[Reading a Mozart score.] |
Salieri: | I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at an absolute beauty. |
Katerina Cavalieri: | I heard you met Herr Mozart. |
Salieri: | News travels fast in Vienna. |
Katerina Cavalieri: | And he's been commissioned to write an opera. Is it true? |
Salieri: | Yes. |
Katerina Cavalieri: | Is there a part in it for me? |
Salieri: | No. |
Katerina Cavalieri: | How would you know? |
Salieri: | Do you know where it's set, my dear? |
Katerina Cavalieri: | No. |
Salieri: | In a harem. |
Katerina Cavalieri: | What's that? |
Salieri: | A brothel! |
Katerina Cavalieri: | Oh-h-h-h. |
Emperor Joseph II: | Well, there it is. |
Salieri: | Mozart, it was good of you to come! |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | How could I not? |
Salieri: | So, did my work please you? |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | I never knew that music like that was possible! |
Salieri: | [Uncertain.] You flatter me. |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | No, no! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... "Salieri." |
Salieri: | God was singing through this little man to all the world, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar. But then, do you know what happened? A miracle! |
Salieri: | He was my idol. I can't think of a time when I didn't know his name. |
Emperor Joseph II: | Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect. |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | Which few did you have in mind, Majesty? |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | "Confutatis maledictis" -- when the wicked are confounded. "Flammis Acribus Adictis." How would you translate that? |
Salieri: | Consigned to flames of woe. |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | Do you believe it? |
Salieri: | What? |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | A fire which never dies, burning you forever? |
Salieri: | Oh yes. |
[Addressing a crucifix] |
Salieri: | From now on we are enemies, you and I. Because you choose for your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me 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 on Earth as far as I am able. I will ruin your incarnation. |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not. |
Priest: | Oh, that's charming! I'm sorry; I didn't know you wrote that. |
Salieri: | I didn't. That was Mozart. |
Salieri: | My plan was so simple that it terrified me. First I must get the death mass and then I, I must achieve his death. |
Father Vogler: | What?! |
Salieri: | His funeral! Imagine it, all of Vienna there, Mozart's coffin, Mozart's little coffin in the middle, and then suddenly, 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 dear 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!! The only thing that bothered me was the actual killing. How does one do that? Hmmm? How does one kill a man? Well it's one thing to dream about it; very different when you, when you have to do it with your own hands. |
[Salieri's description of Motzart's mastery] |
Salieri: | Displace one note and there would be diminishment, displace one phrase and the structure would fall. |
[addressing the complaints to the "improper" libretto for "Figaro"] |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | Come on now! Which one of you wouldn't rather listen to his hairdresser than Hercules? Or Horatius, or Orpheus... people so lofty, you'd think they sh*t marble!! |
Salieri: | Your...merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved, rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory. |
[about Emperor Joseph II's musical tastes] |
Salieri: | Actually, the man had no ear at all. But he loved my music. |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: | They're all so beautiful. Why don't I have three heads? |
[To a priest] |
Salieri: | I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint. |
[Being wheelchaired through the insane asylum] |
Salieri: | Mediocrities everywhere...I absolve you. I absolve you. I absolve you. I absolve you. I absolve you all.
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