First performed in 1979, it was inspired by Alexander Pushkin's short 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, which Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov used in 1897 as the libretto for an opera of the same name.

The premieres of Mozart's operas The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute are the settings for key scenes.

The action then flashes back to the eighteenth century, at a time when Salieri, then the court composer of the Austrian emperor, has not met Mozart but has heard of him and his music.

But when he finally catches sight of Mozart, he is deeply disappointed to find the composer lacking the grace and charm of his compositions.

Salieri recounts on how he was praised throughout Europe for more than 30 years, after which audiences began to turn away from his music and toward that of Mozart, as the world finally comes to recognize his true genius.

The play used as incidental music mainly works by Mozart, for which in the first stage production arrangements were made by Harrison Birtwistle; the only piece included of Salieri being a “banal greeting march” on which Mozart extemporises mockingly to produce "Non più andrai" (the aria which closes Act 1 of Le nozze di Figaro).

[1] Nicholas Kenyon argues that the play (and film) helped to rekindle interest in Salieri's music and increase performances of his operas.

[4] Mozart scholar H. C. Robbins Landon commented that "it may prove difficult to dissuade the public from the current Schafferian view of the composer as a divinely gifted drunken lout, pursued by a vengeful Salieri.

By the same token, Constanze Mozart, she (in the film) of the extraordinary decollete and fatuous giggle, needs to be rescued from Schaffer's view of her".

[5] Amadeus was first presented at the National Theatre, London in 1979, directed by Sir Peter Hall and starring Paul Scofield as Salieri, Simon Callow as Mozart and Felicity Kendal as Constanze.

[6] The cast also included Andrew Cruickshank (Rosenberg), Basil Henson (von Strack), Philip Locke (Greybig), John Normington (Joseph II) and Nicholas Selby (van Swieten).

[7] The play premiered on Broadway on 11 December 1980 at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Salieri, Tim Curry as Mozart and Jane Seymour as Constanze.

[19] It starred Lucian Msamati as Salieri alongside Adam Gillen as Mozart, Karla Crome as Constanze, Hugh Sachs as Count Orsini-Rosenberg and Tom Edden as Joseph II, accompanied with a live orchestra by the Southbank Sinfonia.

[20][21] The play was performed at the Estates Theatre, where Don Giovanni made its premier in 1787, and where part of the 1984 film was shot, in 2017 for the first time in English in the Czech Republic, directed by Guy Roberts.

[26] A new production, scheduled for December 2022 at the Sydney Opera House, was announced in July 2022 with Michael Sheen as Salieri and Rahel Romahn as Mozart.

[27][28] In 1983, BBC Radio 3 aired an audio version directed by Sir Peter Hall which starred the original cast of his National Theatre production.

[30] To celebrate Mozart's 250th birthday in 2006, BBC Radio 2 broadcast an adaptation by Neville Teller of Shaffer's play in eight fifteen-minute episodes directed by Peter Leslie Wilde and narrated by F. Murray Abraham as Salieri.