Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer which gives a fictional account of the lives of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, imagining a rivalry between the two at the court of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. First performed in 1979, it was inspired by Alexander Pushkin's short 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, which Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov used in 1897 as the libretto for an opera of the same name.
Playbill, 1981 (Broadhurst Theatre)
Jane Seymour (Constanze Mozart) alongside Ian McKellen (Antonio Salieri) in Amadeus, c. 1981.
Sir Peter Levin Shaffer was an English playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He wrote numerous award-winning plays, of which several were adapted into films.
Shaffer in 1966
Shaffer in 1975
Grave of Robert Leonard and Peter Shaffer in Highgate Cemetery