I had been holding off until Antonio Salieri’s birthday (Salieri born on this date in 1750) to share two bits of news, which, because of my self-imposed delay, you may have already heard by now.

First, Milos Forman’s highly entertaining and Academy Award winning film of Peter Shaffer’s play is coming to 4K UHD Blu-ray for its 40th anniversary. (The film was released in September 1984.) This is the theatrical cut, as opposed to the more widely-circulated-in-recent-years director’s cut. (Stop with these directors’ cuts supplanting the versions we originally fell in love with, please!) Forman’s revision adds 20 minutes and hardens the original PG rating to an R. Interesting to see once, in my opinion, but it should be treated as a curiosity and consigned to the bonus features. I have no firm information as to whether or not it will be included in the new set, however. If you want to devote the time to doing a more intensive search, you may be able to find out more.

The other bit of news – again, perhaps old news at this point, but the first I am mentioning it – is that “Amadeus” has been adapted into a new miniseries, projected to stream later this year. For his source material, screenwriter Joe Barton is apparently sidestepping Shaffer (and perhaps his copyright?) by going back to the Alexander Pushkin play “Mozart and Salieri” of 1830, which cemented the legend of Salieri’s enmity for Mozart. The play was previously adapted as an opera of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

In the latest version, Will Sharp will play Wolfie and Paul Bettany will assume the role of Salieri. They’ll have some big buckled shoes to fill, as both Forman’s leads – Tom Hulce as Mozart and F. Murray Abraham as Salieri – were nominated for Best Actor, and Abraham took home the Academy Award – as, for that matter, did Forman’s film, which was honored as Best Picture, among its total eight-Oscar haul.

That said, any popular entertainment that takes classical music seriously can’t be a bad thing. If nothing else, it will remind audiences of, and perhaps attract new viewers to, the 1984 classic.

Happy birthday, Antonio Salieri!