PITTSBURGH — To HBO streamers, he’s the Bert, the out-of-touch, rascally grandfather on the comedy-drama murder mystery “White Lotus.” To Marvel’s followers, he’s the voice of the Egyptian god Khonshu in the Disney+ show “Moon Knight,” a massive, masked figure realized with CGI. To crime drama enthusiasts, he’s Omar in the 1983 film “Scarface.”
To classical music fans, he’s Salieri, Mozart’s rival composer and nemesis in the film “Amadeus,” a role that won F. Murray Abraham an Oscar in 1985 and kickstarted a lifelong interest in classical music.
As the film’s narrator, Salieri is a talented but inferior composer, forced to watch idly as Mozart eclipses him. But Abraham, born in Pittsburgh’s Hill District to a family of steel and mill workers, doesn’t see Salieri as the “bad guy” — “imagine being compared to Mozart, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed in a phone conversation.
