I just finished the new Amadeus TV series, which is another go at the narrative popularized by the 1984 movie. It is solid drama, but it doubles down on the same tired trope of the bitter, mediocre Salieri poisoning the young, vulgar genius, this time with the excellent Paul Bettany.

After watching it, I fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I realized there was a huge parallel between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Elvis Presley specifically in how their estates were handled. It was uncanny. I did some more digging and discovered it was basically history repeating.

Both men were absolute disruptors who died in a mess of debt, leaving behind wives who were written off by the establishment as flighty or just trophies. But Constanze Mozart and Priscilla Presley were essentially the first accidental CEOs of the entertainment world.

Look at the playbooks:

The Debt Trap When Wolfgang died, Constanze was 29 and buried in debt. Priscilla was only 32 when Elvis died in 1977, leaving her with a cash poor estate and a 10 million dollar IRS bill. In both cases, the talent was brilliant at creating art but terrible at maintaining a balance sheet.

Asset Liquidation Constanze did not just mourn; she professionalized the legacy. She negotiated high value sales of Mozart’s manuscripts to publishers, clearing the debt and ensuring the back catalog was distributed globally. Priscilla did the same, wrestling control back from Colonel Tom Parker, the 18th century equivalent of a predatory court middleman, and professionalizing Elvis Presley Enterprises.

Inventing the Theme Park Constanze essentially invented celebrity tourism. She turned her home in Salzburg into a shrine, hosting traveling fans and selling them the Mozart experience. Priscilla did this on a much larger scale with Graceland in 1982. Both women realized that when the performer dies, the home becomes the primary product.

Curating the Myth Constanze spent 50 years editing the narrative. She helped write the first major biography of Mozart, carefully polishing his image into the tragic, misunderstood genius we still buy into today. Priscilla did the same through books and biopics, pivoting Elvis from a bloated Vegas act back to a tragic, iconic rebel.

There are a few details the screen versions always lean on that do not quite hold up to the history. That high pitched, hyena laugh from the movie? Pure fiction. There is zero evidence Mozart sounded like that; it was just a creative choice to emphasize the vessel of God angle.

As for the poisoning, Salieri did not do it. Mozart likely died of a streptococcal infection. The confession only came from Salieri when he was suffering from dementia late in life, and he vehemently denied it whenever he was lucid. Even the iconic pauper’s grave scene is a stretch. Being buried in a common grave was actually the legal standard in Vienna at the time for hygiene reasons. It was not a sign of being broke; it was just the local terms of service under Emperor Joseph II.

Little annoyed I missed this parallel, but in my defense the movie doesn’t go into that detail, where as the TV series has Constanze talking, in her elder years, to the person who ends up writing the story that the movie/TV series is based on.

^{AI Disclaimer: Used Gemini to generate the Mozart/Elvis photo working together, as I believe there was no documented evidence of such a meeting ever happening.}