{"id":2196921,"date":"2025-12-12T21:14:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2196921"},"modified":"2025-12-12T21:14:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:14:40","slug":"amadeus-returns-can-skys-miniseries-attract-a-new-generation-to-mozart-classical-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/amadeus-returns-can-skys-miniseries-attract-a-new-generation-to-mozart-classical-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Amadeus returns: can Sky\u2019s miniseries attract a new generation to Mozart? | Classical music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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F<\/span>orty years ago, Amadeus won eight Oscars, four Baftas and four Golden Globes \u2013 and introduced a new generation to 18th-century music. Millions bought the film\u2019s Mozart soundtrack and it remains one of the bestselling classical music albums of all time, shifting more than 6.5m copies globally, and earning 13 gold discs.<\/p>\n

It even inspired a novelty hit when Falco mixed Europop with rap<\/a> in Rock Me Amadeus \u2013 the first German-language song to top the US Billboard chart (Nena\u2019s 99 Luftballons only reached No 2 in the US, pop-pickers).<\/p>\n

On 21 December, Sky will release a miniseries based on Peter Shaffer\u2019s 1979 play, which was the basis of Milo\u0161 Forman\u2019s 1984 film. In an age of streaming, short-form content and even shorter attention spans, will it bring new listeners to Mozart\u2019s music? Its team hopes so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music is like a character in the show,\u201d said its musical director, Benjamin Holder. \u201cOne version of Mozart\u2019s voice is delivered in Will Sharpe\u2019s performance as Amadeus, another version of that voice is delivered through the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are about 115 works by Mozart scattered throughout the five episodes. Although the musical passages are invariably short, they are unadulterated Mozart, recorded on instruments as authentic as possible to the late 18th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are shows where it\u2019s set in period but the music is modern, but that was never the idea here,\u201d said Chantelle Woodnutt, the music supervisor. \u201cThere are other classical composers in there \u2013 Salieri, of course, but also bits of Haydn and Bach, as well as contemporary folk music from Turkey and Hungary, to show how Vienna was a melting pot of cultures and people were being influenced by all these different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holder said: \u201cEverybody making the series understood that the music was already really cool. What becomes clear is that Mozart was a rock star.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Mozart, Sharpe learned to play everything himself. Holder said: \u201cWe started the piano stuff months ahead. Will spent weeks and weeks just playing scales.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharpe came fresh to Mozart\u2019s music. \u201cI had never had my opera epiphany but, making this, I started to understand it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music is extraordinary. Some of it is so playful and light and kind of mischievous and dainty. And then in other places, it\u2019s really dark and grand.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Amadeus explores Mozart\u2019s rise and downfall.<\/span> Photograph: Adrienn Szabo\/\u00a9Sky UK Ltd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, Rory Kinnear, as the music-loving Joseph II, had problems. \u201cHe is extremely musical and a brilliant pianist,\u201d said Holder. \u201cThe difficulty was in making it look plausible that he keeps missing the notes when he plays Salieri\u2019s piece in the first episode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simon Callow, who played Mozart in Shaffer\u2019s original play at the National Theatre in 1979, said: \u201cPeter Shaffer broke the image of Mozart as this perfect little porcelain figure which survived nearly 200 years, and he helped to define the image of Mozart that we have today. He opened the ears of a lot of people who didn\u2019t care for Mozart or had no real concept of what his music was like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin Cullingford, the editor of Gramophone magazine, welcomes the new show. \u201cAnything in the wider media that makes classical music a compelling part of the story is a really good thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might simply be that a lot of people haven\u2019t encountered Mozart and if they watch this and think, wow, that\u2019s extraordinary, then it will make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does he see generation Z embracing Mozart the way generation X did? \u201cBorders between genres feel more porous than they ever have done \u2013 partly as it\u2019s so easy to range far and wide with streaming,\u201d Cullingford said. \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that if people want to respond to this they no longer have to go into a specialist record shop \u2013 which might feel intimidating \u2013 and spend \u00a315 on a CD. Instead they can just explore the music via streaming services.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Holder agrees. \u201cA short-form version of the Queen of the Night\u2019s jaw-dropping aria from The Magic Flute features in episode five,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d like to think that watching that will make people go: \u2018Wow, that\u2019s pretty epic.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Paul Bettany stars as composer Antonio Salieri.<\/span> Photograph: Adrienn Szabo\/\u00a9Sky UK Ltd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The two are echoing a point made by the late conductor Sir Neville Marriner<\/a>, who with his Academy of St Martin in the Fields orchestra recorded the 1984 film\u2019s music and welcomed how it introduced Mozart to such a large audience.<\/p>\n

On an ASMF podcast in 2015<\/a> he shared his memories of working with Forman (he arrived in Devon to discuss the music \u2018with a very big Hungarian sausage for them to spend the weekend eating\u2019, and played tennis \u2013 \u2018he was quite good but didn\u2019t win\u2019) and actor Tom Hulce (who spent a happy Christmas with the Marriners learning to look as if he could play the piano), and spoke of the importance of the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung people sometimes feel a little ill at ease [with classical music\u2019s] grand occasions \u2013 symphonic concerts and operas, say. The film was like going in the back door,\u201d Marriner said at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing around the world still now, it doesn\u2019t matter whether it\u2019s in China or America, one of the first things people want to talk about is Amadeus and how much it influenced their life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The one group who won\u2019t be cheering the return of Amadeus is team Salieri. Poor maligned Salieri, who surely deserves a better epithet than Shaffer\u2019s \u201cpatron saint of mediocrities\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been valiant attempts to rehabilitate his reputation<\/a> over the years,\u201d said Cullingford. \u201cThis will undo all the good work.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago, Amadeus won eight Oscars, four Baftas and four Golden Globes \u2013 and introduced a new generation to 18th-century music. Millions bought the film\u2019s Mozart soundtrack and it remains one of the bestselling classical music albums of all time, shifting more than 6.5m copies globally, and earning 13 gold discs. It even inspired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2196922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2196921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Amadeus-returns-can-Skys-miniseries-attract-a-new-generation-to.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2196921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2196923,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196921\/revisions\/2196923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2196922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2196921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2196921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2196921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}