The entire cast of primarily unknown American and British character actors speak in their own accents and disappear into seemingly custom-tailored roles. Meanwhile, the duplicitous, vengeful, outwardly subservient Salieri is also funny, sensitive and painfully self-aware. He can also be unnervingly childish and arrogant. The preternaturally gifted Mozart can be kind of a punk: broke and living with his wife in a messy apartment, he drinks and parties and defies authority. The central “gods”-Mozart the Boy Genius and Salieri, the seething “Patron Saint of Mediocrity”-are also empathetic outsiders with relatable neuroses. Just as Mozart makes a case to Emperor Joseph II for setting the drama of common mortals in The Marriage of Figaro to the decadent otherworldiness of opera, Forman persuasively combines the ordinary with the extraordinary, the comic and the grotesque, the torment and tragedy, and all the natural and supernatural forces that seem to conspire when making great works of art. Using Shaffer’s theatrical stylization “as a springboard for another vision,” Forman disregards historical accuracy for a “fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri.” Forman creates his own mythic, naturalist opera both situated within and transcending its own time and place through sumptuous and meticulous period set design paired with more contemporary language and behavior. Its radical approach rendered nearly invisible due to its enormous popularity, Milos Forman’s much lauded adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play embraces a particular kind of “realistic” revisionism to rework Mozart’s biography as a narrative doorway to his music.

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