“Wolfgang?” Wilfred’s shook me back into reality. “Are you alright?”
“Huh?” I blinked.
“You haven’t moved in a while,” Fan told me. “I hope that you’re not offended.”
I tilted my head in confusion, “Offended?”
“Well, considering the content of the play I thought that you might have some objections to it.” My butler explained. “After all, I remember clearly of what the real Salieri was like; I almost expected that you might be upset over it.”
“If anything,” the maid added, “Wilfred and I were against the idea from the start since we weren’t sure how you’d react to not just how they’ve portrayed Salieri, but it might bring back memories of your wife. We’ve all been there when you were mourning over her.”
“First of all,” I lifted up a hoof. “Last time I’ve checked, this performance never claimed that it was based on a true story. When one has been transported to the future, it shouldn’t be expected for posterity to get everything about the past right. Even the great Shakespeare had gotten a few things wrong with his histories. Second, I don’t know if any of you three noticed that while I do miss my wife, I don’t feel as sad as I was. However, it does lead up to an interesting question,” I turned to my cook. “Why did you insist that I come here anyway?”
“In my defense,” Mr. Sauté began. “I have two reasons for bringing you here. The first was to help cheer you up back at that Winter Village place when you were showing doubts of your own talent. If anything, this very play was the main reason I got into your music, to begin with. It had changed how I viewed classical music in general of instead of being this dull, highbrow thing that old ponies listen to, into something that speaks about who you are as a pony. And I loved it for that as it showed me your music in a new light.”
“And the other?”
“Well… what you said back there, I want you to take this as a sort of cautionary tale. Of what happens when you let the talent of others foreshadow your own creations. Of what happens if you get jealous of someone that you held in high regard. Tell me; was it true that Salieri was considered the better composer than you by other ponies?”
Now it was clear why I was brought here. Rather cleverly, my cook is having me confront that same envy I have for Beethoven, using the play to act as a sort of mirror. Hmm… I wonder if Celestia would allow me to raise his pay a little for creativity.
Once intermission was over, the second act of the play opened with Salieri alone with a crumpled up music sheets in his aura. “And now, I knew my fate,” he began. “I have had felt my emptiness, as the first ponies must have felt their nakedness. Somewhere in the city of Canterlot, stands a giggling, foul-mouthed child, who can scribble casual notes that turned my most considered ones into lifeless scratches. Thank you, Faust! You have given me to praise you the only way I knew how, and then you made me mute? You put into me the presumptions of the inconsiderable than ensure to know myself forever mediocre?”
Suddenly, he ripped the manuscripts in two, “Why! What was my fault? Until this day, I have perused virtue with rigor. I have worked and worked you know how hard I worked! I had hoped that through all of my devoted sacrifices and my devotion through art which makes the world comprehensible to me, that maybe, I might hear your voice. And now… I do hear it. And it said only one name: Moztrot. Spiteful, sniggering, conceited, infantile Moztrot, who has never worked one second in his life to help another pony,” at this point, I was sinking in my seat as I was being scolded from the stage. “Manure talking Moztrot with his body smacking wife. Him? You have chosen to be your mouthpiece? And my only reward, my sublime privilege is to be the only stallion alive in this time to recognize your incarnation? Thanks,” he mocked. “And thanks again!”
He tossed the torn sheet music to the floor. Then with boiling anger, the actor continued: “Well, so be it. For now on, we are enemies, you and I. Because you have proven to be unjust – unfair –unkind… I swear to you, that I will block you as far as I am able. And don’t think for one minute, that I will ever seek forgiveness. I was a good stallion, as far as this world understood as being good. So what use is it to me now? Goodness won’t make me a good composer. Is your Moztrot good? Since you have shown me that goodness is nothing in the firmness of art, I will use whatever power I have to destroy your voice. This will be a battle to the end dear Faust, and Moztrot will be the battleground.”
After making a mental note that if I ever ran into the actor playing as Salieri on that stage, I would remind myself not to make him angry.
The play continued on where it left off, letting Salieri recommended Celestia to have the position of a tutor be taken up by someone who had no talent whatsoever. After that, it showed that while the other my finances didn’t change with now our first surviving colt adding strain, he however prospered.
“This is the incredible truth:” he monologues to us, “Any fury I excepted from the divine, didn’t come. None. Incredibly, in 784 and 85, it was Salieri that is deemed the greatest composer in not just Canterlot, but in the whole world. Yet, despite the fact that in these two years alone, Moztrot had written his best keyboard concerti and his string quartets. Hayden called the quartets unsurpassed, and they were, but no one heard them. Celestia’s top musical adviser called the concerti sublime, and indeed they were, but no one noticed. Those in Canterlot who did hear them greeted each unique piece like how one would with a new hat. Each was played once, much to their delight, and then completely forgotten. For whatever reason, I alone it seems, was able to recognize what these actually were: some of the most perfect things made in the eighth century. By contrast, my operas were played everywhere and hailed by everyone, including Celestia herself! From my comic to tragic operas, everyone was either discussing them or whistling the tunes. It was incomprehensible to me. I was being praised everywhere as if I were delivery being pushed from one triumph to another. As my fame grew, so did my fortune and respectability. What was going on? Was Faust taking any notice of me of what I was doing at all?”
Then word came to him that I had asked the royal court some time off to write an Istallion opera. At first, nopony had any idea what the theme was as it was kept in secret. However, after he sent two spies to his apartment, bribed a maid that I had at the time, he and the court found out, to their rage, what it was about. So Celestia sent for me to have an audience with her and her musical advisers.
That scene opened up with them at one end of the stage and a confused me at the other as he noticed that there was no cushion to sit on.
“Moztrot,” Celestia began with a serious tone. “Word has reached me that you are writing an opera based on ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ is this true?”
The other me looked at her, “Who told you?”
“That is not your place to know,” one of the snooty advisers said. “Answer her.”
After some hesitation, the actor responded, “Yes.”
Celestia breathed in deeply, “You are aware that particular play is banned, right? So you see Mr. Moztrot, I don’t censor on a whim, but when I do so, I do it for a good reason. Figaro is a bad play. It stirs up hatred among the classes. In Prance it is causing so much discontent that Queen Antoinette writes to me that she is beginning to be afraid of her own ponies.”
“Madame, I swear to Your Grace that there’s none of that in the opera. I’ve already taken out everything that could be taken as offensive. I hate politics.”
“I’m afraid that you’re rather innocent my friend. In such difficult times, I cannot afford to have an uprising by either the nobility or the citizens, simply over a theater piece.”
The other me argued that it was simply a frolic, a comedy about love. “And it’s new,” the reflection of me added, “It’s so new that ponies are gonna going mad for it.”
One of the advisers spoke up, saying that my talent in music wasn’t in question, rather it was the choice in literature. That even if all the politics were taken out, there still be this conflict between the classes and questioned why I would waste my time on it. For why not could I focus instead on a myth or something historical?
“You really want to know why?” the other me asks, “Because I wanted to write about real love and to set it in a real place. To me, a bedroom is the most exciting place in the world. Garments on the floor, sheets still warm from a mare’s body, even a piss pot brimming under the bed.”
“Moztrot!” another adviser scolded.
“But I want real life. I mean, why do I want to write about old dead legends? How come we have to go on writing about heroes and gods?”
“Because they do,” Celestia said, “they go on forever. Or at least, that’s how they tend to represent nowadays; the eternal in us. Opera ennobles us just as much as me. It celebrates what is eternal in ponykind – the Gods in the hero, not the laundress.”
“Oh come on,” the other me was having none of it. “I just don’t understand any of you. In reality, none of you care about Gods and Heroes. I mean, be honest with yourselves: which one would you rather listen to a story about say… your manedresser then somepony like Rockhoof, or Flash Magnus or even Starswirl? Ponies that sound so damn lofty it’s almost they could shit marble!”
Several gaping mouths hung there, “What?” one of them asked in disbelief. My reflection laughed along with the audience, however, he added, “Do control your tongue in Her Majesty’s presence.”
“Excuse me for the language, Mr. Director, but to be fair, I’m just as guilty. ‘The Folly of King Orion,’ all those anguished, antiques. They’re all bores. Bore, bore, boring! About every serious opera made in this century alone are Celestia damned boring!” Stricken dumb with these words, the reflection giggled. “You know, I wish I could write this moment in time of you four gaping mouths. A perfect quartet! I would love to write it, just as you all are.” he went behind the fake Celestia, “The Princess thinking, ‘That immature Moztrot, is he trying to get himself fired?’” Then behind one of the advisers, “Mr. Director, ‘Ignorant Moztrot, debasing the fine art of opera with his vulgarity.’” Then behind Salieri, “Court Composer Salieri thinking, ‘Small town Moztrot, what does he know about music?’ Then there’s me in the middle thinking, ‘I’m just a good fellow, why do they all disapprove of me?’”
After getting out and around to face the Princess, he added, “Celestia, only opera can do this. A playwright has to put in one thought at a time to let the audience know what they’re thinking. Otherwise, if they do it at the same time, it’s just noise. But throw in music into the mix, it’s not an inaudible sound, it’s a perfect harmony where you can understand all of it at once. Just like what I wrote in the end of the second act, where a duet becomes a trio, trio becomes a quartet, than quintet, septet, octet, on and on for twenty minutes with no recitatives.” He paused, giving a nodding thought, “You know, I bet you that’s how she hears it.”
“Who?” asked Celestia.
“Faust. I bet you that’s how she hears the world. Up close, it’s all pointless, random noise that is chaos to our ears, but to her who is hearing trillions of sounds all at once, all mixing, rising and falling in her ears, creating an unending melody incomprehensible to us. That’s our job, Your Highness, as composers, we combined the inner thoughts and feelings of him and her, this and that, solo and choir, from the thoughts of chambermaids to court composers, and turn the audience themselves into gods.”
While I was nodding, agreeing absolutely of what was being presented, Celestia responded, “There’s no doubt that you have passion about this, but you don’t persuade.”
He does so, just describing to her the opening scene in which the opera starts. From this, she permitted the opera to be produced. After that, the play accurately showed how that the Marriage of Figaro’s end of the third act was removed and but was saved by a miracle of having Celestia ordering it to be restored. Salieri described the opera as magnificent, but it was the final scene most of all in which he found most memorable. But at the same time, the actress playing Princess Sunbutt did yawn.
“In that one yawn,” he told the audience, “I have secured my victory. Moztrot was lucky that Celestia yawned only once. More than three and the show would have failed the same night. Two yawns, he could maybe get… maybe a few days. One yawn, however-”
“Nine performances!” the other me objected. “That’s all it gets, nine!”
Salieri turned to him, “Well Moztrot, not everything you’ll put out to the public is going to be liked by everypony.”
“Is the Princess angry at me?”
“What? Oh not at all. However, you did put too many demands upon her and the audience, to spend four hours for a show like that, there are so many notes one hears in the course of an evening. Did you know that you didn’t give it a good bang at the end of each song, cueing the audience to know when to applaud?”
He snorted, “Well maybe you should give me music lessons.”
“…. I don’t want to impose.” My reflection asked what he thought of the opera. “I think it was simply marvelous.”
“More than that, it’s the best opera yet written, and I’m the only one that could have done it.”
“Mr. Moztrot, a little modesty would help you go a long way.” When the other me didn’t respond, Salieri suggested, “I know this is distressing, so why don’t you take leave to go somewhere like Saltzberg? I can give you bits for it.”
“Oh no, I’d never take money for you. It’s not fair as a good friend to beg from you. Even if you did, I don’t want to go back to Saltzberg.”
“How come? Isn’t your father there?”
“Well yes… but Papa and I aren’t on the best of terms. We fought the last time we saw each other.”
“Over what?”
“My wife, he disapproves of her, no matter how much I tried to convince him that I do love her. Especially now, he’s the last pony in the world that I ever want to see, or speak to no less.”
“Sir,” a servant came on stage, speaking towards Salieri. “There’s bad news.”
“What?” he asked.
“Leopold Moztrot is dead.” My mirror counterpart froze on the stage, letting it sink it.
Salieri shooed him away before his servant could witness my counterpart break down. In the next scene, so rose Don Giovanni, my blackest opera. Salieri explained to the audience that as he went to see it, he noticed that he saw that in the final scene, where the dead commander confronted the guilty libertine, he realized that moving statue was really my portrait of my father. He witnessed how that “….bitter, old stallion still possessing his son, even beyond the grave.”
“However,” he added. “I realized too that while we were ordinary ponies, he and I, when it came to opera, with ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘Così Fan Tutte,’ this is where our differences lie. He took ordinary stallions and mares that weren’t gods, epic heroes or nobility, from which he created legends, and I from legends created only the ordinary.”
At the same time, he realized that he had found a way to triumph. To which, in secret, he commissioned me to write the Requiem. His plan was that after he would pass off the piece as his own, then he would kill me somehow. “Imagine it,” he said to us. “The castle, all of Canterlot in attendance, and there in the middle, is Moztrot’s tiny coffin. And then… out of that silence… Music! Divine music, that was a symphony of death! Contributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Moztrot, composed by his devoted friend, Antonio Salieri. Oh, what sublimity, what depth the sound! They will say that Salieri has been touched by Faust at last. And she was forced to listen! Powerless! Absolutely powerless, as I, in the end, am laughing at her!
“The only thing that worried me,” he confessed. “Was the actual killing. How does one kill a pony? Hm? Really think about that,” the audience went dead quiet. “I mean, its one thing to… to dream about it… but when you have to do it… with your own hooves… How to do it?”
While he pondered this, word got to him that I had been commissioned to write a vaudeville opera. In which the theme would be based on fantasy. However, while writing it, and due to my fading health, Constanze took the children and left for the spa. The next time he met the other me; Salieri was shocked to see how ill I seemed. How pale I looked with bags underneath my eyes while my mane was unkempt.
After that, he went to the opera with me while my reflection conducted. Like that two hundred years ago, he too found it a masterpiece as there was hardly a scene in which he didn’t approve of. However… during it, my counterpart was so ill that he collapsed. The next scene took place in a cheap apartment in which sheet music was strewn about the floor, furniture missing, and bottles everywhere.
Salieri and a few others carried me to a bed in the dark room before the other me recovered. As he started to wake up, he shooed them away. The first thing my counterpart asked was if the opera was over. The two of them talked for a bit before he thanked Salieri, “You’re the only one from the court that came.”
“Moztrot, I wouldn’t miss anything you’ve written for the world.”
“It was only a vaudeville.”
“No, no, it was sublime, truly.” Just then, there was a knock on the door, to which my reflection paled.
“Don’t answer it, it’s him.”
“Who?” when the other me didn’t answer, Salieri went over to the door to find the actors from “The Magic Flute,” that came by to see if he was alright, “He’s exhausted. The fever has gotten his brain, and he just needs some rest.” Before he could close the door, one of the actors thrust a purse containing Moztrot’s share of the royalties that night – thus giving Salieri an idea. He returned to my counterpart, pouring the bits onto the bed. “He told me to give you this,” he said, “That if you were able to write out the Requiem by tonight, you’ll receive double.”
“Double?” the other me blinked, “It’s… Oh, it’s impossible I… it’s not even close to being finished. And I’m too exhausted… Did you say double?”
“Could I help you? If you want, I could help you write it out.”
“Would you?” and on the stage, he did. In reality, I worked on the Requiem alone, but we the audience watched how my dying self, dictating the Requiem. Every minute he looked worse as they worked the night away. But what happened as soon as morning rose…
Constanze returned with the colts, finding him and Salieri who he was asleep on the floor. After waking him up, Salieri explained that he was sick and took him home. Before she could dismiss him, my reflection awoke, but just barely. “Wolfie,” she began. “We’re back to take care of you. I’ve missed you so much. But things are going to get better now.” My wife took notice of the sheet music on the bed. “What’s this…?” she realized what it was. “No Wolfie, you’re not allowed to write this anymore.” She picked up the music. “No more of this…” she paused. “This is not in his hoofwriting.”
“It’s mine,” Salieri said. “I was up last night helping him.”
“Well… he’s not going to write this anymore. Not now, or ever again,” she placed the manuscript in a cabinet in which she locked. “I’m afraid that I have to ask for you to leave since we don’t have any servants.”
“I’ll leave when he tells me to,” he folded his forelegs.
“Wolfie?” she turned to the other me… who wasn’t moving. I couldn’t bear to watch as I bowed my head low in the dark, shutting my eyes tight and folded my ears over my head. “Wolfie…? Wolfie…? Wolfie, wake up… Wolfie…?Wolfie!” I could no longer hold back the tears as my Lacrimosa echoed throughout the theater. My butler placed a comforting hoof on my back as I couldn’t bring myself to watch.
From the rest of the play, I only listened to the funeral, and Salieri telling the audience what happened to him after my supposed death. My ears heard how that after it seemed for thirty-two years that he was drowning in fame, being embalmed in fame, but then after all those years: silence.
“I realized the masterstroke of Faust’s punishment. What had I asked at the very beginning? Fame. Just when I had all the fame that I would ever need, just like that, it would be taken away from me. I watched myself to become extinct. She destroyed her own beloved, rather than let a mediocrity like me share in the smallest part of that glory. My music, year by year, became fainter… ever so fainter until nopony neither plays it nor remembers it at all. While he grows everywhere. But…” I heard him sat back into his wheelchair.
“But wasn’t born to become her cosmic joke for all eternity, for I still have one last trick up my sleeve. You remember when you came, those rumors of me shouting, ‘Mercy Moztrot! Forgive your Assassin!’ I did that on purpose. Canterlot, after all, is a city of scandals, and it has one worthy of it at last. Salieri killed Moztrot? Is it possible? Did he really do it after all? Well now… after my death, they will believe the lie forever. From this day on, whenever anypony speaks with Moztrot in love, they will remember mine with loathing. Not the way I prefer it, but it’s better than not being remembered at all.
“With this razor, I’m about to become a ghost myself. Dawn has come; therefore I must release you all. One moment of violence, and it’s over. But before I go, I will tell you that I shall stand in the shadows when you come here to this world. And when you feel that dreadful bite of your failures, and hear that taunt of the unachievable, I will whisper my name to you. ‘Antonio Salieri, patron saint of Mediocrities.’ And in the depths of your hopelessness, you can turn to me, and I will forgive you.”
Then I heard sharp knocks on the door. “Signor Salieri, please open up, be good now… Signor, we’ve brought something for you. Something you’re going to love… Mmm, is that good? Seriously, Signor, this is the best thing I ever had in my life. Really, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Il mio saluto finale, (My final solute)” I heard him say before I heard a painful scream.
Another knock on the door, “Signor, if you don’t open this up right now, we’re going to leave you, and we’ll never come here again, bring nothing for you.” Then came a piano, whose keys were disjointed that was followed by a painful moan. After several banging’s against the door, it flung open, much to the servant’s shock.
While they’re screams of help, to get a doctor faded away, a new voice informed: “The Equestrian Musical Times. May 25th, 825. ‘Our worthy Salieri just cannot die. In the frenzy of his imagination, he is even said to have accused himself of complicity in Moztrot’s early death. A rambling of the mind believed in truth by no one, but the deluded old stallion himself.’”
“Mediocrity is everywhere,” Salieri said just above a whisper, “Now, and to come. I absolve you. All…”
I heard the curtain fell; the lights went up as the audience applauded. I finally was able to look up as the curtain rose once again in time for the cast to bow. Up to the final actors who bowed the other me and the one who played as Salieri, I stood up in my seat. Now, if the actors in that stage didn’t know I was there at all, they certainly did now.
“Can I come up on stage?” I asked them. They looked at one another, uncertain what to do. However, the audience encouraged it so that they cleared a path for me towards the stage in which I climbed on. “To be honest with you all,” said I. “Out of all the things this evening that I thought I would do in Manehattan, seeing a play about myself and Salieri wasn’t what I predicted. And yet,” I turned to the audience. “This was surprisingly entertaining, wouldn’t you all say?”
They agreed, then I turned to the two main actors, “Oh look, another me!” I smiled and they laughed as I trotted up to my double. He appeared to have been quite nervous as I circled around him, “He’s a little taller in real life then I thought he’d be.” I joked as I shook his hoof. “Still, good job portraying as me, it was really amusing.”
“Uh… T-Thank you.”
Then I turned my attention towards the other actor who looked like he was caught red-hoofed. “Awe, don’t be like that Salieri, sure I still owed you that roast beet dinner, but is that a reason for you to try to kill me?” I shook his hoof. “But joking aside, I actually wanted to come up here to do two things: first, and I’m speaking to you in particular, is to simply say… thank you.”
He tilted his head, “W-What for?”
“I was having a rough night and you gave me some peace. I thank you for that. And the other,” I turned towards the piano that was still on the stage. “Whenever I’m around and ponies wanted to hear me, I’ve left them with a small improvisation, just to give them something nice like a dessert before they leave. So what do you all think? Shall I play you a little something before you all go?”
They answered with applause. And from there on those keys, I played out to them a theme that has haunted me that night. A melody in which I witness from the stage that has moved them to tears.