Amadeus: Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany bring Mozart and Salieri to life in this smart and sexy TV remake
Revisiting Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus is no small feat. Joe Barton, the writer behind Netflix’s Black Doves, has taken on the challenge of reworking Shaffer’s dense account of Mozart’s life and legend into a five-episode series for Sky Atlantic. It’s a bold move: the original play – and the 1984 film adaptation – already felt exhaustive, sometimes overwhelmingly so.
Yet Barton manages something unexpected. Shaffer’s monologue-laden tale of Mozart’s rival Antonio Salieri’s guilt becomes a sharper, more fluid exchange between two men bound by genius and self-destruction. This Amadeus is less about one man sabotaging another and more about two talents quietly collapsing under the weight of their own obsessions.
Less emphasis too is placed on Salieri’s ravings as “mad”, although his anguish is still front and centre. And because of the greater expressive range of both Paul Bettany as Salieri and Will Sharpe as Mozart, these performances feel more nuanced than their familiar counterparts from the 1984 movie. Bettany resists telegraphing Salieri’s insincerity towards Mozart in the way that his predecessor F. Murray Abraham does too often, while Sharpe is much more convincing than Tom Hulce in playing Mozart’s brilliance while maintaining his exuberance and obnoxious self-absorption.
The results are an essential binge-watch for the Christmas period. Barton fleshes out the drama with scenes such as a keyboard competition between Mozart and his senior rival composer Clementi (Richard Colvin), contextual scenes involving the Emperor’s (Rory Kinnear) military responsibilities when war breaks out and the infidelities of both Mozart and his wife Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy).
Television writing allows the space for some longer, more intimate exchanges between the two composers. This time around, it’s clear that Mozart’s brilliance is genuinely misunderstood while Barton makes Salieri’s jealousy both artistic and psycho-sexual (a new conceit). The frank sexuality shown in Black Doves (2024) is present here too, this time showing Salieri engaging in kinky sex to help make his psychological torture physical. His mind is bleeding, so his body must too. Mozart also can’t resist screwing his way through life, his drinking and promiscuity leading to his dissolution and destitution.
Much of this is not true to life, however. Records show that Salieri was kind to Constanze after Mozart’s death and the younger composer was generally successful, though the frequent swearing in Barton’s teleplay reflects the coarse language found in Mozart’s letters.
But Barton is smart in acknowledging the mythology too. The final episode is dominated by a conversation between Alexander Pushkin (Jack Farthing) and Constanze Mozart about whether the rumour that Salieri killed her husband is true. Pushkin wrote a short play that inspired Shaffer’s version, and in the new Amadeus, Constanze says he’s welcome to write his version of events: she’ll take the truth to her grave.
It’s all invented, but that’s OK, Barton seems to say. Mythology is how we express our depth of feeling, not only for Mozart specifically but for transcendent genius in general.
Admittedly, there are some rough spots. I thought the conclusion of the Marriage of Figaro sequence, its premiere supposedly interrupted at the very end by protesters, unconvincing, and I’m afraid the opera scenes in general aren’t well designed. Implausibly, the backdrop for Figaro is the same for the first and final acts but suits the situation of neither. Nor are Bettany nor Sharpe convincing as orchestral conductors, and I was confused as to why the document purporting to be Salieri’s Requiem (but actually Mozart’s) played at his funeral was only a few pages long.
Musically, the film’s performances are also generally disappointing, the singing in particular falling well short of world class. In this, the new version seems weak compared to the 1984 film. A film about classical music’s OG should offer a much stronger soundtrack.
Nonetheless, when the focus is on dialogue, the show crackles along with extraordinary pace. Alongside Bettany and Sharpe, the ensemble cast is uniformly strong. Kinnear is ideally characterful as Emperor Joseph, foolish as a musician but credible as the leader of a major country. Creevy is especially strong as Mozart’s wife Constanze, popping up (like Bettany) in prosthetics to hear Salieri’s confession in old age. Enyi Okoronkwo offers strong support as Mozart’s librettist and best pal Lorenzo Da Ponte and Jack Farthing helps to carry the final episode as Pushkin, the playwright in search of a musical legend.
All in all, a smart and sexy triumph for Sky. If Mozart’s music itself doesn’t quite get the investment it deserves, Amadeus makes up for it by offering a compelling drama about the nature of the human spirit.
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Dominic Broomfield-McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.