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Everyone waxes lyrical about the film Amadeus<\/em>, and rightly so. As well as having the biggest wig budget in movie history (yes, my brain is a treasure-trove of useless trivia), it also got many people interested in classical music. But which composer is the film actually about? You probably answered Mozart<\/a><\/strong>. Controversially, I disagree. The composer who narrates the movie, whose terrible decline from imperial court to madhouse we witness, and whose mental turmoil is most profoundly captured by Peter Shaffer\u2019s brilliant script, isn\u2019t the genius Mozart. It\u2019s his overshadowed, humiliated and embittered rival, Antonio Salieri<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p> Yes, Amadeus <\/em>may be an examination of genius. But it\u2019s also an examination of not being a genius \u2013 yet being painfully reminded every day of the gulf that exists between genius and talent.<\/p> In Amadeus<\/em>, Salieri is literally driven crazy with jealousy. But he is also the one with enough musical perception to analyse how Mozart\u2019s creativity exists on a plane that his second-rank mind will never achieve. And the odd thing is that creative geniuses need such second-rankers \u2013 discerning patrons, quick-witted assistants, supportive publishers and even, dare I say it, astute critics. <\/p>How Salieri acknowledged that Mozart was a genius composer with a superior mind<\/h2>