Choreographer Twyla Tharp, who directed the opera and dance scenes for thefilm Amadeus, has this to say about the film’s portrait of Mozart:There are no ‘natural’ geniuses… No-one worked harder thanMozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because ofall the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose…As Mozart himself wrote to a friend, “People err who think my art comes easily to me. Iassure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition asI. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied throughmany times.
