Notes on a symphony
Sky’s lavish reimagining of Amadeus pitches Mozart and Salieri into a claustrophobic world of genius, jealousy and court intrigue. Writer Joe Barton, star Gabrielle Creevy and production designer Morgan Kennedy pull back the curtain on making the five-part drama.
After writing shows featuring cops, time travel and teenage witches – from Giri/Haji and The Lazarus Project to Half Bad: The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself – Joe Barton was having trouble securing a green light for a dramatic, character-led series.
Then when he was approached with an opportunity to adapt Peter Shaffer’s stage play Amadeus, which imagines the rivalry between composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri in 18th century Vienna, he spotted the chance to write a series without any genre elements to fall back on.
“It felt like a bit more of a test of me as a writer as well,” he tells DQ. “Obviously it’s a massive cultural behemoth, so I was excited about the challenge of it. It’s different from other stuff I’ve done. It’s the first thing I’ve done that hasn’t had at least one gunfight in it, or a car chase. It’s a different genre so it’s a different challenge.”
Sky subsequently ordered a five-part series, also called Amadeus, with the lavish historical drama now set to launch this Sunday.
Produced by Sister (Giri/Haji, Black Doves), Amadeus explores the meteoric rise and mythic downfall of one of history’s most iconic composers. When 25-year-old Amadeus (Will Sharpe) arrives in bustling Vienna in 1781, no longer a child prodigy and craving creative freedom, he collides with two pivotal figures: his fiercely loyal future wife Constanze Weber (Gabrielle Creevy) and devoutly religious court composer Antonio Salieri (Paul Bettany).
As Amadeus’s brilliance continues to flourish in spite of his personal demons, a questionable reputation and scepticism from the conservative court, Salieri becomes increasingly tormented by his counterpart’s apparent divine gift. Amadeus is a threat to all that he holds dear in life: his talent, his reputation, even his faith in God, and Salieri vows to bring him down. As a result, Salieri forges a deeply personal obsession spanning 30 years, culminating in a murder confession and a desperate attempt to entwine himself with Mozart’s legacy forever.
Like the play – and the acclaimed 1984 film of the same name, adapted by Shaffer from his own stage script – the series is told from the perspective of the older Salieri, who recounts his battle with Amadeus. But while in the film and the play he is speaking to a priest, here he talks to Constanze.
“That was one of the early changes I made,” Barton says. “One of the things we were aware of is that if you’re making it as a limited series, you have slightly more time, which can be a curse as much as a blessing. More time doesn’t equal better quality.
“But one of the opportunities we saw was looking at characters that maybe were slightly underserved in the original text, and one of them was Constanze. Reading about her historically, this amazing life she’d led, what she’d done to preserve Mozart’s legacy after he died, her own music career and her own relationship with Salieri, it struck me as really interesting story to mine.”
Described as a bold adaptation of Shaffer’s work, this period drama employs pace and language to paint Amadeus, through the eyes of god-fearing Salieri, as a man of excess – a frivolous, exuberant, “completely outrageous creature” who appears totally out of place in court and Viennese high society.
“We didn’t want to do Amadeus exactly as had been done before – this very childlike, innocent character in previous versions,” the writer says. “We were interested in trying to do something that captured the fact that he is an outsider, and he does have a different way of looking at the world, but there’s also a bit more substance to him, and still keeping the naivety and the bawdiness of it.
“A lot of it is about sexual repression as well, and religion and piety and this transactional relationship Salieri has had with God. He’s lived a life in a certain way and cut himself off from certain pleasures and sins, but in exchange, he got this great gift of music. Then this guy comes along who hasn’t cut himself off from anything and is better at music than him. So it was just trying to find a slightly different way into the character. Part that is the more explicit elements of him.”
The series reunited Barton with director Julian Farino and production designer Morgan Kennedy, both of whom he worked with on crime thriller Giri/Haji. Amadeus also marks a reunion with actors Will Sharpe and Gabrielle Creevy, following their respective roles in Giri/Haji and Barton’s spy thriller Black Doves.
In My Skin and The Guest star Creevy was eager to play a character who had previously been overlooked in Mozart’s story – and tackle a part that also demanded she learn to sing and play the piano. “This was a massive challenge for me going into it. Joe Barton’s so good at writing, finding the human in people, and his scripts are so easy to read,” she says. “His scripts have got a great flow to them, and it was really exciting.”
With little known about the real Constanze, save for a “fascinating” diary, Creevy got the chance to create a character who is enthralled by Amadeus, in a series that explores the highs and lows of their home life together.
“She’s more than just Mozart’s wife. She was her own person,” Creevy says. “The fact she kept his legacy and the music and his work alive is pretty impressive. So she was really loyal and hard-working. We have five hours as we get to know her and to see how tough it was at times.”
In particular, Constanze provides stability for Amadeus. “She’s grounded and he’s a rock star,” the actor notes. But while the communication between husband and wife leaves a lot to be desired, Creevy came to understand their relationship – and Amadeus’s music – through her on-screen partnership with the “fantastic” Sharpe and a scene set during a mass. “Will’s conducting and I’m singing, and he’s having this amazing reaction. I can feel him. He’s having an emotional reaction, as am I, but the lack of communication that they have at home… he doesn’t know how to speak [to Constanze]. It’s all through his music,” she says.
“I realised in that moment, ‘Oh, that’s how he communicates.’ Now I listen to his music differently, because I know the psychology. Whereas going into this project, I knew who he was, but I knew nothing else. I didn’t know the background to it all. His emotion goes into the music, and that’s how he communicates. Constanze has to just go along with that.”
Having played the harp when she was younger, Creevy says she has a “tiny” musical background but doesn’t describe herself as a singer. To prepare for the part, she had singing lessons and learned to play the piano – she bought a keyboard to practice with at home – as she confronted the “exposing” role that would include performing on stage.
“You surprise yourself, because now I’m a classically trained singer,” she jokes, “but I actually really did seriously surprise myself, because they were the moments I enjoyed the most on set. It’s not my voice in the show. I’m dubbed [in the final version], but I was singing live on set so I was terrified. No one’s there to judge, but it does scare me that someone has got a recording of me singing opera somewhere in the world.”
Amadeus marks Creevy’s first costume drama, and playing Constanze meant she was dressed in “super tight” corsets, wigs and “rock star” gowns that referenced the styles of designer Vivienne Westwood and actor Helena Bonham Carter.
She also came face-to-face with her 70-year-old self, after spending up to six hours in the makeup chair to film fireside scenes between older Salieri and Constanze as he retells the story of his relationship with Amadeus.
“It was a really scary moment, because it’s not every day you get to see yourself at that age,” Creevy says. “I don’t think I will look like that at that age. I’m telling myself that now, but that was also another challenge because you’re having to not sound so young. I age quite a lot in the show, I’m going from 19 to 70, which is crazy. It was very difficult at times, and Paul looked so good in his old-age makeup.”
Filming took place in and around Budapest, at locations including Eszterházy Palace, Vajdahunyad Castle, Ráday Castle in Pécel for Salieri’s house, the Royal Palace of Gödöllő and St Stephen’s Basilica. Several theatres were also used, including the Hungarian State Opera House, the Budapest Operetta Theatre, the Vig theatre and the Katona Joseph Theatre in Kecskemét.
“The look of that time, it’s quite Rococo. It’s a little bit flouncy, colourful, artsy and romantic,” says production designer Kennedy. “Budapest doesn’t really look like that, to be honest with you. It’s a masculine city. It’s beautiful, but it’s not like Paris or even Prague. You have to change the design to fit that.
“For me, it’s really Salieri’s story, and it’s his battle with God, or his belief system. So it was a big thing to try to portray Salieri as this very troubled guy under a thunderstorm the whole time, and then to offset that with the frivolity of Mozart, this guy who’s got this genius but doesn’t really know what to do with it.”
That contrast between the show’s leading figures provided the “crux” of the show’s design. “Then we had all the operas, which was a really lovely thing to be able to design, because I’ve never designed an opera before in my life,” Kennedy continues. “We had five to do. It’s a very abstract world because you’ve just got this black box, then you can pretty much invent anything you like. Opera is this very free, imaginative medium so that was the most fun bit.”
Mozart’s first apartment and Salieri’s house were filmed at locations, while numerous domestic interior sets were built, from the Webers’ apartment to Amadeus’s second apartment, where he lives when he is “down on his luck.”
One particular challenge proved to be finding a period-appropriate street on which to film, with most modern roads covered in tarmac. Others with cobbled streets had the wrong properties for the era.
“The streets we did find, we covered about 400 metres in earth to try to get rid of the pavements and get rid of the tarmac,” Kennedy recalls. “When you’re doing that, it costs so much money, so you basically have to try to shoot all of your street exteriors in one street. So you shoot it when it’s light one way, and then you shoot it when it’s dark the other way, and then you shoot it another way when it’s a morning. That’s always a bit of a challenge. But having watched it back, I think we get away with it. They shot it very cleverly from a bunch of different angles.”
The operas play a key role in the series, with Kennedy noting how they tap into the emotions of Amadeus and the other characters. “The way Joe wrote it was that the operas are all written with intention from where Mozart is in the story, so you can add that element into the opera sets, as well as just taking them for the operatic story they are,” he says.
In fact, any element of music shown on screen in the series was scripted by Barton, who wanted to feature one key compositional piece per episode. Episode one features A Little Night Music, with Mozart using the piece to “have a go at Salieri,” the writer says. The Great Mass in C Minor, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Requiem also feature.
Other music in the series, such as when Salieri first hears Mozart play, was written into the script with a note such as “he’s playing something really great,” with music director Benjamin Holder and music supervisor Chantelle Woodnutt then bringing in suggestions of things Sharpe, as Amadeus, could play.
“It was a great collaboration between them and us finding the right pieces when I wasn’t able to pick one in the script,” Barton says.
Now in the middle of shooting Black Doves S2 for Netflix, Barton says Amadeus has provided a unique test – and that period drama is “tricky” even without elements of classical music.
“I don’t come from that world, so it was basically all new,” he says. “Adapting a really beloved play is a challenge in itself. You have to justify its existence straight off the bat, because people are always going to be asking, ‘Well, why have you done it?’ So finding something new to say within that story was a creative challenge.”
Barton also faced the task of deciding what to keep from the play and what he could add to the story and its themes of genius, jealousy and obsession. With the genre-based series he has previously scripted, he could also fall back on their thriller elements if he needed to, adding a fight, a plot point or a twist to keep the action moving forward.
“With Amadeus, you’re trying not to use those crutches,” he adds. “It’s much more of a human story and it’s a more sophisticated story, despite all of the sex and stuff like that. It’s a grown-up story.”
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Mozart in the Jungle: A maverick young maestro crashes into New York’s elite symphony orchestra, upending tradition as he battles conservative board members, fragile egos and his own eccentric genius.
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Genius: From Einstein and Picasso to Aretha Franklin and Martin Luther King Jr, each season charts the rise of a different ‘genius,’ peeling back the myths to show bruising marriages, bitter professional feuds and the institutions that try to harness or silence radical ideas.
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