Amadeus (1984)

F. Murray Abraham: Antonio Salieri

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Quotes 

• Antonio Salieri : [reflecting upon a Mozart score]  On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.

• Antonio 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?

• [last lines] 

  Antonio Salieri : [wheelchaired through the insane asylum]  Mediocrities everywhere... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you all.

  [screen fades to black, Mozart's high-pitched laughter rings out in the blackness] 

• Antonio Salieri : [to Father Vogel]  I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.

• Antonio Salieri : Leave me alone.

  Father Vogler : I cannot leave alone a soul in pain.

  Antonio Salieri : Do you know who I am?

  Father Vogler : It makes no difference. All men are equal in God's eyes.

  Antonio Salieri : [leans in mockingly]  *Are* they?

• Antonio Salieri : [addressing a crucifix]  From now on, we are enemies - You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me for reward 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 as far as I am able. I will ruin Your incarnation.

• Antonio Salieri : [reflecting upon Mozart's scores]  Astounding! It was actually, it was beyond belief. These were first and only drafts of music, but they showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it as if he were just taking dictation. And music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall. It was clear to me that sound I had heard in the Archbishop's palace had been no accident. Here again was the very Voice of God! I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink-strokes at an absolute beauty.

  [he drops the pages] 

  Constanze Mozart : Is it not good?

  Antonio Salieri : It is miraculous!

• [Having played two pieces of music to Father Vogel, who does not recognize either] 

  Antonio Salieri : Can you remember no melody of mine? I was the most famous composer in Europe. I wrote 40 operas alone!

  [suddenly inspired] 

  Antonio Salieri : Here, what about this one?

  [he plays the first few bars of "Eine kleine Natchmuzik" while Father Vogel hums along] 

  Father Vogler : Yes, I know that! Oh, that's charming! I'm sorry, I didn't know you wrote what.

  Antonio Salieri : I didn't. That was Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

  Father Vogler : [smile fades]  The man you accuse yourself of killing.

• Antonio Salieri : [to Father Vogel]  Your merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved, rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory. He killed Mozart and kept me alive to torture! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter, all the fainter till no one plays it at all, and his...

• Antonio Salieri : Are you sure you can't leave these and, and come back again?

  Constanze Mozart : It's very tempting sir, but it's impossible, I'm afraid. Wolfgang would be frantic if he found those were missing, you see they're all originals.

  Antonio Salieri : Originals?

  Constanze Mozart : Yes, sir, he doesn't make copies.

  Antonio Salieri : These, are originals?

• Antonio Salieri : [to Father Vogel]  So rose the dreadful ghost from his next and blackest opera. There, on the stage, stood the figure of a dead commander. And I knew, only I understood that the horrifying aparition was Leopold, raised from the dead! Wolfgang had actually summoned up his own father to accuse his son before all the world! It was terrifying and wonderful to watch. And now the madness began in me. The madness of the man splitting in half. Through my influence, I saw to it Don Giovanni was played only five times in Vienna. But in secret, I went to every one of those five, worshipping sounds I alone seem to hear. And hour after hour, as I stood there, understanding how that bitter old man was still possessing his poor son even from beyond the grave. I began to see a way, a terrible way, I could finally triumph over God.

• Antonio Salieri : My plan was so simple. It terrified me. First I must get the death mass and then, I must achieve his death.

  Father Vogler : [stares in horror]  What?

  Antonio Salieri : His funeral! Imagine it, the cathedral, all Vienna sitting there, his coffin, Mozart's little coffin in the middle, and then, 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 devoted 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!

  [beat] 

  Antonio Salieri : The only thing that worried me was the actual killing. How does one do that? Hmmm? How does one kill a man? It's one thing to dream about it; very different when, when you, when you have to do it with your own hands.

• Antonio Salieri : He was my idol. Mozart, I can't think of a time when I didn't know his name. I was still playing childish games and he was playing music for kings and emperors. Even the Pope in Rome! I admit I was jealous when I heard the tales they told about him. Not of the brilliant little prodigy himself, but of his father, who had taught him everything.

• Antonio Salieri : [to Father Vogel]  That was not Mozart laughing, Father... that was God. That was God laughing at me through that obscene giggle...

• Antonio Salieri : I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater, conferring on all who sat there, perfect absolution. God was singing through this little man to all the world, unstoppable, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar.

• Antonio Salieri : [to Father Vogel]  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." And do you know what happened? A miracle!

  [his Father chokes to Death at Dinner] 

• [first lines] 

  Antonio Salieri : Mozart! Mozart, forgive your assassin! I confess, I killed you...

• Antonio Salieri : My father, he did not care for music. When I told him how I wished I could be like Mozart, he would say; "Why? 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] 

  Antonio Salieri : How could I tell *him*... what music meant to me?

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : "Confutatis maledictis" - when the wicked are confounded. "Flammis acribus dictis." How would you translate that?

  Antonio Salieri : Consigned to flames of woe.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Do you believe in it?

  Antonio Salieri : What?

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : A fire which never dies, burning you forever?

  Antonio Salieri : Oh yes.

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : [about the royal composer's position he did not get]  Whom did they choose?

  Antonio Salieri : Herr Zummer.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Herr Zummer? But the man's a fool, he's a total mediocrity!

  Antonio Salieri : No, no, he has yet to achieve mediocrity.

• Antonio Salieri : The restored third act was bold, brilliant. The fourth... was astounding.

• Antonio Salieri : Mozart, it was good of you to come!

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : How could I not?

  Antonio Salieri : How... Did my work please you?

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : [hesitantly]  I never knew that music like that was possible!

  Antonio Salieri : [uncertainly]  You flatter me.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : [insincerely]  No, no! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... Salieri!

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : [of his great opera "Figaro"]  Nine performances! Nine, that's all it's had! And withdrawn!

  Antonio 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.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : But what is it that they don't like?

  Antonio 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.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : What did you think of it yourself? Did you like it at all?

  Antonio Salieri : I thought it was marvelous.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Of course! It's the best opera yet written, I know it... why didn't they come?

  Antonio 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?

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : I know, I know... maybe you should give me some lessons in that.

• Antonio Salieri : [about Emperor Joseph II's musical tastes]  Actually, the man had no ear at all. But what did it matter. He adored my music.

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : I actually threw the score on the fire, he made me so angry.

  Antonio Salieri : You burned the score?

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : No, no. My wife took it out in time.

• Antonio Salieri : [to Father Vogel]  That was Mozart. That! That giggling dirty-minded creature I had just seen, crawling on the floor!

• Constanze Mozart : What are you doing here?

  Antonio Salieri : Your husband took sick. I brought him home.

  Constanze Mozart : But why you?

  Antonio Salieri : Because, madam, I was at hand.

• Katerina Cavalieri : I heard you met Herr Mozart.

  Antonio Salieri : News travels fast in Vienna.

  Katerina Cavalieri : And he's been commissioned to write an opera. Is it true?

  Antonio Salieri : Yes.

  Katerina Cavalieri : Is there a part in it for me?

  Antonio Salieri : No.

  Katerina Cavalieri : How do you know?

  Antonio Salieri : Do you know where it's set, my dear?

  Katerina Cavalieri : No.

  Antonio Salieri : In a harem.

  Katerina Cavalieri : What's that?

  Antonio Salieri : A brothel!

  Katerina Cavalieri : [shocked]  Oh-h-h-h!

  Antonio Salieri : Come. Let's begin.

  Katerina Cavalieri : What does he look like?

  Antonio Salieri : Mozart? You might be disappointed.

  Katerina Cavalieri : Why?

  Antonio Salieri : Looks and talent don't always go together, Katerina

  Katerina Cavalieri : Looks don't concern me, maestro. Only talent interests a woman of taste.

• Antonio Salieri : But why? Why would God choose an obscene child to be His instrument? It was not to be believed! This piece had to be an accident. It had to be!... It better be!

• Antonio Salieri : I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at an absolute, inimitable beauty.

• Father Vogler : All men are equal in God's eyes.

  Antonio Salieri : Are they?