Santu de Silva notes:

>As for myself, I believe that Shaffer has transformed the personalities,
>the events and the facts into understandable 20th-century entities that
>not only are the basis of a parable of talent versus mediocrity, but he
>has also shown us a remarkably astute vision of the historical Mozart.

I hope the historians will chime in here, but I rather object to the Mr
de Silva's last phrase.  The movie version, the only one I've seen, of
Amadeus showed a rather crude sexual predator on the make as "Wolfie"
courted Constanza- it rather made young Mozart into the image of an
18th-century rock star.  That image is in stark contrast to a letter
Wolfgang wrote to his father announcing his engagement to Constanza.
Possibly in the vein of justifying his marriage to a woman whom he noted
was not terribly clever, he said something to the effect of, "I'm 26, and
I've never had a woman".  One of his biographers noted Mozart had a horror
of venereal disease, and avoided sexual licentousness like the plague that
it often was [is].

The movie did prompt me to stir my stumps to read Arthur Hutchins'
biography of Mozart.  The man in Hutchins book was scarcely recognizable
from the film of Amadeus.

"Laurence Sherwood" <[log in to unmask]>