History Theatre / Amadeus

* NoLoveForTheWicked: Salieri in the movie, who takes a vow of chastity and seems to hold to it, having neither a wife nor mistresses. Not so much in the play, in which he expresses contempt towards his wife's frigidity and seduces one of his students, although only after he abandons his bargain with God (in reality, Salieri was by all accounts a happily married family man).

* CompositeCharacter: In the film and play, Salieri disguises himself to commission Mozart's Requiem, all the while plotting to steal and take credit for it. He also assists Mozart's work on the composition as he eggs him on to complete it. This intrigue makes the fictionalized Salieri a composite of himself and two other historical figures: Count von Walsseg, a wealthy amateur musician who anonymously commissioned the piece and was indeed plotting to take credit for the work, as well as Franz Sussmayer, who did assist Mozart in writing down the work and indeed completed the composition after Mozart's death.

* CelibateHero: Salieri in the movie. Not so much in the play, in which he expresses contempt towards his wife's frigidity and seduces one of his students, although only after he abandons his bargain with God.

[[ArtisticLicenseHistory Taking some liberties with historical accounts]], the story is told from the [[SympatheticPOV point of view]] of Antonio Salieri, the court composer for Austrian Emperor Joseph II. A devout and serious man, Salieri's faith is shaken when he meets Mozart. Though Mozart proves to be a tremendous boor and an immature ManChild, his godlike musical talents win the affections of the court and the audiences while simultaneously moving and infuriating Salieri with their genius. That the boorish Mozart could create such magnificent, groundbreaking compositions with seemingly little effort, while Salieri had to struggle to get to where he was, drives him to undermine Mozart any way he can. [[DownerEnding Sometimes, he even succeeds]].

* AdaptationalSexuality: With respect to behavior rather than orientation. In the play and film, Salieri takes a vow of chastity and celibacy, hoping that abstaining from all sexual activity will win God's favor and give him talent. In reality, Salieri was married.

* AffablyEvil: So much so, that Salieri's evil is never discovered [[note]]: Constanza, Mozart's wife, does get a glimpse at Salieri's true feelings towards her husband, but she never understands what is really going on[[/note]], only when he confesses to the priest, and even then, he is quite nice and congenial.

** One minor but curious alteration in the movie is the absence of Salieri's wife. The movie portrays him as celibate but secretly lustful towards his students, in particular Caterina Cavalieri, adding weight to the Director's Cut scene where he tries to take advantage of Constanze but doesn't entirely follow through. The real Salieri was most certainly not celibate, and was in fact known to have fathered eight children with his wife. In addition, the real Caterina Cavalieri was known to have been a mistress of Salieri. In the play, Salieri intentionally married a boring woman so he could simply be married and done with it without the temptation of spending too much time with her and strived for as much celibacy as possible. While he lusted for Caterina, he initially never touched her despite believing Mozart to have seduced her, until he broke his pact with God and seduced her himself entirely to spite God.

* JerkassHasAPoint: When a young girl arrives at Mozart's household to offer her services as a maid, with payment being provided by an anonymous "admirer" of Mozart's, Mozart's domineering father, Leopold, is against keeping her on, stating that they shouldn't hire a servant who doesn't have references. As it turns out, the girl is a spy hired by Salieri.

* ShoutOut: Joseph makes a few allusions to his beloved sister Antonia and becoming afraid of her own people.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Salieri finds himself eavesdropping on an immature, vulgar man fooling around with his girlfriend. Then he hears the concert begin and rushes out as "My music has started without me," leaving Salieri shocked that such a person is also the greatest composer to ever live.

** The scene in which Mozart dictates the Requiem to Salieri obviously never happened, but it is ''almost'' plausible: part of the reason that we still don't know exactly how much of the Requiem was written by Mozart is because there is only so much of the work that has been found written in his handwriting, but Constanze claimed that he had left sufficient notes and sketches of the remaining movements for an outside composer to complete Mozart's vision-- however, in real life that composer was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Xaver_S%C3%BCssmayr Franz Xaver Suessmayr]], not Antonio Salieri. The film posits that Mozart "wrote" a great deal of it through dictation, thus explaining why the work is not in his hand. However, even if this were true, copies of the pieces which the film shows Mozart dictating to Salieri ("Confutatis", with the suggestion that they will finish the Lacrymosa before resting) exist in Mozart's hand.

The story and its relationship to actual history is often misunderstood. The story is about the supposed ''secret'' history of Salieri and Mozart, and works on the idea that recorded history is different because it has been ''duped''. In RealLife Salieri and Mozart were good friends and Salieri was a respected composer, but in this movie Salieri and Mozart are ''also'' good friends and Salieri ''is still'' a respected composer... as far as everybody else knows, Mozart included. The premise is that the only one who knows the ''real'' truth is Salieri, who is far too wallowed up in self-pity to appreciate his lot in life (which is, on the whole, pretty good) but is also enough of a VillainWithGoodPublicity that by the end he, and only he, really knows the extent of his bastardy (bar the priest he [[ConfessInConfidence confesses]] to).

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: InUniverse, Mozart is seen struggling against everyone who can't comprehend the operas and music he's creating for them. Most of them -- Emperor included -- can't recognize good music, while the one person who ''can'' comprehend -- Salieri -- is working behind the scenes to sabotage Mozart's efforts. Parodied when Mozart, in a huff after being told that the Emperor has banned ballet in opera, just removes the music from the ballet scene in ''The Marriage of Figaro'' and has the dancers dance to silence. When the Emperor attends a rehearsal, he asks an aide if this is a new modern development?

* MassiveMultiplayerEnsembleNumber: DiscussedTrope during the composition ''The Marriage of Figaro'', as Mozart believes the use of music to have multiple parties hold simultaneous conversations/trains of thought without being clashing and incomprehensible is what makes opera unique as a medium.

* OvershadowedByAwesome: Salieri, despite his self-assessment as "a mediocrity," is not really a bad musician; one doesn't get to be the Court Composer of the Emperor of Austria by being a hack, and he was a teacher to Music/LudwigVanBeethoven, Music/FranzLiszt, and Music/FranzSchubert. It's just that, well, compared to ''Mozart''....

* ActuallyThatsMyAssistant: When Mozart first meets the Emperor and the rest of the court, he bursts in enthusiastically and bows ... to Baron von Swieten. Von Swieten has to point to the ''actual'' Emperor playing Salieri's 'Welcome March' at the piano, much to Mozart's confusion.

** The idea of Mozart ending up receiving a pauper's funeral and having his body dumped in mass grave, is likely based on the historical description that he was buried in a "common grave". In reality, a grave having the distinction of being a "common" grave, was not in any way a communal grave, it merely meant that it was in a graveyard for the common people, as opposed to a graveyard reserved for the aristocracy. In reality Mozart's funeral was by all accounts a perfectly normal one for someone of his renown, with every expense for the ceremony paid for by his friend and patron Baron Gottfried von Swientien, where his body was interred in a personal plot of land reserved for him.

* NiceGuy: Though he is a humorless figure, out of all of the Emperor's courtiers Baron Von Swieten does the most he can to help Mozart, inviting him to his Masonic Lodge, helping to find odd jobs when he is broke, and even after Mozart alienates himself from the Masons by parodying their rituals in Theatre/TheMagicFlute (at Salieri's suggestion obviously, though he imagined a positive message of brotherly love was being conveyed), Von Swieten still paid for his funeral. TruthInTelevision, as evidence shows that the Baron made attempts to support Constanze and her son after Mozart's death.

** Both Baron von Swieten and the Emperor's Chamberlain try to counsel Mozart, to behave himself, to be more deferential to the Emperor, and not to use such risqué subject matter, while still wishing for him to succeed.