Goofs

The same shot of Kappelmeister Bonno watching from the box seat with two ladies flanking him, is used in crowd shots of two different opera sequences.

When Mozart is conducting "The Marriage of Figaro", the Emperor can be seen yawning in the background. He is shown yawning about two minutes later, and Salieri specifically states that the Emperor only yawned once during the performance.

At the first meeting of Mozart, Emperor Josef II finishes playing the march for Mozart and as he stands, he picks up the parchment from the piano. As Mozart kneels to kiss the Emperor's hand, the parchment is still held by the Emperor. When Mozart stands, the parchment is back on the piano, remaining there until the Emperor turns and steps back to pick it up.

Near the end when the bed-ridden Mozart is dictating a movement of his Requiem to Salieri, he tells him to write the bass instruments' notes as the "tonic and dominant" pitches in the key of A minor. But the notes that play, and the notes that actually appear in the score, are the tonic and sub-dominant.

When Mozart goes into the bedroom late at night to check on his son, the candles on the candelabrum that he's holding are shorter before he goes into the bedroom than when he's in the room.

Mozart is shown being buried in a mass grave. This was not the practice at the time. A "common grave" was not a communal grave, but rather an individual grave for common people. By decree of Emperor Joseph II in 1784, common graves were unmarked and excavated for re-use after ten years. As a result, Constanze Mozart was unable to locate the grave only 17 years later.

Salieri is shown to promise God to remain chaste in exchange for becoming a famed composer, and throughout the movie is shown to live on his own. In reality, during the period shown in the movie, Salieri had both a wife and a son.

Don Giovanni premiered in Prague, not Vienna.

A few mourners are shown at the city gates when Mozart is buried. The Viennese burial custom at the time was that nobody would attend a common burial and would remain at the church after a funeral mass. The first written accounts of anybody attending the burial did not appear until 65 years later.

At the start of the film, Salieri laments the fact that his music is forgotten while the music of Mozart remains known. In actuality, by the 1820's, the period in which the scene is set, Mozart's music had been widely neglected as well.

When asked to play in the style of Handel, Mozart says "I don't like him." He also states that Christoph Willibald Gluck "boring." In fact Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart admired George Frideric Handel, played and listened to his works frequently, and even re-orchestrated a number of Handel's works including "Messiah." Mozart was also fond of Gluck's work and wrote a celebrated set of variations on a theme from one of Gluck's operas (K. 455).

The sequence is told in flashback by Salieri, therefore his account of what Mozart says is unreliable.

Schikaneder has Mozart play the party theme in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach, which the Viennese party crowd clearly recognizes. Although Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was fond of Bach's work which he knew through his friendship with the composer's son, Bach's name and music would have been wholly unknown in the Vienna of the 1780s. Bach's music fell out of favor with performers, shortly after his death in 1750, and was revived only when Felix Mendelssohn promoted and popularized his work around 1830.

If Mozart knew of Bach and his work, then Mozart's playing of his music is not an anachronism; and the crowd's reaction could simply be their appreciation for a good piece of music being played by a popular musician.

When Mozart is talking about the opera that will take place in a harem, he says it is set in "Turkey". In the 18th century, the Turkish country in question was called the "Ottoman Empire" and it did not take the name Turkey until 1920.

Although uncommon, the name of Turkey to refer to the Ottoman Empire dates back to at least the 14th century.

At the beginning of the film, Salieri plays for the priest on what looks like a harpsichord, yet the sound produced is of a piano.

The instrument is in fact a pianoforte, which is also played by both the Emperor and Mozart at their first meeting. The pianoforte bridged the gap between the harpsichord of the 18th century and the grand piano of the late 19th century.

This film is not a biopic. It is a work of historical fiction. The majority of the film is told in flashback by Salieri, therefore the caveat of an "unreliable narrator" applies, meaning that everything that occurs is from his subjective point of view.

Both Mozart and Salieri are shown conducting an orchestra in modern style, by standing in front and waving the arms. In the 18th century, the conductor played first violin or harpsichord, the other musicians watching his head and hand movements. It was the rise of large orchestras in the 19th century that forced the conductor to abandon his instrument and take a more visible position.

When Mozart performs in the orchestra for "The Magic Flute" he is shown playing the bell solo on a celesta. This instrument was not invented until 1886. The part should have been performed on a glockenspiel.

At the beginning of the film, the aged Salieri plays the first 18 notes of "Serenade No. 13 for strings in G" to the confessor, who then picks up the rest of the melody. "Serenade No. 13 for strings in G" (aka "Eine kleine Nachtmusik") was sold in 1799 by Mozart's widow to German composer Johann André, who published it in 1827, two years after Salieri died.

Mozart plays carom billiards with what appears to be a tipped cue. The first tipped cue was invented in 1807. It also appears that the tip is covered with blue dyed chalk, invented in 1897.

Mozart says music he is writing "is going to explode like a bombshell". The term bombshell as a colloquialism for something sensational was not used in English until around 1860 or in German until the 1890s, 100 years after Mozart's death.

During the comic opera, a crew member is seen when the last of the small horses pops through the side wall. The person is wearing light colored pants and is standing behind the paper wall.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was left-handed, not right as portrayed by Tom Hulce, most noticeable when he's at the billiard table composing.

The Emperor recalls an incident between the young Mozart and "My sister, Antoinette", i.e. Marie Antoinette of French Revolution fame. That, however, was simply the French version of her name. Francis would still refer to his sister by her German birth name of (Maria) Antonia.