame as a musician, Salieri mentions "the taunting of unachievable, uncaring God" and declares himself "''Antonio Salieri: Patron Saint of Mediocrities!''" Salieri says that his God is "an old candle-smoked God in a mulberry robe, staring at the world with dealer''s eyes. Tradesmen had put him up there. Those eyes made bargains, real and irreversible." To him, God is a "God of Bargains", a God capable of entering into a Faustian pact. ［7］
3.2 Structure。 Shaffer''s way of dealing with his subject in Amadeus is highly complex, employing various theatrical strategies, and combining them with a wide-ranging knowledge of his subject, to achieve maximum exploration of the theme and, at the same time, maximum intensity of communication between stage and audience. The great number of cross-references, leitmotivs and themes developed in the play form an intricate network, and contribute to its coherence and density. What is so intriguing about this network of thematic references is that certain themes are mirrored on different levels and can be brought to bear upon one another.
In a wider sense, Amadeus is a play about “reception,” that is, the mechanisms and implications of the interplay among the dimensions of “artist,” “work of art,” “audience,” “tradition”. “Audience” and “posterity” become the basic prerequisites for fame to be acted out dramatically. Accordingly, there is a twofold connection between Salieri and the audience: Salieri giving stage directions and summarizing the action for the benefit of the spectators; and Salieri invoking potential audiences. Failure, mediocrity, and success, the fortunes of an artist''s reception, are illustrated dramatically by the central opposition dominating the structure of the play. 3.3 Film adaptation。 The film Amadeus was first presented at the London National Theatre in 1979. Just like the play itself, this film is no ordinary one: a lavish tale of more than two-and-a-half hours, and one of the most decorated post-war films, ultimately the best-known film about a classical composer. The film sequence offers genuine insight not only into how a Mozart score is layered, how parts fit together, interact, and complement one another, but also into the urgency with which Mozart was so often required to work in order to meet a tight deadline. Salieri, once again, is a representative of us all – in awe at the creative mind on display, struggling to keep up.［8］
The biggest change in language might be Salieri''s monologues. Structured as a confession by Salieri to the audience, the stage version of ''''Amadeus'''' featured lengthy speeches about God and Mozart and fate. And the characters, too, have been fleshed out in the movie. Also, to make this film more interesting and authoritative, some of the characters in the film were totally invented. However, the most fascinating blend in Amadeus of the scholarly and the popular, of Mozart the man and Mozart the myth, of Mozart’s musical activity and of the reception of his music, occurs at the end of the film, in the Requiem sequences.
4 Conclusion
Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus is really an artistic success not only for its technical refinement and dramatic richness, but for the intellectual brilliance with which the theme is handled, giving the play its specifically “modern” appeal. His rival characters, Salieri and Mozart, are rivals of talent—one a genius and one a "mediocrity," whose products are judged by mediocre audiences.
As a whole, Amadeu captures Mozart reception from the last 200-or-so years in microcosm. Told from inside the 19th century, with a loaded agenda for the biographer Salieri, by a late 20th-century writer and director aiming at the widest of contemporary audiences, it represents a landmark in Mozart reception itself, simultaneously commenting on and contributing towards understandings and perceptions of its protagonist in the best traditions of biographical work.
References
［1］ Brown, A. Peter. Amadeus and Mozart: Setting the Record Straight ［J］. The American Scholar vol. 61, 1992.
［2］ Carol Simpson Stern. Peter Shaffer: Overview ［J］. London: St. James Press, 1993.
［3］ Wendy Perkins, Critical Essay on "Amadeus" ［M］. Detroit: Gale, 2001.
［4］ Wilfred L. Guerin & Earle Labor, Etc. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature ［M］.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
［5］ 劉海平, 赵宇, 《英美戏剧》［M］. 南京：南京大学出版社, 1992.
［6］ 刘海平，朱雪峰，《英美戏剧：作品与评论》［M］. 上海：上海外语教育出版社，2008.
［7］ 汪义群,《彼得?谢弗和他的剧作》［M］. 北京：中国戏剧出版社, 1991.
［8］ 中国大百科全书(戏剧卷)［M］. 北京：中国大百科全书出版社，1989.
【Key words】Salieri; Mozart; artistic; music; film; audience
【中圖分类号】H315 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】2095-3089 (2012)02-0050-02
1 Introduction
Amadeus is the most famous play wrote by Peter Shaffer, one of the leading dramatists today. Unlike his contemporaries, Shaffer took neither colorful path: he kept himself to himself, not particularly secretive, but evidently taking the reasonable attitude that his plays were the thing, and any information about his intellectual history and private life that he might care to vouchsafe was strictly coincidental to judgment of the work, and anyway not particularly interesting in itself. And this play gained appreciative audiences due to its compelling depiction of the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his contemporary, Antonio Salieri. In this fictionalized version of the two composers'' relationship, Shaffer explores the mystery of creative inspiration, the search for spirituality, and the consequences of success and failure. ［2］
2 Literature Review
Although this play has been enormously popular, it also received high critical acclaim. Winning five Tonys in New York, this play also created controversies, particularly regarding the character Salieri. Michael Hinden, for instance, objects to Salieri''s "static character," and suggests that the shift in Amadeus is chiefly thematic. Hinden notes the uncompromising pessimism of Salieri. And also Janet Larson insists that Shaffer has replaced his "God-hunting" with "contempt for his audience" and sympathy for the harsh cynicism of Salieri. ［3］
And for the domestic study, few people had done researches on this play, although we are also familiar with the genius musician Mozart, this play is undoubtedly the first to write about the musician’s romantic life. With such a great achievement, there must be more and more Chinese scholar to notice it. 3 A Brief Analysis
3.1 Characterization。 When dealing with the characters, Shaffer does not abandon his "God-hunting" as he has done in his earlier plays. Like the Spanish commander Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun and the child psychologist Dysart in Equus, Salieri is:
1) a hollow man;
2) confronted by someone who represents the idea of God;
3) deeply moved by visions of a greater spiritual awareness;
4) trapped in a predicament at the end of the play. ［1］
Although Salieri seems to be deeply religious, he is as hollow as Pizarro and Dysart. Ironically, Salieri has the bitterness and spiritual aridity of Pizarro and Dysart, and the hypocrisy of some of the religious figures of the earlier plays.
As a citizen of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Vienna, Salieri appears radically different from Pizarro and Dysart. At the beginning of the play, Salieri tells us how in his youth he bargained with God, offering to live a life of virtue, a life honoring God through music, in exchange for fame as a composer. But then in the end, failing to achieve lasting fame as a musician, Salieri mentions "the taunting of unachievable, uncaring God" and declares himself "''Antonio Salieri: Patron Saint of Mediocrities!''" Salieri says that his God is "an old candle-smoked God in a mulberry robe, staring at the world with dealer''s eyes. Tradesmen had put him up there. Those eyes made bargains, real and irreversible." To him, God is a "God of Bargains", a God capable of entering into a Faustian pact. ［7］
3.2 Structure。 Shaffer''s way of dealing with his subject in Amadeus is highly complex, employing various theatrical strategies, and combining them with a wide-ranging knowledge of his subject, to achieve maximum exploration of the theme and, at the same time, maximum intensity of communication between stage and audience. The great number of cross-references, leitmotivs and themes developed in the play form an intricate network, and contribute to its coherence and density. What is so intriguing about this network of thematic references is that certain themes are mirrored on different levels and can be brought to bear upon one another.
In a wider sense, Amadeus is a play about “reception,” that is, the mechanisms and implications of the interplay among the dimensions of “artist,” “work of art,” “audience,” “tradition”. “Audience” and “posterity” become the basic prerequisites for fame to be acted out dramatically. Accordingly, there is a twofold connection between Salieri and the audience: Salieri giving stage directions and summarizing the action for the benefit of the spectators; and Salieri invoking potential audiences. Failure, mediocrity, and success, the fortunes of an artist''s reception, are illustrated dramatically by the central opposition dominating the structure of the play. 3.3 Film adaptation。 The film Amadeus was first presented at the London National Theatre in 1979. Just like the play itself, this film is no ordinary one: a lavish tale of more than two-and-a-half hours, and one of the most decorated post-war films, ultimately the best-known film about a classical composer. The film sequence offers genuine insight not only into how a Mozart score is layered, how parts fit together, interact, and complement one another, but also into the urgency with which Mozart was so often required to work in order to meet a tight deadline. Salieri, once again, is a representative of us all – in awe at the creative mind on display, struggling to keep up.［8］
The biggest change in language might be Salieri''s monologues. Structured as a confession by Salieri to the audience, the stage version of ''''Amadeus'''' featured lengthy speeches about God and Mozart and fate. And the characters, too, have been fleshed out in the movie. Also, to make this film more interesting and authoritative, some of the characters in the film were totally invented. However, the most fascinating blend in Amadeus of the scholarly and the popular, of Mozart the man and Mozart the myth, of Mozart’s musical activity and of the reception of his music, occurs at the end of the film, in the Requiem sequences.
4 Conclusion
Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus is really an artistic success not only for its technical refinement and dramatic richness, but for the intellectual brilliance with which the theme is handled, giving the play its specifically “modern” appeal. His rival characters, Salieri and Mozart, are rivals of talent—one a genius and one a "mediocrity," whose products are judged by mediocre audiences.
As a whole, Amadeu captures Mozart reception from the last 200-or-so years in microcosm. Told from inside the 19th century, with a loaded agenda for the biographer Salieri, by a late 20th-century writer and director aiming at the widest of contemporary audiences, it represents a landmark in Mozart reception itself, simultaneously commenting on and contributing towards understandings and perceptions of its protagonist in the best traditions of biographical work.
References
［1］ Brown, A. Peter. Amadeus and Mozart: Setting the Record Straight ［J］. The American Scholar vol. 61, 1992.
［2］ Carol Simpson Stern. Peter Shaffer: Overview ［J］. London: St. James Press, 1993.
［3］ Wendy Perkins, Critical Essay on "Amadeus" ［M］. Detroit: Gale, 2001.
［4］ Wilfred L. Guerin & Earle Labor, Etc. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature ［M］.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
［5］ 劉海平, 赵宇, 《英美戏剧》［M］. 南京：南京大学出版社, 1992.
［6］ 刘海平，朱雪峰，《英美戏剧：作品与评论》［M］. 上海：上海外语教育出版社，2008.
［7］ 汪义群,《彼得?谢弗和他的剧作》［M］. 北京：中国戏剧出版社, 1991.
［8］ 中国大百科全书(戏剧卷)［M］. 北京：中国大百科全书出版社，1989.