Amadeus Amadeus Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer, which gives a highly fictionalized account of the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. First performed in 1979, "Amadeus" was inspired by a short 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin called "Mozart and Salieri" (which was also used as the libretto for an opera of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1897). In the play, significant use is made of the music of Mozart, Salieri and other composers of the period. The premieres of Mozart's operas "The Abduction from the Seraglio", "The Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni", and
Christine Weidinger among others. In 1988 she performed the role of Eupaforice in Carl Heinrich Graun's "Montezuma" at the Spoleto Festival USA. After a 16-year absence, she returned to the Metropolitan Opera in 1992 to sing the title role in Rossini's "Semiramide". Some of the many other roles Weidinger has sung on stage are Arminda in "La finta giardiniera", the Countess in "Le comte Ory", Gilda in "Rigoletto", Konstanze in "The Abduction from the Seraglio", Leonora in "Il trovatore", the title role in Rossini's "Armida", Armida in Handel's "Rinaldo" (with Marilyn Horne) and Amenaide in "Tancredi". She also performed the demanding Donizetti