A surprise update on the upcoming theatrical release inspired by Mozart's prized 1791 opera, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) has been announced: the addition to the cast of F. Murray Abraham, the legendary American actor who once played the role of Antonio Salieri in the hugely successful film adaptation of Peter Shaffer's quasi-biopic play on Mozart, "Amadeus," (dir. Miloš Forman) for which Abraham won the Academy Award for Best Actor as the musical nemesis and self-deluded assassin of Mozart.
The addition of Abraham to the cast of the upcoming film (cr. Florian Sigl/exec. prod. Roland Emmerich) may serve to entice Mozart purists who may pre-emptively make the decision to avoid the film due to it's deviation from the opera's original libretto, penned by the German impresario and singer-playwright Emanuel Schikaneder.
The inclusion of the much beloved actor is a clever draw-in to the critics who, in the mid 1980's and 1990's at first detested Forman's Amadeus for its extensive use of liberties regarding Mozart's life, but who later accepted the film as a classic following the publication of more modern scholarship which included the release of the composers' own unbowdlerized correspondence, and with additional attention paid to his private collaborations with other musicians in both the creation and performance of bawdy canons. (Strangely enough, early critics of the film focused less vitriol on the age old, long debunked theory of Salieri poisoning his rival - a rumor which actually did appear in the press immediately following Mozart's demise[1] - but more with the composers' potty mouth and rampant flatulence).
While Emmerich's The Magic Flute is expected to take on an extreme deviation from the opera's plot by introducing new characters (chiefly, a 17-year old aspiring singer and boarding school student, who "stumbles along a century old passageway" that will lead into the "world of Mozart's Magic Flute"[2] and with the story line being set in twenty first century Europe, the decision to include Abraham, an actor much beloved for his fictional role in a not-so-accurate retelling of Mozart's death may serve to encourage older fans who once pooh-poohed "Amadeus" to view the film with the expectation already in mind that the film will be based purely on entertaining audiences, and perhaps with the goal of drawing in younger audiences unfamiliar with Mozart to further explore the life of the composer and his music.
According to IMDB, Abraham has been
cast in the role of one "Dr. Longbow"
(presumably a professor/conductor). Also joining the cast in the upcoming
film are soprano Sabiene Devieilhe, tenor
Rolando Villazón, and bass Morris Robinson. The forthcoming screen adaptation of The Magic
Flute is currently in post-production with an as-yet
unannounced date of theatrical release, but is expected to premiere sometime during the winter season.
Below: Listen to a heart-wrenching reading of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus by
Academy Award Winning Actor F. Murray Abraham. Achingly beautiful with light touches of gaiety, Shaffer's play would later be adapted into Forman's film of the same name. The latter of which takes on, at times, a more frivolous tone as both composers share equally the spotlight.
Salieri is both narrator and protagonist in Shaffer's original play, and Abraham excels in his reading of the tale, blending equally humor with angst - both egotistical and spiritual. Shaffer's "Salieri" invites the audience to listen to the composer's regaling of his own undoing, marred by an incessant need for vindication, leading up to his final "confession," and, ultimately, to a fate worse than - or perhaps greater than (at least in the mind of the insane former musician) - death itself. (2006, BBC Radio Drama):
[1] See: Footnotes, https://unravelingmusicalmyths.blogspot.com/2018/12/introducing-new-series-mozart-files.html.
This myth was based on the alleged utterance of guilt by an insane Salieri whilst in asylum, who purportedly told caregivers he had "poisoned" Mozart. This rumor was widely circulated in the press following Mozart's death in 1791, leading to the mentally unstable composers' caregivers issuing a rebuttal in print (see: footnotes, https://unravelingmusicalmyths.blogspot.com/2018/12/introducing-new-series-mozart-files.html), denying their patient ever uttered such a statement.
The rumor proved popular throughout the ages however, making it in to the writing books of Ludwig van Beethoven, and inspiring a one-act play by Alexander Pushkin (Mozart & Salieri, written 1830, first published in print in 1832), a subsequent one act opera by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1897 (which used Pushkin's verse drama as the major source for the works' libretto), followed by a play by the aforementioned Shaffer in 1979, and finally, with Forman's blockbuster hit, Amadeus in 1984. See: https://unravelingmusicalmyths.blogspot.com/2019/05/new-series-unraveling-musical-myths-art.html
[2] See: end of Footnotes, https://unravelingmusicalmyths.blogspot.com/2018/12/remembering-wolfgang-amade-mozart-27.html ; and "'The Magic Flute': Modern Reimagining of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Opera Acquired" (Bastos, Margarida, Collider, online, 08 June, 2022)
-Rose.
