Mozart and Salieri

Mozart and Salieri is a story of envy that results in the murder of Mozart and the questioning of the dual capacity of genius and villainy. The short play begins with Salieri discussing his plan to murder Mozart; this theme seems to run throughout the entirety of The Little Tragedies: each lead of the four plays start out knowing exactly what they are going to do, and as an audience member or a reader, we never see them think twice or vacillate on these terms (Evdokimova, 20). Therefore, Salieri's determination to kill Mozart thrusts him into the narrative up until the final moment of the play. The result is not difficult to guess; Salieri poisons Mozart, and at the end of the play Mozart dies and Salieri is left onstage with his dead friend and his lived goal of murdering him.

The reader or audience member is left with an ambiguous ending in the form of a nagging question: Why does Salieri kill Mozart? Is it out of envy for Mozart's musical genius? This question keeps bringing back the reader or audience member to the text. Because the play is so short, as are all of Pushkin's tragedies in this compilation, it can be assumed that every line, every word, every piece of text is crucial in portraying the story to the audience member. However, no where in the scene does Salieri say blatantly as to why he decides to murder his friend. Perhaps the clue is contained in one of Salieri and Mozart's exchanges on villainy and genius:

Mozart:
He was a genius,
Like you and me. And villainy and genius,
As you'll agree, my friend, sit ill together.

Salieri:
You think it so?
(He pours the poison into Mozart's drink)
Come, Mozart, drink.

Through analyzing the play, it becomes apparent that Mozart represents genius, as it is stated earlier several times by Salieri and alluded to in Salieri's deep jealousy of Mozart:

Salieri:
When genius, that immortal sacred gift,
Is granted not to love and self-denial,
To labor and to striving and to prayer--
But casts its light upon a madman's head,
A foolish idler's brow?...O Mozart, Mozart!

Salieri kills Mozart, committing a villainous crime, and therefore, rendering himself a villain. However, it is apparent in their aforementioned dialogue that Salieri does believe that villainy and genius can exist together. By committing villainy and seeing himself as a genius, Salieri is proving that genius and villainy can exist together (Evdokimova, 24).

An interesting juxtaposition, though, lives within this thought: through the act of murder and vilifying himself, Salieri is proving that villainy and genius cannot exist together; in this sense, villainy (Salieri) kills genius (Mozart), rendering them incompatible. Salieri's line in his last speech points to this realization.

Salieri:
Farewell my friend.
You'll fall asleep
Forever, Mozart! But could he be right...
Am I no genius? "Villainy and genius
Sit ill together." Surely this is wrong:
Take Michelangelo. Or is it only
A tale the dull and witless tell--and he,
The Vatican's creator, did no murder?

Villainy has murdered genius, meaning that Salieri is not a genius because he would be a villain. Salieri proves Mozart's genius by killing him and proving his theory correct that genius and villainy sit ill together. The play concludes with an identity crisis for Salieri because of Mozart's argument; therefore, in the end, Mozart has the same power over Salieri in death that he had in life.

Here are two separate and very different productions of this play. The first one is in Russian with English subtitles: the advantage of hearing it in Russian is that you can hear the rhythm and flow of Pushkin's original text that is so often lost in the English translations.



Below is the second clip of the play. Unfortunately, I could not find a good clip in English or one that had English subtitles. In addition, I could not find one with good enough quality that showed the death of Mozart, so I apologize that this version cuts off before the complete end of the production.