Amadeus (play)

Amadeus
Playbill, 1981 (Broadhurst Theatre)
Written by	Peter Shaffer
Characters	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Antonio Salieri Constanze Weber Katherina Cavalieri Emperor Joseph II Count Orsini-Rosenberg Baron Gottfried van Swieten Giuseppe Bonno Count Johann Kilian von Strack
Date premiered	2 November 1979
Place premiered	Royal National Theatre London, England
Original language	English
Subject	Biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Genre	Drama, tragedy
Setting	1783–1825; Vienna, Austria; the Court of Joseph II

Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer which gives a fictional account of the lives of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, imagining a rivalry between the two at the court of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. First performed in 1979, it was inspired by Alexander Pushkin's short 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, which Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov used in 1897 as the libretto for an opera of the same name.

The play makes significant use of the music of Mozart, Salieri and other composers of the period. The premieres of Mozart's operas The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute are the settings for key scenes. It was presented at the Royal National Theatre, London in 1979, then moved to Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End followed by a Broadway production. It won the 1981 Tony Award for Best Play and Shaffer adapted it for the much acclaimed 1984 film of the same name.