It's unbelievable, the director has actually torn up a huge section of my music. They say I have to rewrite the opera. But it's perfect as it is! I can't rewrite what's perfect!
From now on, we are enemies - You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block You, I swear it. I will hinder and harm Your creature as far as I am able. I will ruin Your incarnation.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Confutatis maledictis" - when the wicked are confounded. "Flammis Acribus Adictis." How would you translate that?Antonio Salieri: Consigned to flames of woe.Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Do you believe in it?Antonio Salieri: What?Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A fire which never dies, burning you forever?Antonio Salieri: Oh yes.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes! Old dead legends! Why must we go on forever writing about gods and legends?Baron Van Swieten: Because they do. They go on forever. Or at least what they represent. The eternal in us. Opera is here to enoble us. You and me, just the same as His Majesty.