Antonio Salieri

The young man was overwhelmed at such unexpected kindness and camaraderie as he was receiving from the master, and gratefully accompanied him back to the city.

Before going to the Seilerstätte, however, Beethoven turned into Steiner's, the music publishers, which he was in the habit of frequenting about noonday, where there was nearly always a little crowd of composers and a brisk interchange of musical opinion.

Huttenbrenner Beethoven was today in a genial and expansive frame of mind.

Possibly the advent of a young Englishman had struck him as a good omen for the fulfillment of his cherished hopes towards English fame.

Music, the profession, as generally understood, he relegated to the depths of distaste.

He sat down with a shrug of his square shoulders and, crooking his fingers to such a degree that his hands almost hid them, continued for a moment his tirade against the prevalent methods of playing.

How did the old composers who were pianists play? He asked of his audience.

They did not run up and down the keyboard with their carefully practiced passages, pooch, pooch, pooch, and he worked the runs in a caricatured passage on the pianoforte.

Set in the glittering musical world of the 18th century Vienna, Amadeus explores genius, jealousy, ambition, faith.

And perhaps the most unsettling question of all, what happens when we encounter greatness that we cannot possess ourselves? Mozart was read by Darius Sonawalla and Salieri was read by Ranji David.

The play also has a special place in the theatrical journey of Arjun Sajnani, who has directed Amadeus twice.

returning to Schaeffer's extraordinary world at different points in his own journey as a theatre maker.

And perhaps that is what makes Amadeus such an interesting place to begin a conversation with Arjun.

Because his own journey in theatre has unfolded over decades through ambition and certainty and large-scale productions and intimate moments of success and challenges, friendships and collaborations and through a Bangalore theatre's landscape that has itself changed enormously.

So, from Salieri's question about genius, envy and creation, we now turn to a man who has spent much of his life creating worlds of his own stage.

What does it mean to dedicate a lifetime to theatre? What does one learn along the way? And after all these years, what keeps one returning to the stage again and again? Let's listen to Arjun Sajnani.

Yeah.

And so you might say he had the Salieri complex.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Having observed in my only son, from a very early age, a decided predilection for music, and having from my youth cultivated the art as an amateur, I myself, for the space of three years, superintended his first musical education with that constancy and perseverance which form one of the characteristic traits of our nation.

I afterward placed him for eighteen months under the instruction of Messieurs Salieri and Czerny, from the first of whom he received lessons in harmony and counterpoint, and from the second instruction on the pianoforte, and to both of whom he is indebted for their kind care and attention.

I am happy to be thus able publicly to render them the homage of my grateful acknowledgments.

i came to paris with the permission of the prince and by the advice of my friends in order to perfect my son's talents by affording him an opportunity of hearing the numerous artists whom this capital contains and of cultivating the french language of which he already has some general idea a language which justly lays claim to the title of being that of europe at the same time i have not neglected to take advantage of the eagerness testified by the parisians to hear his performance in order to indemnify myself for the expenses necessarily attendant upon a long journey and the removal of my whole family Accept my best acknowledgments and believe me, etc.

Nobody has ever been able to understand why God preferred Abel's sacrifice to that of Cain.

In our own day, Salieri repeats Cain's vengeance and poisons his friend and benefactor Mozart, according to the poem of Pushkin.

All say there is no justice on earth, but there is no justice up above.

This is as clear to me as a simple scale of music.