Mozart researcher Konrad on “Mozart/Mozart” on ARD | EUROtoday

Why did Alexander Puschkin or Leonhart Wohlmut within the nineteenth century, Peter Shaffer or Miloš Forman within the late twentieth century tackle the life and work of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart in very completely different poetry, stage and movie works? They had questions. For instance, how the distinctive phenomenon of an extremely excessive degree of expertise pertains to the prevailing rule of common effort, in different phrases, how the mass of the common pertains to the person of the unattainable. In our egalitarian instances, genius not appears to play a task, however it’s noticeable that cultic worship of extraordinary individuals is widespread observe.

Mozart is clearly nonetheless one in all these, however in some way not. The monuments that had been as soon as erected to him are not pilgrimage locations, in contrast to the memorial to Michael Jackson, into which the Gluck statue on Promenadeplatz in Munich was transformed. But within the cliché, Mozart lives on as a god of artwork. Chocolate balls, a little bit evening music, stunning ladies and an earthly existence that ends bitterly early decide the image. And a diadam, diadam, diada-a, calling for salvation from cell telephones.

So why, on the finish of 2025, on the eve of Mozart’s 270th birthday, dedicate a number of million euros of fee-financed prime time to the distant “Amadeus”? Who needs to be reached, with what intention and for what function? Above all, what elementary thought may a media method to Mozart within the first quarter of the twenty first century be dedicated to? In the opening credit to the ARD sequence “Mozart/Mozart” it’s made clear that it’s in regards to the story of the Mozart siblings, i.e. brother and sister Maria Anna. Historical custom, which boring minds may assume it essential to hint, is constantly pushed apart in favor of “imagination”. How boring it’s to attempt to reconstruct the previous when everybody is aware of that historical past does not exist, however is made.

In the primary brainstorming session for the movie, the artistic minds round director Clara Zoë My-Linh von Arnim and the screenplay crew Andreas Gutzeit and Swantje Oppermann wrote down on a chunk of paper what their creativeness may provide you with when it comes to the zeitgeist: gender equality, gender fluidity, postcolonialism, patriarchy, abuse of energy, feminism, wokeness, to cite a number of key phrases. Oh sure, and in addition music, right here within the type of classical or digital music.

Anyone who refrains from claiming to not less than roughly characterize what as soon as was will give themselves free rein for a plot that corresponds to the present understanding of the biopic style. With a contact of Bonnie and Clyde, eventualities of delicate deception are performed out, which works as a result of Maria Anna can maintain a candle musically to her alcoholic and drug-addicted brother Amadeus, who was finally locked away in exhausting withdrawal. Other doubtful playing cards are additionally performed. Salieri, a talent-poor schemer by occupation (in some way well-known), runs his underhanded enterprise, but in addition finds his manner into Maria Anna’s keen womb.

Emperor Joseph already appears to be considerably affected by Habsburg genetic defects, as he’s so weak in assertiveness (however maybe it’s also as a result of vegetarian food regimen that he eats day-after-day). His sister Marie-Antoinette, who’s in fixed sexual misery and has fled to Vienna from her husband Louis, who’s supposedly unable to conceive, seems for pleasure on the desk and within the champagne tub when she will not be having fun with the stomach pleasures triggered by Mozart’s (Maria Anna’s) piano taking part in. She complains that she’s operating out of time, so the key phrase menopause comes up, because it ought to lately. Who desires to show their nostril up at the truth that Mozart is lastly allowed to father the French inheritor to the throne on a inexperienced subject? Leopold as soon as had one thing that did not go with out penalties with a wonderful dark-skinned singer, which he did not wish to settle for as a characterless white man.

All of those and different phantasms, tailor-made to the imaginary Ancien Régime in a TV-like opulence, may very well be accepted, particularly since they don’t have anything to do with the Mozarts, or nothing in any respect, if this product of imaginative incapacity did not have a central clean house. Music, of all issues, is within the deadly vacuum of the movie. Mozart’s compositions solely seem in minimal excerpts or barely identifiable snippets, as if solely disjointed fragments of them had been preserved from historic instances. Instead, Jessica de Rooij and Felix Raffel provide colorfully blended items of on a regular basis electro-pop, the sound and sound ratatouille of which comes throughout with a disconcerting randomness. One senses the intention to create the suggestive energy of Mozart’s music utilizing up to date means, and one is displeased as a result of these are far too weak for that.

After 4 and a half hours of broadcast time, the viewers sits at a loss in entrance of the screens. Who approves such orders to manufacturing firms, who decides on the road between respectable leisure and the suitable achievement of the academic mission? Why do specialists from tradition, music and science stay uninvolved in such tasks? Since good and unhealthy movies normally value the identical, why not make good ones as an alternative? “Mozart/Mozart” raises questions whose explosiveness needs to be taken critically. Or is there an absence of creativeness?

The writer is Professor Emeritus on the University of Würzburg and was awarded the Mozart Medal of the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg for his analysis into Mozart’s artistic methodology.