Amadeus.

SHAFFER, Peter.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 128746

London: Andre Deutsch, 1980.

First edition of the playwright’s classic work. Octavo, original cloth. Lengthily signed by the author on the front free endpaper, “What use, after all is man, if not to teach God His lessons?” Peter Shaffer.” Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Front cover photograph by Nobby Clark.

Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer, which gives a highly fictionalized account of the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. First performed in 1979, Amadeus was inspired by a short 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin called Mozart and Salieri (which was also used as the libretto for an opera of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1897). After being presented successfully at the Royal National Theatre, London in 1979, the play moved to the West End followed by Broadway. Amadeus won the 1981 Tony Award for Best Play. It was adapted by Shaffer for the 1984 Academy Award-winning film of the same name, directed by Milos Forman. The film was nominated for 53 awards and received 40, which included eight Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globes, and a Directors Guild of America award. As of 2016, it is the most recent film to have more than one nomination in the Academy Award for Best Actor category. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked Amadeus 53rd on its 100 Years...100 Movies list.