Mr Sherwood seems to think that Mozart is portrayed as a 'sexual predator' in Amadeus. Look carefully. Listen carefully. Even Salieri's furious snarl that Mozart had "had my darling girl" need not mean what it would mean in these modern times. Even if Mozart had learned his manners from the aristocratic circles in which he moved as a child, (circles by no means devoid of vulgar humor, I'll bet, but not in mixed company, perhaps) sexual license would not have been tolerated. Madame Cavalieri (or whoever) would probably not have let Mozart get to home base and run the smallest risk of getting pregnant. (Getting pregnant with an aristocratic patron's child was one thing, but with that of a mere servant quite another. However, even after having played whatever sexual games Mozart may have with the younger daughter of his landlady, and in spite of her manipulation= s to get him to marry her, he may still have written that letter to his father with some degree of honest feeling, enough to give it the necessary tone of earnestness that it needed. There is no doubt that the young Mozarts were 'in love' for at least a brief time, in some sense of the phrase. The degree to which they were and weren't is portrayed very plausibly and movingly in the film. As someone suggested, Mozart's letters reveal a personality remarkably close to that portrayed in the movie. They also reveal the range of possible expression in such letters, and how they both disguised and revealed the feelings of the writers, and how truth and deception rolled promiscuously together in every paragraph! Modern life and speech is, indeed, remarkably simple in comparison. Personal liberty has freed us from the necessity to be sophisticated in our personal correspondence. We musn't make the assumption that with Mozart's letters it was a case of wysiwyg. Arch