Richard A. Ujvary <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Here's what Shaffer has to say:
>
>"Finally, this is how Mozart actually appears to me.  Trained superbly
>by his expert and relentless father, Wolfgang Amadeus was fitted from
>the age of 16 for one supreme mode of existence: to be the magic
>flute at the lips of God.  His death at the age of 35 does not seem
>to be tragic in the least.  He died after gigantic labors of sublime
>transcription because the Player had finished playing with him.  That
>is all.  How lucky to be used up like that, rather than, as most of
>us are, by the trillion trivialities which whittle us away into dust."

I think this is a very revealing quote from Shaffer.  Working on the play
is to be become aware that the playwright (and his mouthpiece Salieri)
indeed became consumed with jealousy of poor Wolfie!  This, doubtless, is
what led him to pull his composer down a peg or two.  The hero is Salieri,
Mr. Ordinary, Mr. Mediocre (a libel on Salieri, too, of course).

The line about the "magic flute at the lips of God" gives us a very good
example of Shaffer's customary impressiveness of utterance, combined with
total vacuity of meaning.

The last line shows his innate sympathy with the bourgeois white collar
worker "measuring out his life with coffee spoons"; and his surprising,
paradoxical suspicion of the artistic life.  Odd that, from one of the
most bankrolled playwrights of his day (now, not surprisingly, passed).

Whether or not we choose to drag God screaming and kicking into the frame,
anyone unable to evince some regret the passing of the man whose art was
expanding along such diverse lines as Mozart's in the late quartets and
quintets, not to mention the Requiem, The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di
Tito, is clearly not to be taken seriously either as a chronicler or a
critic.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"