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What was a challenge [in playing Mozart] was that Mozart was a person who'd actually lived and was indeed one of the greatest artistic geniuses of the whole Western civilization, and I was a great lover and admirer of Mozart's music, so there was a tremendous challenge to bridge the character that Peter Shaffer had written. Peter Shaffer knows all about Mozart so that Mozart was sort of a smutty, hysterical child, really, in a lot of the play. My job was to reconcile that with the fact that he wrote The Marriage of Figaro, and that was tremendously hard.

Miniature Portrait and Lock of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Artist: Johann Walch (1757-1816)

Date: Late 18th century

After playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on tour for a year in Amadeus, [Mark Hamill] perfected a high-pitched, annoying laugh that he utilized when auditioning for the smiling villain. "Apparently," he says, “that’s what got me the part, the laugh. One thing that's great about doing the character is he's just such a rich loony.”

For her historical work on Amadeus, [Patrizia] von Brandenstein’s artistic background came into play as she chose a “natural but lively palette. The colors consistently seemed vivid and bright, and they appeared wonderfully rich,” she explains. “I have never used primary color in film in my life. I tend to use a tertiary, dark color palette, because the actors look better.” She also felt it was imperative for the sets to exude the life and exuberance of Mozart’s music. “Mozart’s world was reflective, bright, silvery, pastel, brilliant, tingling like crystal, faceted like his music. It was the music that drove the design,” she says.

(Stephen Farber, The New York Times)

Two of the most coveted film roles of the decade — the parts of Mozart and Salieri in the screen version of Peter Shaffer's play ''Amadeus'' — have gone to two actors who are barely familiar to most moviegoers.

In explaining his casting choices, Mr. Forman said first of all that he felt major stars in the roles would work against credibility. On the other hand, he said, ''nonprofessional actors wouldn't do. I considered musicians for the role of Mozart, but the demands of the role were too great and I needed an experienced actor.''

In working together in Prague, where most of the film was shot over a six-month period, the two actors began to feel a bit of the same jealousy that infected the relationship of Mozart and Salieri. ''Occasionally Murray and I would go out and drink this terrible sweet champagne that they have in Prague,'' Mr. Hulce said. ''But at other times there was a rivalry between us, and I found myself suspicious of him.'' Mr. Abraham felt the suspicion even more strongly during the rehearsal period. Mr. Hulce had a very close rapport with Meg Tilly, the actress originally cast as Mozart's wife, Constanze. (She broke her ankle during rehearsals and had to be replaced at the last minute by Elizabeth Berridge.) ''Tom and Meg were very close,'' Mr. Abraham recalled. ''They had these secret jokes and were always laughing together. I was pushed out, and I was resentful. I began to have very nasty feelings that were exactly like Salieri's feelings toward Mozart. When that correspondence between a film and real life occurs, it's a director's dream.''

When they were hired for the movie, the first task for both Mr. Hulce and Mr. Abraham was to steep themselves in the music of the period. Again Mr. Hulce had a headstart, for he had some background in music. He was able to read music, had played the violin as a child and had also sung in boys' choirs and with symphony orchestras in Michigan, where he grew up. But for his role as Mozart he had to learn to play the piano and spent four hours a day with a piano teacher for a full month before filming began. ''My fingers ached,'' Mr. Hulce recalled. ''After working at the piano all day, I wanted to go out and drink and listen to rock and roll. People wondered how Mozart could work all day and then go out and party all night. In a tiny way I felt I understood that from my experience.''

Although Salieri might be seen as the villain of the piece, Mr. Abraham came to admire him just as intensely as Mr. Hulce admired Mozart. ''Salieri is so human in his responses,'' Mr. Abraham contended. ''And he's not a coward. What do you do when you're a mediocre composer confronted with genius? Many people would simply quit. But Salieri didn't destroy his work or kill himself. He said no to fate. There are two lines which were unfortunately cut from the movie, where the priest hearing his confession says to him, 'May God forgive you,'' and Salieri replies, 'He may, but I shall never forgive Him.' I like that spirit. I think he was a courageous, crazy man.''

(Les Solomon, Campaign)

TOM HULCE, an enthusiastic and likeable 29-year-old actor has won acclaim for his role as Mozart in Amadeus. And he's also won an Academy Award nomination [...] but he is taking it all very much in his stride.

"I was in Singapore when I heard of the nominations," he says. "I was staying at the Raffles Hotel which is full of romantic fantasies. I was a bit drunk from the sun and a rather vicious drink called the Singapore sling. In the middle of the night friends rang to tell me of the nomination and in my sun-poisoned drunken stupor I failed to get very excited. It's been creeping up on me ever since and I am particularly pleased as it's other actors who have made this choice. A lot of people expected it but I was not sure I was going to get the nomination."

"Our parents and teachers never tell us the truth about these people. They whitewash their image so I had to go back to his letters to find he had a bad boy mentality, He had a love of dirty words and I'm sure he littered Vienna with his extra-marital affairs. To put all that together into one person and to take all those unflattering elements such as his arrogance and infantile behavior and try to mould them into a person audiences could understand was incredibly difficult."

"He [director Milos Forman] did not want us influenced by the image that a historical film should have a museum type feel to it [...] Milos believed that as Mozart and his wife were from the provinces and the streets respectively then they should talk in the sort of American accents we used in the film [...] We wanted to make the film as naturalistic as possible, we did not want to limit an audience's enjoyment because they could not identify with the period. You know some of us spent a lot of time dressing and eating in the costumes of the day. We spent a couple of days living in the Mozart apartment and learned how constrictive the clothes were. It was an interesting period, you know the sexual excitement that must have built up while wearing those clothes would have been really amazing."