Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the National Theatre is based on the legend that Antonio Salieri, composer to the court of Emperor Joseph II of Austria, murdered Mozart. This legend was created by Salieri himself on his death-bed in 1825. Deeply jealous that God should have chosen to speak through “the voice of an obscene child”, rather than through him, he took his revenge by destroying Mozart’s career at court and reducing him to destitution and starvation. Mozart was only 35 when he died penniless.