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
Seraglio Istanbul. The term can also refer to other traditional Turkish palaces—every imperial prince had his own—and other grand houses built around courtyards. In modern Italian the word is spelled "serraglio". It may refer to a wall or structure for containment, for example of caged wild animals; or for defence, such as the Serraglio of Villafranca di Verona, a defensive wall built by the Scaligeri. The ghettoes established in many Italian cities following the promulgation by Pope Paul IV in 1555 of the papal bull "Cum nimis absurdum" were initially called "serraglio degli ebrei", "enclosure of the Jews". The Seraglio is