Customer Reviews (1)

Very Informative, But Too Technical
This book is a long-overdue tribute to a much and unfairly maligned operatic genius of classical Italian music, who was one of Beethoven's teachers. The book contains not only a Salieri biography, but a detailedhistory of the opera in to Salieri's day and rightly regards him as thesuccessor of Gluck's reform operas. The major fault of the book is that itwill appeal mainly to musicians and musical historians rather than thegeneral reader due to its over-technical nature with regard to some areas.Still, the best book about Salieri's life and art. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

A THOROUGHLY REASEARCHED BOOK!
THIS BOOK IS WORTH EVERY PENNY . . . A COMPLETE PORTRAYALOF SALIERI AND THE VIENESSE OPERA.ALSO DELVES INTO THE MANY MYTHSREGARDING SALIERO'S RELATIONSHIP TO MOZART AND HIS DEATH. THE AUTHORIS TO BE COMMENDED ... Read more

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This is the first Salieri's Minuet published in United States. The music is a theme from his opera "Tarare" This arrangement by John Schaum is for easy level piano students. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Contenido, published by Editorial Contenido, S.A. de C.V. on November 1, 1996. The length of the article is 1183 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Antonio Salieri, el calumniado.(TT: The slandered Antonio Salieri)
Author: Mario Márquez
Publication: Contenido (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 1996
Publisher: Editorial Contenido, S.A. de C.V.
Issue: n401Page: p90(4)

Article Type: Biography

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This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on June 1, 1994. The length of the article is 809 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Maligned Master: The Real Story of Antonio Salieri.
Author: Alice M. Hanson
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 1994
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: v50Issue: n4Page: p1395(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on March 1, 2000. The length of the article is 988 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera.(Review)
Author: Dorothea Link
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2000
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 56Issue: 3Page: 709

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Opera Canada, published by Opera Canada Publications on March 22, 2000. The length of the article is 503 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Antonio Salieri and Viennese opera.
Publication: Opera Canada (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2000
Publisher: Opera Canada Publications
Volume: 41Page: 43-4

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on September 1, 1996. The length of the article is 1525 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Mass in D Major. (book reviews)
Author: Robert M. Cammarota
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 1996
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: v53Issue: n1Page: p275(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on September 1, 1996. The length of the article is 1512 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Missa stylo a cappella, C-Dur, gemischter Chor: 1767. (book reviews)
Author: Robert M. Cammarota
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 1996
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: v53Issue: n1Page: p275(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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0riginating at the National Theatre of Great Britain, Amadeus was the recipient of both the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award. In the United States, the play won the coveted Tony Award and went on to become a critically acclaimed major motion picture winning eight Oscars, including Best Picture.

Now, this extraordinary work about the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is available with a new preface by Peter Shaffer and a new introduction by the director of the 1998 Broadway revival, Sir Peter Hall. Amadeus is a must-have for classical music buffs, theatre lovers, and aficionados of historical fiction.

Customer Reviews (32)

Who will pray for the world's mediocrities?
When I was younger, I almost never reread anything.My hunger was so voracious that I gobbled up a book and then rapaciously moved on to the next.But as I've aged, I read less frantically, returning again and again to a few works that especially move me.At the top of the list of such works are the plays of Peter Shaffer.And at the top of that list is his masterpiece "Amadeus."

What I find remarkable about Shaffer's "Amadeus" isn't so much the title character, Mozart, as the character who becomes Mozart's nemesis, Antonio Salieri.Salieri is one of the great tragic figures in literature.He's an individual who appears to genuinely love musical beauty, and who genuinely wants to dedicate his life to it.(In an early scene, for example, he makes a deal with God."Signore," he begs, "let me be your flute, your mouthpiece.Let me produce absolute beauty.In return, I'll be your slave.")But Salieri is also a hopeless mediocrity.He knows good music when he hears it, but he's simply unable to create it himself.His compositions are acceptable, and sometimes even pleasing to the ear.But when compared with the music of Mozart, they reveal themselves for what they are:technically proficient, but utterly uninspired.The awareness of his own mediocrity, coupled with his absolute yearning for beauty and his life-destroying jealousy of/admiration for Mozart, is the heart of the play.(Milos Forman's 1984 cinematic production of the play unfortunately rewrites the script to put Mozart rather than Salieri centerstage, thereby missing the whole point.)

When one thinks about it--and I believe that this is what makes Shaffer's play so poignant and profound--Salieri is everyperson.Let's face it:most of us are mediocre.We fall somewhere in that great middle zone of "average."We'll never be able to create artworks that express the yearning for beauty that even the dimmest of us occasionally feel.

As if that's not bad enough, the world, as Shaffer demonstrates in his play, is unforgiving of mediocrity when it comes to art.One can work like a demon, as Salieri does, but it's genius that the world wants, genius that the world demands, and genius that the world rewards.Moreover, the creative genius is allowed anything by the admiring world--in fact, the world expects its geniuses to walk to the beat of a countercultural drummer.The mediocre artist, however, is allowed no latitude whatsoever in personal lifestyle.

The paradox of this situation, as well as the horrible burden of mediocrity felt by artists like Salieri (and the rest of us), is the tragic message of "Amadeus."When Salieri at play's end tells us, in his decrepitude and madness, that we can pray to him when we feel the sting of our own shortcomings and he will bless us, most of us ought to shiver.For, after all, we don't want our mediocrity blessed, do we?And yet the tragedy of the human condition is that, blessed or not, it's what we are.And so Shaffer leaves us with this question:how do we overcome our Salieri-like resentment and frustration at not being able to create beauty long enough simply to appreciate beauty when we encounter it?

Amadeus -- Play Script
The best part of the book is the introduction, which tells of the changes made to the script over the years, based on on-going research by the author. I saw the movie and the play, then bought the script in order to compare the different renderings of this amazing story.

Spiritual Vs. Material
Peter Shaffer's award-winning and highly popular play AMADEUS is in many ways a morality play but seen through the eyes of a complicated postmodern villain.The play is called AMADEUS but the chief character of the story is Antonio Salieri.Salieri is the Court Composer for Emperor Joseph II of Austria during the end of the 18th Century.He is held in esteem not only by the Emperor and Court, but by the masses as well.Then Amadeus Mozart makes his way to the Austrian Court at Salzburg and Salieri recognizes in the young man a musical genius superior to anything musical he has ever heard.He becomes enraged with bitter jealousy.Feeling that God has abandoned him and given the talent that he has trained to develop and possess his entire life, Salieri declares a war against God that he will fight on the battleground that is Amadeus Mozart.

AMADEUS is a fantastic play.Author Peter Shaffer has revised the play several times since its first performance in 1979 and this version of the show (written twenty years later in 1999) is in my opinion the best because it is the one that portrays Salieri more than just an evil man, but as a human being that the audience and readers can relate to and actually understand somewhat.A must see play that anyone who enjoys theatre should be familiar with.

Well, then, there it is...
Like a newspaper article, theatre has to convey its story with an economy of words.

In this way, great playwriting is a rare skill much like land the penny toss at the carnival and Shaffer is that rare playwriter who accomplishes his task so seemingly effortlessly.

Deftly, Shaffer tosses his Amadeus and Saliere together and in so doing plays each against their type rendering his Amadeus into the simple squeezebox which provides the background for the languid single note of Saliere's mournful jealousy.

What's so amazing is that in telling us the story of Amadeus' art, Shaffer shares important insights about his own.Don't have too many or too few notes but just the right number.Don't be so flashy in being good that people concentrate on the flashiness instead of the point.

And don't become so engrossed in your art that you lose sight of the ultimate ends it was meant to service in the first place.

Whether we are each more Amadeus or more Saliere we can connect with this play.

Brilliant
The film version of "Amadeus" is perhaps my favorite movie of all time. So I was a little nervous when, after picking up the play, I read that it would be very different from the movie. But I needn't have feared because, while there are several key differences, the heart of the story and the genius of its telling are equally prevalent. There is an intriguing alteration to the character of Salieri here in that he feels remorse for what he does to Mozart when confronted with the results of his machinations -- making him much more human and layered than his celluloid counterpart. The truly wonderful thing is that both forms are spectacular -- F. Murray Abraham's Salieri a brazen and histrionic devil to the printed Salieri who becomes horrified by what he has been reduced to in his quest for glory. As drama goes, you can't do much better than the exquisite "Amadeus". Shaffer's labor and its myriad incarnations have only served to deepen the play's message and painstakingly evolved it into the brilliant work presented here. It is undoubtedly one of the great masterpieces of theater, and will surely stand the test of time in future generations. ... Read more