Shadow Puppet Storyteller

History Re-revealed

I saw a performance of the play, "Amadeus" performed at the Hollywood Bowl this past week. This year marks 250 years since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. The play, which is a brillantly crafted story is something I've enjoyed as a quick read (It's available from the public library). Plus there's the movie of the same name from the 80's. So altogether, I've seen it performed on stage twice, read the play, and seen the movie.

The most interesting thing to me is how an audience's attitudes and historical understanding can become skewed by clever extrapolation of events and theories.
One audience member that I was chatting with after the end of the show wondered aloud, "So, do you know, was that historically accurate or fantasy?" She was an older woman, accompanied by her husband. I was surprised that she didn't know that the story was fiction placed in the accurate timeframe of Mozart's and Antonio Salieri's successes. Her husband added, "I didn't know Salieri was such a bad man. He did horrible things!"

I'd have to research it to be absolutely sure...but really, any fictional representation of a historical figure has to be accepted as FICTION.

This problem mirrors the controversy arisen from the popularity of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code.

More on this later...