Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Antonio
Salieri
Running time: 2 hours (with one intermission)
Premiered
on 17 February 1995
The tragedy is founded on a tradition which charges
the composer Salieri with having poisoned Mozart out of envy. Salieri has
devoted all his life to the service of music and achieved much, but now realizes
that musical talent does not appreciate so much sacrifice and instead rewards a
lazy, frivolous and unprincipled individual such as, in his opinion, Mozart.
Mozart arrives in the company of a blind musician who he had met in the street
whilst he was massacring a piece of Mozart’s music. He sits at the piano and
improvizes a short fantasy, full of sad presentiments. Salieri decides to kill
Mozart, who has too much talent. He invites him to dinner. At dinner Mozart
tells Salieri that three weeks ago a man "all dressed in mourning black" called
to see him and requested him to write a Requiem. Since that time the man has
never come to claim his order, though the Requiem is ready. Mozart admits that
"by night and day my man in black still haunts me." Salieri tries to calm him
down. After some hesitation, he secretly puts poison in Mozart’s wine. Mozart
drinks, then sits at the piano and plays his Requiem. But soon he feels ill and
takes his leave. When left alone, Salieri begins to realize the pointlessness of
his crime: he has silenced his jealousy, but he has also destroyed his faith in
his own talent. Villainy and genius - he remembers the words that Mozart spoke a
short time before - are incompatibles.