Amadeus
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50 free Amadeus trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Amadeus turns the life of Mozart into a story of envy. An old court composer looks back on the giggling genius who arrived in Vienna and made everything he had written sound ordinary, and on what he did about it. The film swept the Academy Awards, sent a classical soundtrack up the pop charts and is still one of the most admired films about music ever made. This quiz covers the whole picture: the plot and its famous scenes, the actors who won the parts and the well-known names who lost them, the months of filming behind the Iron Curtain, the music you hear and the awards night that followed. A handful of questions step outside the film to ask what really happened between the two composers, because the true story is stranger than most viewers expect. The questions start easy enough for anyone who has seen the film once and build to deep cuts for people who know the stage play and the soundtrack by heart. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will learn something even when you guess.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which singer topped the US chart in 1986 with a German-language hit partly inspired by Amadeus?
Falco
Falco took Rock Me Amadeus to number one in Britain as well, the first Austrian act to top the chart there. He grew up in Vienna, the city where Mozart made his name.
Q 02Which Star Wars lead, who had played Mozart on Broadway, was turned down for the film Amadeus?
Mark Hamill
Mark Hamill auditioned for hours, only for the director to decide that nobody would accept Luke Skywalker as the composer. He had played the part on stage in 1983.
Q 03Which tennis star's mood swings reportedly shaped the lead actor's portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus?
John McEnroe
John McEnroe and his outbursts on court gave the actor a model for a genius with no self-control. The actor claimed he only found the famous giggle after downing a bottle of whiskey.
Q 04Amadeus is the Latin form of Mozart's baptismal name Theophilus, which is usually said to mean what?
Loved by God
Loved by God is just how the envious Salieri sees his rival in the film. The name also exists as Gottlieb in German, the form used in the letter that announced his birth.
Q 05Which capital city behind the Iron Curtain doubled for 18th-century Vienna in the film Amadeus?
Prague
Prague was a homecoming for the director, who had left Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. The crew filmed in six real palaces, furnished with antiques lent by the Czech government.
Q 06Which acting legend announced Amadeus as Best Picture without first reading out the other nominees?
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier, frail and in his late seventies, opened the envelope while still saying his thanks. The winning producer named the four losing films himself in his speech.
Q 07Which colour is the wig worn by Mozart in Amadeus that is now displayed in a Canadian museum?
Pink
Pink is the shade of the wig created by Paul LeBlanc, who shared the film's Oscar for makeup. It is kept at the Acadian Museum at the University of Moncton.
Q 08Which actress lost the role of Mozart's wife in Amadeus after injuring her leg playing soccer?
Meg Tilly
Meg Tilly was hurt just before her scenes were due to start, so a replacement was cast at the last minute. Both the director and her co-star had praised her rehearsals.
Q 09Which rock frontman was reported in 1982 to have auditioned for a leading role in the film Amadeus?
Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger was said by the Hollywood trade press to have read for a part. David Bowie and the ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov were also passed over when the film was cast.
Q 10The actor who played Mozart in Amadeus later spoke and sang which Disney animated hero?
Quasimodo
Quasimodo, the hero of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, needed a singer as well as an actor. By then the star had largely given up screen roles to produce stage shows.
Q 11Which opera, based on a banned French play, does Mozart talk the Emperor into allowing in Amadeus?
The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro gets its royal blessing in the film, but the Emperor is bored at the premiere and the run is soon cancelled. The real play was censored for its frank view of class conflict.
Q 12Which opera, featuring a murdered commander's statue, does Salieri watch five times in Amadeus?
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni entrances Salieri in the film, yet he still uses his influence to have it taken off. The real opera had its first night in the theatre where these scenes were shot.
Q 13Which opera does Mozart write for a commoners' theatre, against his wife's wishes, in Amadeus?
Q 21Which actor, seen earlier as Pinto in Animal House, played Mozart in the film Amadeus?
Tom Hulce
Tom Hulce practised the piano for four hours a day in the month before filming so that his hands would match the music. He earned a Best Actor nomination for the part.
Q 22Which actor won the Best Actor Oscar for playing Salieri in Amadeus, beating his own co-star?
F. Murray Abraham
F. Murray Abraham had played a drug dealer in Scarface only a year earlier. In his speech he said the one thing missing was his beaten co-star standing beside him.
Q 23Which actress was called to audition for Mozart's wife after filming on Amadeus had already begun?
Elizabeth Berridge
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute delights the paying crowd, but Mozart collapses before he can finish conducting it. The real opera opened just two months before his death.
Q 14In Amadeus, whose masquerade costume does Salieri copy when he poses as a mysterious masked patron?
Mozart's father
Mozart's father had worn the outfit to a masquerade ball, and Salieri counts on it to terrify a son still haunted by the dead man's disapproval.
Q 15Which Mozart tune does Salieri's visitor know at once in Amadeus, after two by Salieri draw a blank?
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Eine kleine Nachtmusik has the visitor beaming with relief, to the disgust of a host nobody remembers. Its German name simply means a little night music.
Q 16At the end of Amadeus, the aged Salieri declares himself the patron saint of which group of people?
Mediocrities
Mediocrities everywhere receive his blessing as he is wheeled through the asylum, absolving his fellow patients while Mozart's laughter rings out.
Q 17In the closing scenes of Amadeus, where is Mozart's body finally laid to rest?
A pauper's grave
A pauper's grave is the film's bleak last image of him. The real Mozart was buried in a common grave, which was normal in Vienna at the time for someone of his standing.
Q 18To whom does the aged Salieri tell the whole story of Amadeus, speaking from a psychiatric hospital?
A young priest
A young priest named Vogler arrives to hear a confession and leaves too shaken to grant absolution. At first he does not even recognise the old composer.
Q 19In Amadeus, what stuns Salieri about the handwritten scores that Mozart's wife secretly brings him?
They have no corrections
They have no corrections because, Salieri realises, Mozart is simply copying out music already finished in his head. He takes it as proof of a gift straight from heaven.
Q 20Which character returns at dawn in Amadeus and locks the unfinished Requiem away from Salieri?
Constanze
Constanze, Mozart's wife, comes home after leaving him, orders Salieri out and shuts the score away. Moments later the two of them find that her husband has died.
Elizabeth Berridge won the part only once the cameras were rolling, after the first choice was injured. She later starred in the Norman Lear sitcom The Powers That Be.
Q 24Which director of Hair and The People vs. Larry Flynt won his second Oscar for Amadeus?
Miloš Forman
Miloš Forman approached the playwright about a film after the very first London preview in 1979. His earlier directing Oscar was for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Q 25Which playwright of Equus turned his own stage hit into the Oscar-winning screenplay of Amadeus?
Peter Shaffer
Peter Shaffer shut himself away for four months at the director's Connecticut farmhouse to rewrite the play. He and his identical twin, Anthony, also wrote detective novels together.
Q 26Which producer of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The English Patient also made Amadeus?
Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz financed the film through his own company. His money came from Fantasy Records, home of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Q 27Which actor, later the dean of students in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, played the Emperor in Amadeus?
Jeffrey Jones
Jeffrey Jones earned a Golden Globe nomination as the amiable monarch with no ear for music. He went on to play Charles Deetz in Beetlejuice.
Q 28Which future Sex and the City star played Lorl, the maid planted in Mozart's home, in Amadeus?
Cynthia Nixon
Cynthia Nixon, still a teenager, plays the servant Salieri secretly pays to report on what Mozart is writing. She became famous as the lawyer Miranda Hobbes.
Q 29Which actor, the first Mozart in the London stage production, plays Schikaneder in the film Amadeus?
Simon Callow
Simon Callow created the part on stage in 1979, and the screen version became his first film. He plays the showman who tempts Mozart into writing for ordinary theatregoers.
Q 30Which Star Wars actor has a cameo as a parody Commendatore in a comic opera scene in Amadeus?
Kenny Baker
Kenny Baker, the man who worked R2-D2 from the inside, turns up in the rowdy send-up of Mozart's operas staged at the people's theatre.