Summary

• Salieri's vow of chastity was an embellishment in Amadeus - he married and had children in real life.
• Mozart's heavy drinking in the film is exaggerated - no evidence he was an alcoholic in reality.
• Salieri wasn't manipulative towards the Emperor in real life - he earned his position through talent.

Based on a beloved stage play and the winner of multiple Academy Awards, Amadeus is one of the most successful and beloved films of all time, but how accurate is Amadeus? As with most biopics, movies often take true-life stories and add embellishments, increasing the film's dramatic elements. These dramatizations are often either heightened versions of events that happened, or they are completely made up to add to the dramatic moments of the finished movie. This Miloš Forman movie is no different.

Amadeus is about the rivalry between Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but not everything in the running time really happened concerning the two lead characters. Despite the historical inaccuracies, Amadeus earned 11 Oscar nominations and won eight of them, including Best Picture, Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham as Salleri), and Best Director. Tom Hulce, who played Mozart, was also nominated for Best Actor. It was also added to the National Film Registry, showing adding drama never hurts a biopic like Amadeus.

Amadeus ia available to watch on AppleTV.

Things Amadeus Dramaticized

Salieri Took A Vow Of Chastity

Antonio Salieri's vow of chastity is the easiest moment in Amadeus to debunk. However, even though it is not true, it is a moment that the film embellishes. There is no way to know exactly what Salieri promised his God, but he was not chaste or celibate. In fact, Antonio Salieri married and had children, and there are even rumors that he had a supposed affair with Catrina Cavalleri. He also suffered through tragedies, as his only son died in 1805 and his wife died in 1807, both ing before he died years later in 1825.

The chastity storyline was likely done to increase the fictional Salieri's devotion to composing great music, by presenting the fact that he's willing to forsake his desires of the flesh. However, in real life, a wife and kids were hard evidence against this part of the Amadeus plot. In all, Salieiri and his wife had eight children, seven of them daughters.

Mozart's Heavy Drinking

While it's true that Mozart liked to have a good time, was bad with money, and proved to be immature and strange, evidence shows that the composer was not an alcoholic, as Amadeus claimed. In the film, Mozart is always drinking alcohol. Bottles of various substances are often scattered about his house and workspace, but this is all a highly romanticized image. Though it has been said Mozart favored punch, as was customary during the period, there is little evidence he was a heavy drinker.

With his gift for composing and creating beautiful music uninhibited, it's unlikely Mozart completed his work inebriated or under the influence. Dr Jonathan Noble published a book called That Jealous Demon: My Wretched Health and wrote, "There is 'no way you can go around composing operas, symphonies or string quartets' if you are a true alcoholic." He wrote that there is no evidence Mozart, Schubert, Brahms or Beethoven had problems with alcohol (via Daily Mail).

Salieri Manipulated The Emperor For His Position

One of the biggest embellishments and exaggerations regarding Antonio Salieri is how manipulative he was towards his employer, Emperor Joseph II. The truth of the matter is that Salieri didn't have to manipulate anyone. He relied on his talent and reputation to earn a living for himself and his pupils. Though Mozart was very popular, Salieri also had one advantage over him. He was Italian. During this period, Italian composers like Salieri had a better chance of getting published and employed.

This is semi-referenced in the film when Salieri convinces the Emperor to grant him a position to avoid favoritism for the Austrian-born composer. In reality, composer Florian Leopold Gassmann brought Salieri with him to play for Emperor Joseph II, and the Emperor liked Salieri's music so much that he invited him back to play for him every chance he could. They maintained this relationship until Joseph's death.

Salieri Hated Mozart

Though there was indeed a musical rivalry between Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, there was hardly any animosity between them. In fact, Salieri and Mozart knew each other and even collaborated. If Salieri ever had a beef with Mozart at all, it was after his rival ed away and became more famous and known than himself. Salieri, though like many, was put off by Mozart's eccentric nature.

Salieri reportedly adored Mozart's opera Der Zauberflöte/The Magic Flute. In Mozart: A Life, Maynard Solomon wrote that Salieri "heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture, to the last choir there was not a piece that didn't elicit a 'Bravo!' or 'Bello!' out of him." Along with other composers, Salieri might have helped finish "The Requiem Mass." The film presents Salieri's hatred of Mozart as the film's catalyst. However, their rivalry was more professional than that.

Salieri Killed Mozart

The famous line that starts the movie's story is: "Mozart, forgive your assassin." Though a mentally unstable Antonio Salieri confessed to killing Mozart, he was not responsible for the musician's death. However, certain events did connect him with his rival's death. The idea that Salieri killed Mozart arose from a rumor that Mozart suspected he was being poisoned, along with speculation that the rivalry between them was less than professional.

Salieri later told one of his former pupils that the accusations about him were all rumors and hearsay without an ounce of truth. However, that didn't stop the imagination of playwrights, filmmakers, and moviegoers, including the embellishments in Amadeus. In reality, Mozart suffered from frequent attacks of tonsillitis. In 1784, he developed post-streptococcal Schönlein-Henoch syndrome. His death was a result of this, which caused a cerebral hemorrhage and bronchopneumonia (via JRSM).

Things In Amadeus That Really Happened

Mozart Was A Child Prodigy

Many scholars and music enthusiasts today compare him to what we would call a child star

One of the things Amadeus did get right was the fact that Mozart was a gifted child prodigy. His reputation as a musical genius presented by Antonio Salieri builds up the surprise of his reveal when the movie introduces him for the first time in the Prince Arch-Bishop's court. Mozart was indeed a musical genius from a very young age. Many scholars and music enthusiasts today compare him to what we would call a child star. Mozart played songs on the harpsichord at four years old and composed simple music at five.

His father, a gifted composer himself, recognized his talents and essentially took him on the road to perform for various nobles and audiences. Mozart also proved his brilliance when he heard the late Renaissance choral music, the Miserere, composed by Gregorio Allegri. After only hearing it twice, Mozart was able to memorize every note and transcribe it at the age of 14 (via Britannica).

Mozart Did Have A Dirty Sense Of Humor

When Mozart first appeared in the film, he was not presented as a gifted, brilliant, and professional composer. In fact, it was quite the opposite since he's vulgar, childish, and chasing a girl through the Prince-Archbishop's home. When listening to what Antonio Salieri said about him in the opening, this is a moment that allows the movie to deliver a surprising introduction that shakes up what the viewer might think about Mozart. In what amounted to a funny historical drama moment, he looks nothing like what Salieri described.

As surprising as it sounds, this side of Mozart is more accurate than most thought. Mozart had a taste and talent for scatological humor and even wrote his strange brand of toilet humor into some of his writings. The composition "Lich mich im arse" includes many of these strangely humorous lines. This was one of many canons published after Mozart's death, with many of the more scatological lyrics cleaned up and changed.

Salieri Was A Well-Renowned Music Instructor

Antonio Salieri, though not nearly as popular as his young, genius rival, still had a sterling reputation as both a composer and a music instructor. Not only did the musician tutor the Emperor and Catrina Cavalleri, but his list of pupils featured other great composers, such as Hyden, Liszt, and even Beethoven. With such a pedigree and talent for music, it makes sense that Salieri was a sought-after teacher, even by royalty and other composers.

The film presents Salieri as a successful musician in Mozart's shadow when, in fact, he still had a remarkable reputation, talent, and even somewhat of a fanbase. It should also be noted that he was such a brilliant music instructor that he eventually educated Franz Xaver Mozart, Mozart's youngest son, who was born four months before his father died (via mozarteum.at)). Fanz went on to compose several works of his own, with his last compositions done under the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Son).

A Mysterious Stranger Did Commission The Requiem Mass

"The Requiem Mass" was commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg in 1791 after his wife's death

Perhaps the most iconic visual in the entire film is Salieri as the masked messenger standing in Mozart's doorway. In a moment that sounds almost entirely like something dreamed up by the writer of a Hollywood thriller, there's actually more truth than fiction. The fictional element in the movie was that it wasn't Salieri. "The Requiem Mass" was commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg in 1791 after his wife's death.

Franz von Walsegg had a reputation for hiring composers to create works which he then took full ownership of and claimed as his own. Though he didn't rely on a disguise, he sent messengers and worked in the shadows while Mozart died writing the music. In real life, after Mozart died, Constanze Mozart had several other composers, including Franz Xaver Süssmayr, complete the work, so she could get the full amount of money that Walsegg had promised her husband.

Salieri's Attempted Suicide

The film opens with an older Antonio Salieri in a maddened stupor exclaiming how he killed Mozart before a pair of servants walk in on him shortly after slicing his wrists in a suicide attempt. This opening, though slightly dramatized in its delivery and portrayal, did, in fact, happen after Salieri was struck with dementia toward the end of his life. In 1823, Salieri attempted suicide, and while mental health practices and medicine were not as advanced or effective as they are today, the suicide attempt landed him in a hospital, not an asylum.

It was more than likely the attempt was due to mental illness, rather than a guilty conscience as Amadeus claimed (via The Guardian). Salieri spent the last year and a half of his life in a hospital, receiving medical treatment for dementia. He finally died on May 7, 1825, at 74. His own Requiem in C minor was played at his funeral - performed for the very first time.