Other Titles • Amadeus: The Director's Cut (1984) • Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (1984) • Peter Shaffer's Amadeus: Director's Cut (1984)
Quotes from Amadeus (1984)
1
[Reflecting upon a Mozart score] Salieri: I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes - at an absolute beauty.
(52 votes)
2
Katerina Cavalieri: I heard you met Herr Mozart. Salieri: News travels fast in Vienna. Katerina Cavalieri: And he's been commissioned to write an opera. Is it true? Salieri: Yes. Katerina Cavalieri: Is there a part in it for me? Salieri: No. Katerina Cavalieri: How would you know? Salieri: Do you know where it's set, my dear? Katerina Cavalieri: No. Salieri: In a harem. Katerina Cavalieri: What's that? Salieri: A brothel! Katerina Cavalieri: Oh-h-h-h.
(49 votes)
3
[last lines] [Salieri is wheelchaired through the insane asylum] Salieri: Mediocrities everywhere... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you all.
(49 votes)
4
Emanuel Schikaneder: I asked you if we could start rehearsals next week and you said yes. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Well, we can. Emanuel Schikaneder: Can I see it? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: No. Emanuel Schikaneder: Why not? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: There's nothing to see. Emanuel Schikaneder: Where is it? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Here. It's all right here in my noodle. The rest is just scribbling.
(47 votes)
5
[repeated line] Emperor Joseph II: Well, there it is.
(42 votes)
6
[the Emperor offers the sheet music of Salieri's welcome march to Mozart] Mozart: Keep it Majesty, if you want. It's already here in my head. Emperor Joseph II: What? On one hearing only? Mozart: I think so, Sire, yes. Emperor Joseph II: Show us.
(2 votes)
7
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I actually threw the score on the fire he made me so angry. Salieri: You burned the score? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: No, no. My wife took it out in time.
8
Constanze Mozart: Is it not good? Salieri: It is miraculous.
9
Salieri: They showed no corrections of any kind. He was simply writing down music already finished in his head. Page after page as if he were taking dictation.
10
Emperor Joseph II: Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. But there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?
11
Salieri: Mozart, it was good of you to come! Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: How could I not? Salieri: So, did my work please you? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [hesitantly] I never knew that music like that was possible! Salieri: [uncertainly] You flatter me. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: No, no! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but..."Salieri."
12
Salieri: God was singing through this little man to all the world, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar. But then, do you know what happened? A miracle!
13
Salieri: He was my idol. I can't think of a time when I didn't know his name.
14
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Confutatis maledictis" - when the wicked are confounded. "Flammis Acribus Adictis." How would you translate that? Salieri: Consigned to flames of woe. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Do you believe it? Salieri: What? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A fire which never dies, burning you forever? Salieri: Oh yes.
15
[Addressing a crucifix] Salieri: From now on we are enemies, You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind I will block You, I swear it. I will hinder and harm Your creature on Earth as far as I am able. I will ruin Your incarnation.
16
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.
17
Father Vogler: Oh, that's charming! I'm sorry; I didn't know you wrote that. Salieri: I didn't. That was Mozart.
18
Salieri: My plan was so simple that it terrified me. First I must get the death mass and then I, I must achieve his death. Father Vogler: What? Salieri: His funeral! Imagine it, all of Vienna there, Mozart's coffin, Mozart's little coffin in the middle, and then suddenly, in that silence, music! A divine music bursts out over them all. A great mass of death! Requiem mass for Wolfgang Mozart, composed by his dear friend, Antonio Salieri! Oh what sublimity, what depth, what passion in the music! Salieri has been touched by God at last. And God is forced to listen! Powerless, powerless to stop it! I, for once in the end, laughing at him! The only thing that bothered me was the actual killing. How does one do that? Hmmm? How does one kill a man? Well it's one thing to dream about it; very different when you, when you have to do it with your own hands.
19
[Salieri's description of Mozart's mastery] Salieri: Displace one note and there would be diminishment, displace one phrase and the structure would fall.
20
[addressing the complaints about the "improper" libretto for "Figaro"] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Come on now, be honest! Which one of you wouldn't rather listen to his hairdresser than Hercules? Or Horatius, or Orpheus... people so lofty they sound as if they shit marble!
21
Salieri: Your... merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved, rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory.
22
[about Emperor Joseph II's musical tastes] Salieri: Actually, the man had no ear at all. But what did it matter? He adored my music.
23
[Trying on wigs] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: They're all so beautiful. Why don't I have three heads?
24
[to a priest] Salieri: I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.
25
Katerina Cavalieri: Looks don't concern me, Maestro. Only talent interests a woman of taste.
26
Salieri: While my father prayed earnestly to God to protect commerce, I would offer up secretly the proudest prayer a boy could think of: Lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate Your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world. Dear God make me immortal. After I die let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote. In return I will give You my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life, Amen.
27
[Having played two pieces of music to the priest, who doesn't recognize either] Salieri: Can you remember no melody of mine? I was the most famous composer in Europe. I wrote 40 operas alone.
28
Katerina Cavalieri: Is that woman still lying on the floor?
29
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: That doesn't really work, does it?
30
Salieri: You don't mean to tell me that you're living in poverty? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: No. But I'm broke.
31
Constanze Mozart: [to Mozart's father] May I offer you some tea, Herr Mozart? Mozart: Tea? Who wants tea? Let's go out! This calls for a feast. You don't want tea, do you, Papa? Constanze Mozart: Wolfie... Mozart: I know, let's go dancing! Papa loves parties, don't you? Constanze Mozart: Wolfie! Mozart: What? How can you be so boring? Tea...
32
[Mozart loses at musical chairs] Emanuel Schikaneder: Herr Mozart, why don't you name your son's penalty? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Yes, papa. Name it. Name it, I'll do anything you say. Anything. Leopold Mozart: I want you to come back to Salzburg with me, my son. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Papa, the rule is you can only give a penalty that can be performed in the room. Leopold Mozart: I'm tired of this game, I don't want to play anymore. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: But my penalty! [jumping up and down like an angry child] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I've got to have a penalty!
33
Mozart: Why must I submit samples of my work to some stupid committee just to teach a thirteen-year-old girl? Count Von Strack: Because his majesty wishes it. Mozart: Is the emperor angry with me? Count Von Strack: Quite the contrary. Mozart: Then why doesn't he simply appoint me to the post? Count Von Strack: Mozart, you are not the only composer in Vienna. Mozart: No. But I'm the best!
34
Mozart: [of his great opera, "Figaro"] Nine performances! Nine, that's all it's had! And withdrawn! Salieri: I know, I know, it's outrageous. Still, if the public doesn't like one's work, one has to accept the fact gracefully. Mozart: But what is it that they don't like? Salieri: I can speak for the emperor. You make too many demands on the royal ear. The poor man can't concentrate for more than an hour... you gave him four. Mozart: What did you think of it yourself? Did you like it at all? Salieri: I thought it was marvelous. Mozart: Of course! It's the best opera yet written, I know it... Why didn't they come? Salieri: I think you overestimate our dear Viennese, my friend. You know you didn't even give them a good bang at the end of songs, to let them know when to clap? Mozart: I know, I know, maybe you should give me some lessons in that...
35
Mozart: [about the royal composer's position he did not get] Whom did they choose? Salieri: Herr Zummer. Mozart: Herr Zummer? But the man's a fool, he's a total mediocrity! Salieri: No, no, he has yet to achieve mediocrity.
36
Mozart: It's unbelievable, the director has actually torn up a huge section of my music. They say I have to rewrite the opera. But it's perfect as it is! I can't rewrite what's perfect!
37
Constanze Mozart: Wolfie, I think you really are going mad. You work like a slave for that idiot actor who won't give you a penny. And here, this is not a ghost! This is a real man who puts down real money. Why on earth won't you finish it? Can you give me one reason I can understand? Mozart: It's killing me.
38
Salieri: All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?
39
Salieri: Leave me alone. Father Vogler: I cannot leave alone a soul in pain. Salieri: Do you know who I am? Father Vogler: It makes no difference. All men are equal in God's eyes. Salieri: [leans in suspiciously] *Are* they?
40
[first lines] Salieri: Mozart! Mozart, forgive your assassin! I confess, I killed you...
41
Salieri: My father, he did not care for music. When I told him how I wished I could be like Mozart, he would say, "Boy, do you want to be a trained monkey? Would you like me to drag you around Europe doing tricks, like a circus freak? [Salieri chuckles ruefully] Salieri: How could I tell *him*... what music meant to me.
42
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sire, only opera can do this. In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it's just noise, no-one can understand a word. But with opera, with music... with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it's not noise, it's a perfect harmony!
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