IT ONLY HURTS WHEN YOU THINK . . .

Mozart, Mozart, Mozart! He was such a nice, bright young man until an overblown movie called “Amadeus” turned him into a braying, mysteriously talented, Technicolored nincompoop.

He was so credible until the simple-minded Silver Screen forced him to rewrite history by dictating his own Requiem on his own deathbed to a jealous Iago named Salieri. Now you can catch him on MTV, in the slick mod-vid company of rockers and punkers. If he is lucky, and it won’t be easy, he may even survive the slings and arrows of that outrageous band that tortured him, and us, at the Academy Awards puff orgy.

Now it may be backlash time. A few unlikely experts actually are devaluing old Wolfi. Take, for example, Barry Tuckwell’s assessment in a recent edition of Women’s Wear Daily.

The sometime maestro, undoubted brass virtuoso and possibly unrivaled exponent of the Mozart horn concertos voiced these revolutionary sentiments:

“It’s a pity that Mozart died when he did because he was about to become great--and I say that with very great respect. He wrote so much and so much of genius, but it’s all sort of clever. Even the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony is full of clever things. A lot of what he wrote was so easy for him to do he wasn’t always trying, and it was so unquestionably marvelous--so much better than anyone else--that that fools a lot of people.”

Sic transit. . . .

Most critics loathed Andrew Lloyd Webber’s super-eclectic Requiem. A few just disliked it. Peter Davis of New York magazine found the work “a pretentious and crushingly trivial hunk of junk.” Andrew Porter of the New Yorker was content to describe it as “not exactly a distinguished piece of music, but a ‘felt’ work and an honest one.”

One incidental line in Porter’s luke-warm notice, however, haunts the memory. The British scholar wrote this of the solo boy-soprano: “Master Miles-Kingston has a sweet, slightly breathy treble and is of exquisite appearance.”

While the press grumbles and sighs, the great American public seems to be clasping to its collective bosom the mawkish mock-religious meanderings of the man who gave us “Cats” and “Evita.”

The prefabricated Angel recording already has zoomed to the top of the so-called classical chart published in Billboard magazine. At the time of writing, it is listed as the No. 1 national seller. As such, Lloyd Webber’s candy-coated opus outdistances--are you ready?--the “Amadeus” sound-track album, the Hogwood version of the Mozart Requiem, a Wynton Marsalis spectacular and Pavarotti’s “Mamma,” in that order.

It gives one pause.

Admirers of Beverly Sills--and of great singing--will be happy to know that eight of her most significant recordings have been re-released by Angel with updated, digitally remastered sound. This brings a definitive “Manon” and a splendid “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” among other treasures, back to the catalogue.

Angel’s packaging, unfortunately, is strange. Each of the opera boxes contains a glamorous new portrait of the retired diva on the cover and a generous biographical essay about her in the libretto booklet. But information about her stellar collaborators is conspicuously absent. A new generation of opera lovers, therefore, can hear the work of Norman Treigle, Nicolai Gedda, Carlo Bergonzi, Stuart Burrows, Paul Plishka, Piero Cappuccilli, Gabriel Bacquier, Thomas Schippers and Julius Rudel, but read nothing about these esteemed artists.

One cannot live on sopranos alone. Or can one?

It had to happen, but we had hoped it wouldn’t.

Hollywood, in the unlikely plastic-seductive form of Joan Collins, has purchased the rights to Arianna Stassinopoulos’ soap-operatic biography of Maria Callas. The “Dynasty” diva will, of course, play the title role.

“I’m not an opera buff,” she recently admitted, “but ‘Callas’ will be the story of her private life, a super-vulnerable woman destroyed by love for one man--Onassis.”

With such an uplifting cultural exploration in the offing, one wonders how long it will take our tinselly moguls to crank out “The Life of Chaliapin” with Larry Hagman--a k a J. R. Ewing--starring as the profoundest of basso profondos.

The craze in opera these days involves subtitles--or Surtitles or Supertitles or Supratitles or Optrans or whatever the company in question chooses to call its version of the text translations projected on a screen atop the proscenium arch. Most audiences seem to find the comprehension crutch useful.

Some people complain, however, that the subtitles keep them so busy reading that they forget to watch what is happening on the stage. A few singers in comic operas, moreover, seem to resent it when the public guffaws at a verbal joke before it has been sung.

A most disconcerting problem arose recently in Houston, however, when a very serious diva, Eva Marton, uttered one of Tosca’s more dramatic lines only to be greeted with a chorus of giggles. It happened in Act I, when the jealous heroine begged her lover, the artist Cavaradossi, to alter his portrait of a blue-eyed Magdalena so she wouldn’t resemble a presumed rival.

“Falle gli occhi neri!” sang Marton. Freely translated, that means “Paint her eyes black.”

The subtitle, unfortunately, offered a more ambiguous translation: “Give her black eyes.”

Meanwhile, the New York City Opera has produced a breathless press release announcing plans for next season. The plans, it says here, involve “four new productions, including three not previously performed by the company.” How’s that again?

More important, Beverly Sills’ company has declared its intention to use subtitles for all 13 operas that are to be sung in foreign languages. Most important, the company will also use English subtitles--repeat, English subtitles--for one opera that will be sung in English.

Dominick Argento’s “Casanova,” which managed to go innocently unsubtitled at its world premiere in Saint Paul on Friday, will boast redundant sign language when it reaches Fun City. The City Opera promises that the projected words will “enhance audience understanding of a complex plot line.”

With advances like this, singing actors will no longer have to knock themselves out trying to get the words across the footlights. Nor will singing actors have to worry about such an archaic problem as expressive nuance. The eyes will have it.

What’s more, the possibilities for expansion are endless. Perhaps in the season after next, Sills & Co. will provide a bouncing ball over the text, so the audience can sing along--as it did in those long-lamented movie shorts.

Better yet, three seasons from now, the singers won’t have to bother learning the words at all. They can sing la-la-la and other pearly toned nonsense syllables while the folks out front read the lines.

Isn’t modern technology marvy?

Los Angeles has seen some clever, convoluted, ingenious choreography in recent weeks, thanks to the Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theater. But, according to the toughest critic of them all (Sixtus Beckmesser), the most clever, most convoluted, most ingenious choreography to be seen here in many a moon--also the fastest and the funniest--took place during the delirious, door-slamming, gut-thumping second act of “Noises Off” at the Ahmanson.

Pity the poor aficionado who missed it.

The Feld Ballet has a new publicity gimmick. It has issued ballet cards. They resemble the baseball cards we used to collect and trade, thanks to the bubble-gum industry. Each card depicts a company dancer in a characteristic assignment on one side and lists that dancer’s stats on the other. Cute, cute, cute.

One of those cards, however, is notable either for incredible naivete or for incredible insensitivity. We don’t know which.

It shows Christopher Hoskins of Sebastapool, Calif.--who happens to be black--in a dramatic leap. The title on the card identifies his vehicle: “The Jig Is Up.”

Back in the good old days, opera companies sold their product with dignity and restraint worthy of the loftier arts. Now, some companies are willing to hawk their wares in the drippy lingo of media hype.

Take, for example, a recent missive from the once-tasteful San Francisco Opera. “Dragons and Smoke?” asks a rhetorical headline. “San Francisco Opera Readies Blockbuster Production of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung,” is the non-answer.

Then comes the chronically ungrammatical pitch:

“Where can you see a 60-foot dragon, maidens swimming in the Rhine, burning buildings, rainbow bridges and a super-cast of international artists--all in the span of one week? Forget Hollywood. Move over, Mozart. Get ready June 2 through 23 for the only place it could happen: the San Francisco Opera, when it presents an international festival of the blockbuster four-opera production of the monumental work by Richard Wagner, ‘Ring of the Nibelung.’ Ticket sales alone show that opera today has gone ‘mainstream.’ As anticipation grows, finding a ticket for performances is like trying to find a side-door into the Super Bowl or a Prince concert.”

Gosh. And so it goes, breathlessly and unblushingly. At the end comes word of an extra-operatic bonus. “On June 2, the fantasy world seen on stage will not end with the final act of ‘Das Rheingold.’ Instead it will continue on with a Twilight Celebration in the Opera House, complete with laser rainbows, trumpet fanfares and fine California champagne. . . .”

“Goetterdaemmerung” it, Bayreuth was never like this. Guess we’ll just have to Lohengrin and bear it.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, splashy Music Center Opera Assn. ads for “The Beggar’s Opera,” which opens a 10-performance run at the Embassy Theater April 25, say nothing about a composer, a librettist, a conductor, a director, a designer or a cast. But the ads do proclaim that this production comes “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You the Royal Opera.”

It is as if those wonderful folks really thought there was some connection between Mozart, Puccini and Britten from Covent Garden and John Gay from St. Louis.

At home in St. Louis, incidentally, the same work in the same production is touted as “the world’s first musical comedy.”

Another small step for mankind. . . .