Emanuel Schikaneder: Look, I asked you if we could start rehearsals next week and you said yes. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Well, we can. Emanuel Schikaneder: So let me see it. Where is it? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Here. It's all right here in my noodle...
Antonio Salieri: He was my idol. Mozart, I can't think of a time when I didn't know his name. I was still playing childish games and he was playing music for kings and emperors. Even the Pope in Rome! I admit I was jealous when I heard the tales they...
[addressing the complaints about the "improper" libretto for "Figaro"] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Come on now, be honest! Which one of you wouldn't rather listen to his hairdresser than Hercules? Or Horatius, or Orpheus... people so lofty they sound as...
Antonio Salieri: [to Father Vogel] Your merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved, rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory. He killed Mozart and kept me alive to torture! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching ...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [trying on wigs] They're all so beautiful. Why don't have three heads?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Why must I submit samples of my work to some stupid committee just to teach a thirteen-year-old girl? Count Von Strack: Because His Majesty wishes it. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Is the emperor angry with me? Count Von Strack: Q...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Confutatis maledictis" - when the wicked are confounded. "Flammis Acribus Adictis." How would you translate that? Antonio Salieri: Consigned to flames of woe. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Do you believe in it? Antonio Salieri: W...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [of his great opera "Figaro"] Nine performances! Nine, that's all it's had! And withdrawn! Antonio Salieri: I know, I know, it's outrageous. Still, if the public doesn't like one's work, one has to accept the fact gracefully....
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [about the royal composer's position he did not get] Whom did they choose? Antonio Salieri: Herr Zummer. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Herr Zummer? But the man's a fool, he's a total mediocrity! Antonio Salieri: No, no, he has yet...
Constanze Mozart: Wolfie, I think you really are going mad. You work like a slave for that idiot actor who won't give you a penny. And here, this is not a ghost! This is a real man who puts down real money. Why on earth won't you finish it? Can you g...
Antonio Salieri: My father, he did not care for music. When I told him how I wished I could be like Mozart, he would say; "Why? Do you want to be a trained monkey? Would you like me to drag you around Europe, doing tricks like a circus freak?" [Salie...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [to Emperor Joseph II] Sire, only opera can do this. In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it's just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music... with music you can have twenty indiv...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [speaking backwards] Say I'm sick. Say I'm sick! Constanze Mozart: Yes, you are. You are very sick. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [chuckling] No-ho-ho! Say it backwards, shit-wit!
Constanze Mozart: Stop it! Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I am stopping it! Slowly. There? See? I've stopped. Now we're going back. Constanze Mozart: No! Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Yes, yes! You don't know where you are! Here, everything goes backwards. Peop...
Constanze Mozart: No. I'm not going to marry you. You're a fiend! Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [speaking backwards] Ooy vol I tub. Ooy vol I tub! Constanze Mozart: Tub, but. I. Vol, love... But I love you? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: [nods, mouths] I love y...
Antonio Salieri: [to Father Vogel] That was Mozart. That! That giggling dirty-minded creature I had just seen, crawling on the floor!
Antonio Salieri: The restored third act was bold, brilliant. The fourth... was astounding.
Constanze Mozart: What are you doing here? Antonio Salieri: Your husband took sick. I brought him home. Constanze Mozart: But why you? Antonio Salieri: Because, madam, I was at hand.