All language subtitles for 1 Intro.EN

Sir! Sir! Sir!

I was the most successful young musician in the city
of musicians. And new suddenly, without warning -

Mozart!
- Mozart has come!

Bene
- Bene

I too wish you success with your opera

Oh, I'll have it. It's going to be superb

Was it then - so early-
that I began to have thoughts of murder?

No. Of course not: at least not in Life.
In Art it was a different matter

I believe that for all of us
in whatever discipline, even within families.

This idea of there being one person
that we all relate to and think-

'How are you doing that? I want to do that.
I want to make the magic you make'

As a lover of football, you who hacks at the grass,
who hoofs around hacking and chopping,

and then you turn around and your teammates are gliding.

Or there's one teammate who might
tum it into something balletic and beautiful

We can all relate to that, to somebody who elevates
what is ordinary to something magical

And that in tum, I guess, foments a kind of
a love-hate relationship with the idea of genius

I think you're going to shit yourself
- Sshh!

Yes, in a moment it's all going to be on the floor

There's loads of letters that Mozart wrote
to his father. He wrote a letter almost every week

and so you got a real insight into the way he spoke
and the way that he felt about things

They were smutty letters
- They spoke about poo a lot

Yep. They spoke about faeces regularly

He liked to interweave that
into just regular conversation

General chit-chat. Yeah

And sexual. He was extremely sexual

Shh all over the mattress and shout 'I did it!'

He is somebody that realises the way he is supposed to
behave and instead chooses the way he wants to behave

Musically I find him to be radical
and so I thought I would like to update that,

and that means to me David Bowie,
Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols

The contemporary world is very visible and very
part of the story because he feels so contemporary

And it's retrospective. You're looking back
through Salieri's eyes and what he experienced,

so I feel like everything is slightly
left of field, slightly grotesque,

because it's his memory and his experiences
and you're going through with him

We wanted to find an actor
that would give us a new take on Salieri

And I think Salieri can be, on the page,
a stereotypical villain

And Lucian brings more humanity to that character
than I could ever have imagined was possible

And fundamentally I think it's really important
that we open up these stories, and...

...if you want to know what Salieri looked like,
you can Google him

We exist in a world of metaphor. We exist in a world
of dreams and of limitless, boundless imagination

And if you are going to tum around and tell me that
the only reason that you can't buy into the story...

...is because of my lovely chocolatey hue,
that's your problem

As for the music, it matched the coat completely

By having the orchestra on stage,
framed as a modern orchestra,

you have, I guess,
the keepers of our music today

and they are the people that Salieri
is trying to influence

But I guess we know as an audience member
that it's Mozart's music that we listen to

and that they'll be playing
four hundred years down the line

High hams for their hunting

and drums for their wars

It's brought all kinds of new challenges

Usually we're used to sitting within our sections,

and you get very used to heating certain instruments
that are near you and how to blend with them,

so the end result that comes across to the audience
is a well-balanced sort of sound

We somehow need to make sure that...

...the sound that eventually comes to the audience
is still that perfect blend

And all the more so because it's not like we're trying
to do a sort of dumbed-down version of Mozart

We're trying to play it as accurately
and as faithfully as possible

so that the audience do genuinely feel
like they could be at an opera

There was a moment when certain members of the cast
just came along and whipped away the music stands-

which suddenly felt a bit...
- What are you doing?

But overtime it gives you so mum more freedom

And we can become part of the action because then
it kind of frees us up to move whilst playing as well

It's really nice to get the opportunity
to present that in a more dramatic way,

Definitely
- so that it really hits home...

...how amazing some of Mozart's music is
and how powerful it can be

To be able to produce music
or any art form so effortlessly,

you're bound to have people that are jealous of that,
or people who wish that that was them,

because there's no rhyme or reason, so I can see
why that might be regarded as a gift given from God

Salieri says, 'My sublime privilege
is to be the sole man alive in this time...'

'...who shall dearly recognise your incarnation.'
Are you going to be happy with that?

The height of your achievement,
your entire reason for being,

is that you are the one who will herald The One.
That is your gift

I think the play was called 'Salieri' atone point in
the first few drafts, and you could see why it should be

I think it's very cruelly indicative
of what Salieri experiences...

...that he's not even allowed to be
the star of his own play