Spinning Mozart into his grave, believe it or not

Aug. 16--One of the great villains this side of Shakespeare's Iago gets a rare opportunity to come out and play in this 250th anniversary year of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth.

Hofstra USA uses the occasion of Mozart's quarter-millennial to present Peter Shaffer's wickedly brilliant, infrequently revived 1979 drama-with-music. Based on the persistent but little-credited rumor that Antonio Salieri, the late 18th century court composer of Vienna, murdered Mozart, the musical genius from Salzburg, "Amadeus" pours out its delicious venom in the form of a deathbed confession.

Salieri, whose piety exceeds his talent, is at war with God. He bargains: Let me write music for your greater glory and I will obey your commandments. That means keeping hands off his comely student Katherina (Gina Haver). But all Mozart has to do to bed the same girl is cast her in "The Marriage of Figaro." What's more, the foul-mouthed young philanderer has a beautiful wife, Constanze (TracyLynn Conner) whom Salieri degrades by offering to find her husband work if she'll sleep with him.

Using his influence with the emperor (regally clueless Stephen Ryan), Salieri strangles Mozart's patronage to an unsustainable trickle, turning his Freemason benefactor (Howie Orlick) against him. All because Salieri is jealous of the prodigious talent God has bestowed on this impish manchild whose favorite word is a scatological epithet. Worse, God has granted Salieri the discernment to appreciate genius. He alone among Viennese cognoscenti realizes that his own work, exalted by a public with no taste, withers next to Mozart's (heard in recorded snippets). Salieri lives long enough to see himself fade into oblivion as Mozart swells to posthumous glory. In his dying hour, Salieri resurrects his fame in the cloak of infamy. But was he Mozart's assassin?

"I don't believe it," proclaim the jesters (Sue Anne Dennehy and Allyson Mantello) who purvey the play's gossip.

We don't know whether to believe it, either. But without Drew Keil's tight-fistedly obsessive Salieri, "Amadeus" would crumble beneath the weight of its melodrama. And without Ed Huether's cacklingly comic Mozart, we could not sympathize with Salieri's torment. As directed by Ed Dennehy on Gary Hygom's gilt-framed set, we see genius through the fun house eyes of artistic envy.

As Iago does to Othello, Salieri renders Mozart as a twisted disfigurement -- tragic and grand.

From classical music to musical classics, two of Rodgers and Hammerstein's greatest hits get a reprise: "Carousel" at Airport Playhouse and "South Pacific" at Smithtown Performing Arts Center. Of the two, "Carousel" holds up better. "South Pacific," bogged down by World War II battle exposition, still boasts a lush romantic score, which is delivered powerfully on "Some Enchanted Evening" by William Carpentiere Jr. (as Emile de Becque) and Southern-fried on "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair" by Lauren Verfenstein (as Nellie Forbush).

In "Carousel," Brodie Centauro wins empathy (even though his Billy Bigelow is a wife-beater) on "If I Loved You." Matt Senese, Mary Ellin Kurtz and Ray Gobes Jr. also turn in tuneful go-rounds in one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most enduring classics.

AMADEUS. Hofstra USA, Monroe Theater, Hempstead, through Aug. 27. Tickets $25. Call 516-463-6644. Seen Friday.

CAROUSEL. Airport Playhouse, 218 Knickerbocker Ave., Bohemia, through Aug. 27. Tickets $18-$20. Call 631-589-7588. Seen Aug. 4.

SOUTH PACIFIC. Smithtown Performing Arts Center, 2 E. Main St., through Sept. 10. Tickets $26-$30. Call 631-724-3700. Seen Sunday.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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