Re: "The movie portrayed Salieri as a man who could barely play. When that was just not true at all."
That was the King, not Salieri, as I remember it. But Salieri's playing did lack the flair that Mozart's had, as shown. However, the King himself seemed to prefer Salieri's simpler style, based on various conversations.
In actuality, Salieri was probably financially more successful than Mozart, but less remembered, so there is an element of truth to it.
In general Mozart's music did tend to please musicians more than regular audiences. He was perhaps a bit ahead of his time. This is similar to Beethoven, who was probably considered to be in the top 10 at the time, but not the greatest of his era. Beethoven practically invented the so-called Romantic era, so to some he was doing "weird stuff". It took a while for mainstream to "get" Jimi Hendrix also. I know it's a politically-incorrect cliche, but pioneers often do take arrows in the back.
> We can all achieve excellence
is false in practice.
In this context, excellence is a stand in for what Aristotle calls arete in the Nicomachean Ethics. Or if it isn't, it should be; this conversation spans millennia.
For any given field of endeavour, we may aspire to excellence, but it isn't given to all of us to achieve it.
However I must believe that arete is, if not available to absolutely everyone, at least, an accessible part of the human condition, to the point where someone who was born with such a paucity of gifts as to make this impossible, I would consider disabled.
Schizophrenia comes to mind as an example of a condition which makes this very difficult. But Terry Davis shows us that it isn't impossible.
