"Amadeus" // Harry

[ms_petra_pan]

> Mercia wrote, on the main list:
> 
> >> It reminds a bit of Peter Schaeffer's play 'Amadeus'.
> >> When I first saw it years ago in London some people
> >> behind me were deeply scandalised by the portrait of
> >> Mozart. I heard them discussing it at the interval
> >> after which they left and didn't come back.
> >> They couldn't handle a picture of a musical genius as a
> >> revolting little creep with a purile and smutty sense 
> >> of humour. Yet that is the  whole point of the play. 
> >> That into this very unworthy vessel God had poured total 
> >> inspiration, while poor old Salieri who wanted to offer 
> >> his talents to the glory of God plodded through life
> >> with a very mediocre talent and with never a spark of
> >> inspiration.  Very unfair but very true to life. 

The point about the imbalance between what one receives and what one 
deserves stands - sometimes real life seems so arbitrary.  But my 
reading of Salieri is far less favorable than Mercia's.

It's been a while since I read the play, but remembers Salieri being 
less motivated by his wish to honor the divine than with becoming the 
acknowledged musical genius of his age.

I saw a theme in Amadeus (a most appropriate name considering the 
above observations) that I think we may see in the HP books to come:

Salieri is a man who had set the highest musical goal that he and his 
society can imagine and then he achieved it.  When Mozart comes along 
and broadened the horizon, he showed Salieri just how much higher the 
bar could go and effectively rendered Salieri's achievements 
worthless.  Salieri retaliates by destroying Mozart but Mozart's 
legacy lives on - lots of Mostly Mozart concerts while Salieri is 
relegated to the footnotes of history books.

The Wizarding World is about to undergo its own catastrophic change, a 
paradigm shift as momentous as the one Salieri experienced.  What it 
entails, we don't know yet.

Baby Harry's banishment of Voldemort was just a prelude to the 
decisive battle between good and evil.  To truly destroy Voldemort, 
the WW of present day and every generation to come must make an 
informed and conscious decision to reject prejudices about Muggles and 
Muggle-born.

This would mean plenty of purebloods are about to lose their "edge" 
over the Mudbloods.  Who will be the Salieri to our Harry Potter?  Or 
would JKR find a way to bring about a win-win situation for all 
involved?  (Maybe she can ask John Nash...) < wink >

Umm...is this still OT?

Well, this part is: speaking of people leaving at intermissions of 
stage performances - loads of people walked out of Matthew Bourne's 
"Swan Lake" (danced with a gaggle of all-male swans) too.  People 
really hate to change their ways...even about the gender of dancing 
swans, much less how they view their ordinals in the pecking order 
(aside: do swans peck?) in their w