You said I got a '90's Volvo and their whole discography

[sovay]

Okay, on an unfamiliar antibiotic and the aftershock of the concert and next to zero sleep it appears that I do not have the mental wherewithal to write any further about movies today, so please enjoy this thoroughly charming article: "Antonio Salieri's Revenge." Shaffer's Salieri has been important to me for twenty years, but I have in fact heard and enjoyed the music of the real, neither murderous nor mediocre one, and I don't see the point of resisting this description: "Salieri is one of history's all-time losers—a bystander run over by a Mack truck of malicious gossip."

Comments

[wpadmirer]

I saw AMADEUS on Broadway with Frank Langella playing Sallieri. It's a magnificent play. Too bad it's based on such a lie.

[sovay]

It's a magnificent play. Too bad it's based on such a lie.

So many pieces of really good art are. It's tricky.

[rachelmanija]

I love Amadeus but the real Salieri sounds great. The bit about him sadly slinking away after eavesdropping until he heard someone say something bad about his play was so relatable.

[sovay]

I love Amadeus but the real Salieri sounds great.

I wonder if he's gotten any fictional treatments that aren't Shaffer. He should. I'll settle for a translation of Herrmann's biography until then.

The bit about him sadly slinking away after eavesdropping until he heard someone say something bad about his play was so relatable.

Seriously!

[kore]

Carl Czerny, the composer of piano exercises that have tortured generations of students

I don't always like Alex Ross but that got an actual loud "HAH!" out of me.

When my mother did her Elderhostel/community college Great Composers lectures, when she got to Mozart she always spent the first five minutes debunking Amadeus. She loved the movie, tho!

[kore]

Yeah, Shakespeare's histories have that problem in spades.

[kore]

My mom had the book Maligned Master: The Real Story of Antonio Salieri, a bio by Volkmar Braunbehrens, and now I have it. I haven't read it tho. It's pretty cheap on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Maligned-Master-Story-Antonio-Salieri/dp/088064155X

[a_reasonable_man]

I saw Amadeus in London in 1981, with Frank Finlay as Salieri. I still remember the way he said "sweetmeats from my native Italy."

[sovay]

When my mother did her Elderhostel/community college Great Composers lectures, when she got to Mozart she always spent the first five minutes debunking Amadeus. She loved the movie, tho!

I understand that! I didn't love the movie, but I loved the play. It's an incredibly powerful and resonant channel for thinking about creativity and envy and what it means to be good enough. It just happens to have real people's names stuck on it, which is awkward. (See also, I suspect, The Royal Hunt of the Sun.)

[sovay]

Yeah, Shakespeare's histories have that problem in spades.

Mary Renault's The King Must Die (1958) is in no way a faithful representation of Bronze Age Greece, but it shaped the ways I think about sacrifice and consent to this day. It feels real right down to its dyes and pottery. And that makes it a little dangerous, because it's got Renault's characteristic issues with women soaked through it as deeply as the sea.

[sovay]

I saw Amadeus in London in 1981, with Frank Finlay as Salieri. I still remember the way he said "sweetmeats from my native Italy."

I can still hear David Suchet's "Grazie, Signore!"

(Who was Mozart in 1981?)

[kore]

It's an incredibly powerful and resonant channel for thinking about creativity and envy and what it means to be good enough. It just happens to have real people's names stuck on it, which is awkward

YES and also YES. It's so powerful. But it's so different from the actual people....

[a_reasonable_man]

I had to look it up, but Richard O'Callaghan.

I do remember a lot of things, though, about that trip to London, including seeing the procession for Chuck and Di's wedding.

[kore]

I feel that way about her Alexander novels -- "yes, this is how it happened." She is dangerously convincing. (Persuasive?)

Renault's characteristic issues with women soaked through it as deeply as the sea

that is lovely.

[sovay]

I had to look it up, but Richard O'Callaghan.

I have never seen him, but I know what he sounds like: he was Merry in the 1981 BBC Radio Lord of the Rings.

(Frank Finlay I think I have seen only as Van Helsing. Ironically, I identified him there with Mozart.)

I do remember a lot of things, though, about that trip to London, including seeing the procession for Chuck and Di's wedding.

That sounds fascinating. What were you in London for?

[sovay]

She is dangerously convincing. (Persuasive?)

I tend to say "plausible," but I know what you mean. That must be the way it was, wasn't it?

[a_reasonable_man]

I was in Denmark with my family that summer and was invited to London by second cousins who were touring Europe. They were going to see the wedding procession; the mother of that family had seen Queen Elizabeth's coronation procession and wanted her family to have a similar memory. I have a lot of stories from that trip.

[kore]

In that Mary Renault bio that came out a while back (much longer than I thought, ahahah) the author talks about scene with someone using a stigil and how one part of the skin is "always" left for last, and it's details like that "always" that give her work such uncanny authority.

[kore]

It is like that ONE bad comment on a fic!

[kore]

Ooh that post is great. ("I want the book of your film essays, and I want it now" -- yes please! in the most supportive non-pressury tone possible.)

[sovay]

("I want the book of your film essays, and I want it now" -- yes please! in the most supportive non-pressury tone possible.)

Thank you! I . . . have been told recently that books of film criticism are difficult to market and sell.

[kore]

....well whoever told you that can go piss up a rope, as my late father used to say. Pfui. (Publishers don't know what will sell any more than movie producers know what movies will sell a lot of ticket. It's all fucking guessing imho.)

[nineweaving]

Poor old Salieri. He coulda been a runner-up.

Nine