Amadeus sets its stage in Imperial Vienna, in the middle of the European Enlightenment. Though it is the antagonist Antonio Salieri who narrates, it is Mozart who lives and is witness to the vibrant capital of the Austrian andto a reduced extentHoly Roman Empire. The movie does not portray the city like a white-washed, trimmed-gardened Versailles. The city is dirty, and bustling with life. We see the aristocracy in their operas, and the urban poor with their low-theater. The people of the capital delight in the simple pleasures of magic tricks, fire-breathers, and comics but they can also eagerly take in the Enlightenment, and its child in Mozart.
In Austria (and Europe, for the most part), there were two competing schools of music the German style which stressed on counterpoint and polyphony, and the Italian style stressing harmony and melody. The movie portrayed Wolfgang Mozart as representing this German school of thought, shocking the Viennese court kappellemeisters and composers used to the more operatic Italian tradition, represented in the movie by Salieri. Both were actually products of the Enlightenment, breaking free from the old choral and religious traditions that defined the Baroque.
There were other, subtler nods to Enlightenment the Marriage of Figaro, a play which Mozart proposed to put to music, was banned from France and many courts in Europe as, being true to Enlightenment ideals, it was seen as criticizing the old order and the aristocracy. In Amadeus, Mozart found, in his revolutionary music, a receptive ear in Emperor Joseph II. Though we see him give only a few lines and have a limited but important role in the story, historically Joseph II was the one monarch who tried to champion Enlightenment-inspired reforms in the Empire. In the movie, he played a stark contrast with the Archbishop of Salzburg, who more closely adhered to tradition and disdained Mozarts follies.
Amadeus can be credited for having many scenes and parts that can actually be supported with historical fact. Mozart was indeed lewd and vulgar, a trait that was shared in the family. The quarrel with the Archbishop, leading to the break, actually happened. Even Joseph IIs comment of too many notes with the musical genius retort of exactly as many as are needed did happen. Though the relationship of Mozart and Constanze in the movie seem to conveniently forget the historical Mozarts passion for his wifes sister, Aloysia, still he was a loving husband and this was well portrayed in the movie.
Perhaps to make the movie more dramatic, however, the narrator Salieri was placed in as much of the movieand consequently Mozarts lifeas possible. They exploited gaps in history where Salieri would seem plausibly to fit. Thus, while there is no historical account of him during Mozarts visit to Vienna with the Archbishop of Salzburg, he could have plausibly been in the crowd (though the scene of him spying on Mozart requires a great stretch of the imagination). For a time, the anonymous figure who requested for Mozart a Requiem Mass was not known plausibly it could have been Salieri. Soon, what competition Mozart and Salieri might have had was transformed in the movie into a rivalry stoked by both envy and adulation on the part of the Italian composer. In truth, the two composers collaborated frequently with each other, and Salieri was even a musical teacher to Mozarts son. And the Requiem Mass was actually requested by a Count Franz von Walsegg for his wife.
From a historical perspective, we can say that Amadeus might have been worth watching. However, the movie picked up on the myth of the Salieri-Mozart rivalry, which though has since been romanticized in a dozen literatures, really cannot be adequately be backed up by historical facts. Amadeus, then, in its present form cannot be taken as a historical source.
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