Mo And Sal: The
Reel Story
A steaming pile of faketion
by George Beckerman
Not too many
people know this, but…contrary to
longstanding rumor, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s
death was not caused by poisoning at the hands of
his colleague and rival Antonio Salieri. Who done
it? Have patience.
Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg,
which would be today’s Austria. Anna
Maria Mozart’s mother’s milk didn’t
agree with baby Mo, so his breast nourishment was
handled by his father, Leopold. Sadly, Mrs.
Mozart never mastered the art of fileting which
led to Leo’s tragic death by fishbone
choking in 1787. As a result, thirty-one
year old Wolfie was left woefully short on
vitamin D.
Young Mozart’s interest in music,
particularly the piano, quickly became an
obsession. Unfortunately, the Mozarts were so
poor they couldn’t afford to so much as look
at an upright. In those days, a fee was charged
for even accidentally glancing at one. Thankfully,
Anna Maria was so dedicated to nurturing her son’s
talents that she built him a piano. For the keys,
she used the teeth of walleye and yellow perch
that she hooked from the Tauglbach River.
For the piano wire, Mother Mozart deployed
horsehair. The local equine population always
galloped away in fear when they saw her headed
their way brandishing scissors. Eventually,
they asked the local horse barber to just give
them The Vin Diesel.
Other than being portrayed by F. Murray Abraham
in the film “Amadeus”, not much about
the brilliant Antonio Salieri is known. Sal’s
signature piece was the opera “Tarare”,
which the Viennese public preferred to Mozart's
“Don Giovanni”. Nevertheless, Mo
received most of the critical accolades, which
along with Saliere’s chronic halitosis, left
a foul taste in his mouth.
Conspiracy theories are not a contemporary right
wing invention. In the 1700’s one such was
that Salieri planned to murder Mozart, steal his
final composition and present it as his own. That
false premise belied the character of Salieri who
was as honest, upstanding and clean as the air
that was inhaled in the days before greed turned
dead, buried dinosaurs into fuel for cars.
To insure that her progeny’s “Requiem”
stayed numero uno, Anna Maria invited Sal for
dinner planning to have him choke on the same
trout bone that killed her husband. Problem was
that Salieri’s mother taught him to chew his
food one hundred times before swallowing. So it
was on to plan B for Mother Mozart. She would
filet and then liquefy the trout, leaving the
bones in Salieri’s drinking stein, while her
son’s heirloom chalice of reduced fish
remained boneless.
But Amadeus, with all his faults, was a staunch
proponent of table etiquette. He switched
with Sal because he thought that a dinner guest
should have the fancier drinking vessel. Mo was
ironically about to perish the way of his choking
father, but fortunately he was rushed to the
nearest Urgent Care where health insurance
covered eighty-percent of his throat de-boning.
An uninsured Mozart would later die at age thirty-five
from a strep throat. Antonio Salieri outlived his
rival by over three decades.
Moral: Die young and they make a movie about you
starring the kid from “Animal House”.
Live a long life, and you get F. Murray Abraham.
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