Early into Starz’s new 18th-century historical drama Amadeus, a royal patron of the arts demands the court composer remake one of his most popular operas. “A return to past successes is what’s needed in delicate times,” he proclaims, which could double as a statement of purpose for the series itself. Playwright Peter Shaffer’s cutting take on the potentially apocryphal musical rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his lesser-known contemporary Antonio Salieri already won a Tony for Best Play in 1981 and an Oscar for Best Picture in 1984. Now Black Doves creator Joe Barton is returning to the well once again with a darker, earthier take on the same material—not to mention a chance for stars Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe to put their stamp on roles that have earned acclaim for everyone from Ian McKellen, Tim Curry, and F. Murray Abraham to Mark Hamill, Michael Sheen, and Neil Patrick Harris.
The result is frequently compelling and occasionally riveting, if never quite essential viewing. If the magic of the Miloš Forman film is that it’s as light and airy as meringue, Barton’s take is more like a rich, occasionally too dense Black Forest cake. Working with directors Julian Farino and Alice Seabright, Barton grounds Shaffer’s famed musical rivalry in the grittier, more salacious historical reality of its time period, with occasional moments of heightened imagery, like Mozart (Sharpe) setting a piano on fire before he starts to play it. Ironically, however, it’s a meta idea about the nature of historical mythologizing in the finale that winds up being the most compelling thing about the series.
Still, there are some clever adaptive choices before that ultimate requiem. Where the stage show has an aging Salieri (Bettany) narrate his history with Mozart directly to the audience and the film has him share his confession with a priest, Barton has him open up to Mozart’s widow, Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy). That immediately reframes the series as more of a three-hander than a duet. In the flashbacks that make up the bulk of the show, Salieri is a talented but perhaps not truly exceptional composer working for Emperor Joseph II (Rory Kinnear) in Vienna circa 1781. Mozart is the preternaturally gifted and preternaturally immature wunderkind who swoops in as the hottest new thing in court. And Constanze is a pragmatic young woman caught between her dreams of being a famous soprano and the reality that she doesn’t quite have the musical range for it.
They’re characters who run the gamut of self-awareness. Intelligent but reckless, Mozart acts purely on impulse, with Sharpe delivering a performance less manic and more charismatically aloof than Tom Hulce in the film. It’s a transformative take on a character often relegated to comedic relief. Salieri, meanwhile, is imperious, status-obsessed, and tormented by the fact that he’s just talented enough to appreciate Mozart’s god-given skills while also understanding his own lack of true genius in comparison. Bettany effectively captures the seething rage and self-loathing hidden behind Salieri’s placid exterior. Yet it’s Constanze who might truly have the full picture of both men and the ways in which their obsession with music and fame prevents them from appreciating the fullness—and the briefness—of life. Radiating both intelligence and playfulness, Creevy all but steals the show from her two co-stars in a heavily beefed-up role.
Barton’s take on Amadeus is hornier and more explicit than past versions have been and yet also more connected to the life-and-death realities of the past, too. For all the fancy wigs and fine tailcoats of the Viennese court, the medical limitations of the era mean that death is often just a fever or an unchewed piece of beef away. That gives a real sense of stakes to this story of musical rivalries and courtly politics. Weighing in on the latest opera is the most important thing on Emperor Joseph’s mind until war breaks out and suddenly he couldn’t care less about Salieri’s sniveling musical power plays.
It’s an intriguing balance of themes that, at five hours, also starts to feel spread a bit thin at times. Amadeus—which was made for Sky Atlantic in the U.K. before it was acquired by Starz—runs the gamut from the satirical comedic impulses of The Great to a much more conventional period drama sensibility. Yet it never really finds a signature tone all its own. The series is stuck between exploding out like Mozart and holding back like Salieri. Though it serves up a smorgasbord of ideas about everything from divine inspiration to daddy issues to the mercurial nature of making a living as a creative, they don’t quite add up to a full meal.
Still, a trio of strong performances and the chance to watch some elaborately staged versions of Mozart’s most famous operas go a long way towards keeping things engaging—especially when the finale sticks the landing so powerfully. Though this isn’t an Amadeus for the ages, the love/hate relationship between Salieri and Mozart is so inherently compelling it’s hard not to get sucked in by it anyway. Indeed, considering an 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin and an 1897 opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov explored the rivalry before Shaffer ever did, perhaps it’s best to think of the series less as Barton trying to deliver a definitive take on the saga and more so just another new riff for these particularly delicate times.
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