“Amadeus” at the Théâtre Marigny: intense, flamboyant, overwhelming… We loved this new Mozart

The stakes were high: to be able to compete with one of our favorite films. Or not be ridiculous in front of a monument of the 7th art. Of course, this is theater, not cinema. But when entering the Théâtre Marigny (Paris 8th) to discover this new version of “Amadeus”, it is impossible not to think of Milos Forman’s masterpiece released in 1984 on the screens. The feature film won 40 awards around the world at the time, including eight Oscars – including best film, best director and best actor for F. Murray Abraham in the role of Salieri opposite a breathtaking Mozart played by Tom Hulce, an actor who never regained this state of grace afterwards.

How can you live up to these two? How to stage a story that is both intimate and flamboyant? The rivalry between Antonio Salieri, talented musician of his time, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, absolute genius of the 18th century. A merciless confrontation which is nevertheless pure fiction.

Revenge after humiliation…

The original play, imagined by the British playwright Peter Shaffer in 1979 already performed in Paris by Roman Polanski and François Périer in 1982 then Lorànt Deutsch and Jean Piat in 2005 and which inspired the film, combines jealousy, hatred, manipulation, revenge. Here Salieri takes on the features of Jérôme Kircher, a character initially ghostly in the twilight of his life when he first appears on stage screaming: “Mozart, forgive your murderer. » He calls out to the public, makes them listen to one of his works, unknown, and another by Mozart, instantly recognizable. Cruel.

Then the character goes back three decades in time. In a few seconds, the impressive actor becomes younger, begins to tell how the young Mozart – played by Thomas Solivérès, revealed by “Intouchables” – shook up his notoriety by arriving like a tornado in Vienna. Salieri may well have the honors of the emperor, played here by Éric Berger – the “Tanguy” of Étienne Chatiliez – but he is humiliated by the insolent musician who brilliantly improvises on one of his elder’s compositions after having heard it only once.

So the Italian composer broods over his revenge, attacks God directly, whose Messiah of music, would therefore only be a childish and crude Austrian? Intolerable for a believer like him. How can the Lord do him such an affront? So what does morality matter and if he ends up in hell, he will be killed by Mozart, slowly but surely.

Musical prowess

The more “Amadeus” advances, the closer Wolfgang’s fall approaches, engineered by his enemy whom he does not see coming, in whom he even trusts until the end when he asks him to note down the composition of his “Requiem” on a sheet of music. A final mass for the dead that a mysterious ghostly messenger has ordered for him, while he is in agony.

Seeing the work take shape live as the different instruments resonate one after the other is an anthology moment in Milos Forman’s film, a fabulous illustration, never equaled, of what musical genius is. In Marigny, the very inspired director Olivier Solivérès – fresh from the triumph of his astonishing “Circle of Disappeared Poets” – succeeds in this sequence between theoretical writing and symphonic illustration, the ultimate face-to-face between his two characters and his two actors: Jérôme Kircher, intense and complex Salieri from start to finish, Machiavellian and funny at the same time, more nuanced than in the cinema, and Thomas Solivérès, brother of the director, breathtaking Mozart inhabited by his energy, his carefreeness and his laughter as loud as it is exasperating. He even manages to perform some feats on the harpsichord, including a performance upside down.

Around them, the scenes at Court are flamboyant, with period dresses and wigs, illustrations of Amadeus’ ingenious creations, with real musicians, singers and opera singers on the stage, notably for his opera “The Magic Flute”. The piece crescendoes until the two final notes: the death of Mozart thrown into the mass grave like a pauper then that of Salieri in a mystical sequence that leaves you speechless. A very great show.