It’s Mozart’s birthday.

By coincidence, I just happened to rewatch “Amadeus” (1984) earlier this week, for the first time in many years. Of course, I’d seen it a bunch of times before.

This was the theatrical cut. With all apologies to Miloš Forman, it has been my experience that directors’ cuts tend to be in most ways inferior, especially when recut so long after the fact. (Forman’s was issued in 2002.) Or maybe George Lucas has just made me skittish.

Unfortunately, once a director’s cut appears on home video, it tends to displace the original in all formats, including streaming.

Thankfully I’ve got my trusty old, double-sided DVD. Yeah, I have to flip it an hour and 50 minutes into the movie, but I grew up during the LP era, so I can take it.

All that aside, has there ever been a staged “Don Giovanni” as cool as this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1QyaKs6E5w

And the audience is like, WTF?

So true to life.