Amadeus was released in 1984 as Milos Forman’s adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s stage play. Featuring an Oscar-winning performance from F. Murray Abraham as the tormented composer Antonio Salieri and a career-defining turn from Tom Hulce as the legendary Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the film brought classical music and 18th century court intrigue to mainstream audiences in a way nobody expected. From its troubled production in communist Czechoslovakia to its dominance at the Academy Awards, the making of Amadeus is a story worth telling. We’re doing that now with 40 huge facts about the film. You can also listen to our Amadeus podcast episode here.

1. The story began on the stage, not the screen

Peter Shaffer was an English playwright best known for Equus, a psychological drama that had been adapted for the screen in 1977 by Sidney Lumet. A fan of classical music, Shaffer had long been fascinated by the contrast between the beauty of Mozart’s compositions and the vulgarity found in his personal letters. His play Amadeus told the composer’s story through the lens of a rivalry with fellow court musician Antonio Salieri, and debuted at the London National Theatre in 1979 before transferring to Broadway in 1980.

The cast for that original Broadway run was remarkable: Tim Curry played Mozart, Ian McKellen was Salieri, and Jane Seymour played Mozart’s wife, Constanze. Milos Forman saw the play at its London premiere and approached Shaffer during the intermission to tell him he was going to make a film of it. Forman apparently said, “It’s a wonderful drama and would even be wonderful if Mozart and Salieri were not in it.”

2. But the origins go back even further

Amadeus didn’t begin with Peter Shaffer. In 1830, the Russian playwright Alexander Pushkin wrote a one-act play called Mozart and Salieri, inspired by a rumour that had circulated after Mozart’s death: that he’d been poisoned by a jealous Antonio Salieri. Shaffer explored similar themes in his own play decades later, though he has said he was unaware of Pushkin’s work when he was writing Amadeus. The two plays share thematic ground but are entirely different narratively.

3. No Hollywood studio wanted to fund it

Forman took the project to producer Saul Zaentz, who had produced Forman’s Oscar-winning classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Zaentz agreed to get involved and shopped the idea around Hollywood, but no studios were interested. In the end, the Saul Zaentz Company funded the entire production themselves, with a budget of $18 million. The film was distributed by Orion Pictures, the independent studio that also released The Terminator (1984) that same year.

Zaentz’s money came from an unexpected source. He owned Fantasy Records, the label that Creedence Clearwater Revival, the hugely popular American rock band, had signed to in the 1960s. The band made him a fortune, and Zaentz ploughed the proceeds straight into his film career (much to the fury of Creedence, which is a story all of its own).

4. Forman and Shaffer spent four months rewriting the play

Peter Shaffer is credited as sole writer, but has publicly said that Forman’s contribution to the screenplay was substantial. Once Forman came on board as director, Shaffer moved into his farmhouse for four months to adapt the stage play into something that would work on film.

Forman said the play was very much written for the stage, so they had no choice but to tear it apart structurally. Shaffer would say they agreed immediately about the need to reimagine the play, but argued about just about everything else, calling Forman’s house a “torture chamber.” They would sometimes argue all afternoon about changing a scene, agree on the change, then spend most of the evening arguing about who should cook dinner. When disagreements peaked, they would resolve them by listening to Mozart.

Some key changes from the play: in the stage version, two characters called the Venticelli represent the Viennese public and deliver much of the backstory. Forman ditched them entirely for the film. The play also opens with the Venticelli whispering “Salieri! Salieri!” Forman said the film should start with Salieri shouting “Mozart!” which it does. And Salieri’s confession, delivered directly to the audience in the play, was redirected to a newly created character, the priest Father Vogler (Richard Frank).

5. Prague was chosen because of societal “problems”

The advantage of Zaentz funding the film independently was that he and Forman had complete creative control, including where they should shoot it. Forman told Zaentz that only three cities still had the architecture needed to create an authentic 18th century Vienna: Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Forman said his home city of Prague was pretty much untouched thanks to what he called “communist inefficiency,” so they decided to film there.

6. Filming in communist Czechoslovakia brought issues

The production crew was often followed by the STB, the Czech secret police, largely because Forman was considered a traitor for becoming an American citizen. On 4th July 1983, they were filming one of the opera scenes and, to celebrate Independence Day, the crew unfurled a huge American flag onstage and played the national anthem. Forman said there were 600 extras in the room and about 30 of them didn’t stand up, revealing the to be members of the secret police.

7. Almost all of the locations were real

The Production Designer was Patrizia von Brandenstein, who had worked with Forman on Ragtime (1981) and had a reputation for authentic historical set design. For Amadeus, only four sets were built from scratch: Salieri’s hospital room, Mozart’s apartment, the stairway outside Mozart’s apartment, and the Volkstheater where The Magic Flute is performed. Almost everything else was filmed on location in real historical buildings.

The scenes in the Archbishop’s palace and the Emperor’s court, for instance, were both filmed at the Gryspek Palace in Prague. For Amadeus, von Brandenstein became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Art Direction.

8. The production used government antiques

The Czech Government and Ministry of Culture provided real antiques for the production, including museum pieces, period furniture, and French tapestries dating from the 1750s. The result is a film where any shot of people walking through a courtyard or down a street feels utterly authentic.

9. Many costumes and many, many wigs were created

Costume designer Theodor Pištěk was a Czech artist and expert in historical costume design. Forman hired him to create around 700 costumes, mostly based on the work of two 18th century French painters: Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Jean Antoine Watteau. His team also created approximately 1,500 wigs at a cost of $500,000.

Mozart’s wigs serve as a form of visual storytelling throughout the film. When he’s happy and successful, he wears a bright pink wig. As things start to go wrong, it becomes an unkempt white wig. And by the time he’s completely off the rails, it’s a dirty brown wig.

10. Salieri’s hospital corridor was the real deal

In the film’s framing device, an elderly Salieri confesses his sins to a priest in a mental hospital. His room was a purpose-built set, but the corridor scenes outside his room, where we first see the priest arrive and later watch Salieri being wheeled through in the final scene, were filmed at Invalidovna in Prague, a dormitory built for war veterans in the 1730s. It had been used as a military residence until 1935 and was operating as a museum when Amadeus came to film there.

11. Forman favoured art over historical accuracy

The piece of music Salieri plays to the priest early in the film, which the priest doesn’t recognise, is a serenade called “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” (“A Little Night Music”). It’s one of Mozart’s most well-known pieces today. He wrote it in 1787, around the time he was composing the opera Don Giovanni, but it wasn’t actually published until 1827, 36 years after his death, when Constanze sold it to a German publisher.

The scenes with Salieri and the priest are set in 1823, four years before that music was even published, meaning the priest couldn’t have known it. Forman’s decision to choose art over historical accuracy is there from the opening minutes of the film.

12. The film made significant changes from history

Shaffer said he never saw either the play or the film as a biopic, calling it “a fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri.” Some of the more notable departures from history:

The film opens with Salieri attempting suicide. The real Salieri did attempt suicide in 1823 and made claims about poisoning Mozart, but he was suffering from dementia at the time and later retracted those claims. Historians say there is no evidence at all that Mozart was poisoned. His cause of death remains uncertain, but the most likely culprits are rheumatic fever or strep throat.

The main plot point of the film, Salieri’s jealousy and sabotage of Mozart’s career, has no basis in fact. In reality, there is no evidence of anything other than a friendly professional rivalry between the two composers. After Mozart died, Salieri even tutored Mozart’s son.

In the film, Salieri is portrayed as celibate, a vow made to God in exchange for musical talent. In reality, Salieri was married to Therese Helferstorfer, fathered eight children, and apparently had a well-known affair with Caterina Cavalieri (played by Christine Ebersole in the film).

There’s a saying that emerged from Pushkin’s role in creating the unflattering Salieri myth: “Salieri didn’t murder Mozart. But Pushkin for sure murdered Salieri.”

13. The Requiem wasn’t commissioned by Salieri

In the film, Salieri secretly commissions Mozart to write his Requiem Mass in D Minor, presenting himself as a messenger from a mysterious patron. In reality, it was commissioned by an Austrian nobleman called Count Franz von Walsegg, though he did commission the work anonymously, and tried to pass it off as his own when Mozart died. Salieri had nothing to do with it, and he certainly didn’t disguise himself as Mozart’s dead father.

Even the title of the film was largely fabricated. Mozart’s real name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He would often sign letters using “Amadé,” the French version of Theophilus. “Amadeus” became the standard in popular culture after his death. It translates as “loved by God,” which, given the themes of the film, makes for a fitting title.

14. Around 1,400 auditions were held

Casting directors Mary Goldberg and Maggie Cartier said Forman told them he wasn’t interested in stars. Mozart and Salieri were the stars. He wanted to find the perfect actors. They held approximately 1,400 auditions in total to find the perfect cast, which was easier said than done…

15. Some unexpected names could have played Mozart

When Zaentz was shopping the film around Hollywood, an unnamed studio said they would fund it on the condition that Forman cast Walter Matthau as Mozart. Forman said no. Mozart died when he was 35 and Matthau was in his early sixties at the time.

Other actors who auditioned or were considered for the role included Tim Curry (who had played Mozart on stage), Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, and Mark Hamill, who was playing Mozart on Broadway at the time of casting. Hamill met with Forman but said he was told very early on that the director had no intention of casting him. Forman apparently said, “People will not believe Luke Spacewalker as Mozart.”

Branagh later said he thought he had the part in the bag, until Forman decided he wanted to cast an American in the lead. That’s when Tom Hulce was cast.

16. Hulce spent six months learning piano for the role

Hulce threw himself into the part. He already knew how to play guitar, but spent six hours a day for six months learning piano. The music we hear in the film was recorded by session musicians, but Hulce learned every piece so he could recreate it accurately on screen. Music professors have since studied the film and confirmed that every time we see a cast member playing a piece of music, what their hands are doing matches exactly what we’re hearing.

The child Mozart, who we see playing piano and violin at the start of the film, was played by Miroslav Sekera, a nine-year-old professional Czech pianist who we can see is clearly playing for real on screen.

17. Mozart’s laugh was practised in department stores

One of the most memorable things about Hulce’s performance is Mozart’s laugh, though its historical accuracy is debatable. Some sources claim that letters written by women who knew Mozart described his laugh as “infectious, giddy, and like metal scraping glass.” However, musicologist Robert Marshall carried out extensive research and said he could find no evidence at all describing how Mozart actually laughed. Marshall concluded the laugh was a dramatic device created for the film, representing what Salieri calls “God’s laughter.”

Hulce said Forman asked him to create something extreme, and that he based the laugh on a director he knew, though he’s never revealed who. He practised it in public by bursting into it in the middle of department stores to gauge people’s reactions. Forman uses the laugh throughout the film as almost a sound effect: sometimes funny, sometimes obnoxious, sometimes deeply sad. He even transitions between scenes with it, and ends the film on it.

18. Mozart’s personality is rooted in reality

Historians have studied letters written by the real Mozart and confirmed he did seem to have the kind of crude sense of humour we see in the film.  When he was in Vienna, Mozart composed a piece of music called “Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber,” which translates as “Lick my arse nice and clean.” And he would often sign off letters with “Trazom” (“Mozart” backwards), which is why we see Mozart talk backwards to Constanze.

Hulce also said he based elements of Mozart’s character on the tennis player John McEnroe, particularly McEnroe’s mood swings and on-court outbursts, using those as inspiration for Mozart’s childish behaviour.

19. Salieri was a role in demand

According to Forman, “every major star wanted to be Salieri” when the film was being cast. Burt Reynolds was an early candidate. Donald Sutherland and Sam Waterston both read for the part. Al Pacino apparently lobbied for it. And Mick Jagger even expressed interest.

20. F. Murray Abraham worked overtime for the part

Abraham originally auditioned for the part of Count Rosenberg, one of Emperor Joseph II’s court advisers. During one audition session, Forman asked him to stay back and read with other actors as Salieri. Abraham hadn’t prepared anything as the older Salieri and had to improvise on the spot. However, Forman was so impressed that he told Abraham he was his number one choice for the role.

Abraham reportedly replied, “Number one choice? Great. What does that mean? Have I got the part or not?”  and when Forman said he wanted to bring him back for more auditions, Abraham said, “No, I’m painting my kitchen.”

Forman apparently told Zaentz, “This guy thinks he’s a great actor who’s just had breaks against him. That’s Salieri.” And he cast him in the role.

21. The lead actors weren’t pals

Abraham said he and Hulce respected each other but weren’t friends during production. Hulce stayed in a different hotel with the rest of the cast, and they would throw parties. They stopped inviting Abraham because he never showed up. Abraham said he grew jealous of how well Hulce got on with everyone, and started to feel towards Hulce the way Salieri felt towards Mozart.

22. Turning Abraham into old Salieri took four and a half hours

Before filming, Abraham learned to read and conduct music. The physical transformation into the elderly Salieri was handled by legendary makeup artist Dick Smith, the man who had turned Marlon Brando into Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972).

Smith’s ageing makeup for Salieri consisted of eight separate foam latex pieces that covered Abraham’s entire face except his nose. He also wore contact lenses that gave his eyes a faded appearance, had liver spots added to his skin, and wore a bald cap with thinning white hair. It took four and a half hours to apply each day.

The process revolutionised ageing makeup in Hollywood, where one-piece masks had tended to be the standard. Smith created the prosthetics working alone in his basement, then flew into Prague carrying all of the makeup himself. Abraham said getting into character as old Salieri was easy because all he had to do was look in the mirror for inspiration.

23. Forman told one actor to stay off TV

Vincent Schiavelli was an actor who had first met Forman in the 1960s and appeared in all of his Hollywood films, including playing hospital inmate Fredrickson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In Amadeus, he plays Salieri’s valet, the character we see trying to tempt the old man out of his room with a plate of food early in the film. Schiavelli said that before Amadeus he’d been doing guest appearances on TV shows, and after shooting a single take where all he had to do was walk into frame, Forman shouted “cut” and told the actor, “Television is ruining you.”

24. The Emperor was a last-minute replacement

The first person cast as Emperor Joseph II was Ian Richardson, known primarily as a Shakespearean actor, but he pulled out due to scheduling conflicts. Jeffrey Jones, also known as a stage actor at the time, was spotted by Forman’s casting team in an off-Broadway British two-act play called Cloud 9 and recommended as a replacement.

All of the aristocratic characters in the film speak with posh English accents, while the main characters are all played by Americans. This was an intentional choice by Forman to create a clear distinction between the establishment and the artists.

25. One of the famous scenes really happened

After Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio is performed for the Emperor, we see Joseph go backstage and tell Mozart there were “too many notes.” This moment is based on reality. A biography of Mozart published in 1798 recorded that after seeing the opera, the Emperor said, “That is too fine for my ears. There are too many notes.” Mozart reportedly replied, “There are just as many notes as there should be” as he does in the film.

26. The Emperor’s advisers were (mostly) based on real people

The Director of Opera, Count Franz Xaver Wolfgang von Orsini-Rosenberg, played by Charles Kay, was a real figure who genuinely opposed Mozart’s desire to compose operas in German rather than Italian. In the original Broadway production, Rosenberg had been played by Patrick Hines, who appears in the film as Kapellmeister Bonno. Hines passed away not long after the film came out.

Baron Gottfried van Swieten, the adviser who first mentions Mozart to the Emperor, is played by Jonathan Moore, who played the same character in the stage version. The real van Swieten played a significant role in popularising the music of Bach and Handel in Vienna, which is why his assessment of Mozart is notably measured: “It’s the most promising work I’ve heard in years.” When Mozart died, van Swieten arranged the funeral, which is why we see him at that scene near the end of the film.

Count von Strack, played by playwright and actor Roderick Cook, was one of the few characters in the film not based on a real person. He was invented by Peter Shaffer.

27. Salieri’s welcome march isn’t real, but Mozart’s cover version is

In an early scene at court, the Emperor plays Salieri’s welcome march for Mozart on the piano, badly. Mozart then takes the piece and transforms it into something spectacular. Salieri’s march was composed for the film, but the music Mozart adapts it into was written by the real Mozart. It’s called “Non più andrai, farfallone amoroso” and comes from The Marriage of Figaro.

28. Katerina Cavalieri was a real celebrity

The soprano who stars in The Abduction from the Seraglio in the film is Katerina Cavalieri, and she was one of the most famous singers in Vienna at the time the film is set. She really did appear in Mozart’s opera and really did study under Antonio Salieri. She may also have been Salieri’s lover. She did not, however, have a relationship with Mozart. That part was made up for the film.

Cavalieri is played by Christine Ebersole, who had appeared on Broadway, been a cast member on Saturday Night Live, and had a part in classic comedy Tootsie (1982). Forman said he cast her because of her versatility. Her singing voice was dubbed by Suzanne Murphy, an acclaimed Irish soprano.

29. Mozart’s conflict with the Archbishop was toned down

At the start of the film, Mozart is in the service of Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo of Salzburg, played by Nicholas Kepros, and the Emperor acquires Mozart’s services from him. This friction is rooted in reality. Mozart’s letters from the period describe the Archbishop as authoritative and dismissive of his music. When the real Mozart resigned from the Archbishop’s court to go to Vienna, his meeting with the Archbishop’s chamber clerk went so badly that the clerk reportedly threw Mozart out by kicking him in the pants.

30. The casting of Constanze was a saga

The first person Forman considered for the role of Mozart’s loyal wife Constanze was Amy Irving, who had played the part in the Broadway version. She wasn’t keen on flying to communist-controlled Prague for six months and declined. Rebecca De Mornay and Elizabeth McGovern both auditioned. McGovern had been in Forman’s previous film, Ragtime, but he felt she wasn’t right for this role.

Forman then cast Meg Tilly after her performance in Psycho II (1983). She did table reads and dress rehearsals and, according to Tom Hulce, was “absolute dynamite.” But the day before filming was due to start, Tilly was playing football with locals in the streets of Prague and tore a ligament in her knee, meaning she had to be replaced.

An emergency casting session was held. Forman auditioned 60 actresses at short notice and narrowed it down to two: Diane Franklin and Elizabeth Berridge, who had been recommended by her acting teacher, Warren Robertson. Neither had auditioned during the original casting process. Both actresses spent a week in Prague with Forman, who made his decision by telling them, “You both have the part, but one of you is too pretty to play Constanze, so I’m going to have to cast Elizabeth.” Berridge later said she felt like she’d won the booby prize.

31. Constanze was more musical than the film suggests

The real Constanze Mozart came from a musical family. She was a trained soprano who would rehearse with Mozart, and her sisters Josepha and Aloysia were sopranos who performed in Mozart operas. None of this musical background features in the film.

32. Elizabeth Berridge had a sweet tooth on set

The Nipples of Venus delicacies that Salieri offers Constanze in one of the film’s more uncomfortable scenes weren’t made up. They were real Italian chocolates of the era. For filming, they were made from marzipan, and Berridge didn’t know she could spit them out between takes, so she kept swallowing them. She later said they were disgusting and made her sick.

33. Leopold Mozart’s portrait was based on a real painting

Mozart’s father Leopold is played by Roy Dotrice, who was mostly known as a stage and TV actor at the time. The film’s portrayal of Leopold as domineering is largely accurate. He really did try to control his son’s career and finances, and disapproved of his marriage to Constanze. The painting of Leopold that hangs in Mozart’s apartment is based on a real portrait of the elder Mozart, but recreated to look like Dotrice.

34. The silent ballet was a real decree

In one of the film’s most entertaining sequences, we see Count Rosenberg literally removing the ballet music from The Marriage of Figaro before the Emperor overrules him and puts it back in, only to then struggle to stay awake during the performance. In reality, the ballet was never actually removed. But the idea for the scene is rooted in fact: the real Emperor Joseph did issue instructions forbidding ballet in operas unless it was integral to the action, as part of his efforts to promote German theatre over Italian traditions.

35. A supporting actress was still a schoolgirl

The maid Lorl, whom Salieri sends to work at Mozart’s apartment so she can report back to him, wasn’t in the original play. She was created for the film and played by Cynthia Nixon, who would later become famous as Miranda Hobbes in hit TV show Sex and the City. Nixon was only 17 at the time and still at school, so her parents had it written into her contract that if she didn’t shoot for two consecutive days, she would be sent home. Forman agreed to the terms.

36. They filmed where Mozart actually performed

The performances of The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni were all filmed at the Tyl Theatre in Prague. This is a historically preserved building where the real Mozart performed Don Giovanni for the first time in 1787. Choreographer Twyla Tharp, who had worked with Forman on his adaptation of the musical Hair (1979), said the theatre had been pretty much untouched since it was built in 1783, so it essentially looked how it would have when Mozart played there.

Peter Shaffer went missing on their first visit to the Tyl Theatre. They found him sitting in a corridor, sobbing, overwhelmed by being in the same place Mozart had premiered Don Giovanni.

When they filmed the Don Giovanni performance, the cast carried real fire on stage, and Patrizia von Brandenstein said she had nightmares about burning the place down. They had 40 firemen on standby. During one take, the actor playing Don Giovanni accidentally set his plumed hat alight on a candle. The firemen apparently just stood and waved rather than rushing on stage, because they were scared of annoying Forman.

37. Creating The Magic Flute was a huge production of its own

While the main opera scenes were filmed at the Tyl Theatre, the Don Giovanni parody performance and The Magic Flute were filmed on a purpose-built set. Von Brandenstein and her team constructed a replica of an 18th century Volkstheater on Czechoslovakia’s biggest soundstage at Barrandov Studios. The replica was 330 feet long, had 700 seats, and took six weeks to build.

Simon Callow plays Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto for The Magic Flute and performed the role of Papageno at its premiere, as he does in the film. Callow had been the first person to play Mozart on stage at the National Theatre in 1979, which is how he came to Forman’s attention. Forman apparently told Callow that his Mozart had been “truly brilliant. Fantastic. An asshole and a genius. Funny, tragic, crazy, a baby and a god.” He still didn’t cast him as Mozart, though. The real Schikaneder was reportedly as larger than life and flamboyant as he appears in the film.

The actress performing the Queen of the Night was Czech soprano Milada Čechalová. The voice we hear, though, belongs to June Anderson, one of the most famous American sopranos in the world at the time.

38. The music was recorded before a single frame was shot

Forman knew he wanted Mozart’s music to play a much bigger role than it had in the stage play. Zaentz asked his contacts to recommend a music supervisor and one name appeared on every list: Sir Neville Marriner, regarded as one of the world’s greatest conductors. Forman and Zaentz met Marriner in an airport and he agreed to the project on one condition: not one note of Mozart’s music was to be changed for the film.

Marriner recorded all of the music before production started, performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, an orchestra he had founded, at Abbey Road Studios in London. Recording the music first was a crucial creative decision. It meant Forman knew exactly what he was working with, allowing him to weave the music into scenes with extraordinary precision. Several moments in the film transition seamlessly between diegetic music (heard by the characters on screen) and non-diegetic score (heard only by the audience).

Over 27,000 candles were burned during production to light the opera performances by candlelight, a decision made for authenticity by Director of Photography Miroslav Ondříček, who had been collaborating with Forman since his Czech films in the 1960s.

39. The Requiem scene was created with deliberate sabotage

The climax of Amadeus brings everything together in devastating fashion. After Mozart collapses during a performance of The Magic Flute, Salieri takes him home and they work on the Requiem together, with Salieri taking dictation as Mozart composes from his deathbed.

Before filming the scene, Neville Marriner and one of his musicians acted it out for Hulce and Abraham to show them how two musicians would actually dictate music to each other. Hulce said it was dull. During filming, both actors wore earpieces through which the pieces of music were played. This is why Hulce and Abraham are perfectly in time and in pitch with the background music as they sing it.

At one point, the Music Coordinator, John Strauss, miscued the music going into Hulce’s earpiece, and that take ended up in the finished film. It’s the moment early in the scene where Mozart hesitates and says, “A minor… A minor.” Hulce was stalling, waiting for the music to play. On top of that, Abraham said Hulce would deliberately change lines from the script or skip sections to confuse him. Hulce wasn’t forgetting his lines. He was trying to make Salieri’s struggle to keep up with Mozart feel real.

40. The final scene went through some last-minute changes

The film fades to black with one final Mozart laugh. This wasn’t scripted. Forman realised he wanted it during editing, nine months after filming had wrapped. They brought Hulce back to record it, but he couldn’t do the laugh any more. Until Forman gave him some whiskey.

The music that plays over the final sequence and into the end credits is Piano Concerto No. 20. And the last image of the film captures the entire story: we’re looking at Salieri and listening to Mozart, a fitting way to finish.

And you’ve reached the end – 40 huge facts about Amadeus, one of the great films of the 1980s. Listen to our Amadeus podcast episode, share on your social media channels, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for lots of great video content.