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Amadeus weaves a complicated spell. It often feels like there are several plays going on at once. As Sir Peter Hall writes in his introduction, "the play asks why God would seem to bestow genius so indiscriminately, indifferent to morality or human decency." This is the question that Shaffer's Salieri wishes for us to consider as he presents his case, something he calls "my last composition." We in the audience, however, are skeptical of his calculated confessions. We see that he's a crank, and a bit of a joke -- a mediocrity trying to snatch away some infamy from the bargain, since he is to be denied any lasting fame.
As the play unfolds, we measure our own skepticism against Salieri's increasing desperation. His story is all-too human, we begin to discover. He is a good man, apparently; despite his envy and duplicity. He is cursed, he tells us. His curse is to be denied by God any real measure of the talent Mozart possesses in abundance. But we know he is cursed as well by his resentments. His goodness recedes with every resentful indulgence, with every step he takes down his treacherous path. But as this poison turns the man into a self-loathing monster, our sympathies begin to change. Ironically, as Salieri's actions darken, as he tries to pass off his treacheries as some kind of principled rebellion against God, we reconsider our initial skepticism. We reconsider not because of Salieri's bogus religious arguments, but because of our growing awareness that his struggle is for something far more compelling than the theology he hides behind. Salieri's real struggle is for atonement, and this struggle he barely understands.
However one receives the theological discussion in Amadeus, it is our coming to understand a very human Salieri that is at the center of the drama. Salieri is one of us. We, like him, must live with our worst actions. We may not revel in them so theatrically, or describe them with such wit, but we struggle under the guilt brought on by our own envies and bitterness. In the end, we see that Salieri's story may seem to us at the start as nothing more than a bitter joke, but it ends making the case for something far more moving -- a deeply human need to atone at the last.
Jim and Natalie Haslam
The University of Tennessee | College of Arts & Sciences | UTK Theatre Department | Knoxville, Tennessee 37996 | 865-974-5161
