Antonio Salieri was born on August 18, 1750, and died on May 7, 1825. He was an Italian composer and teacher who lived during the classical period. He was born in Legnago, a town near Verona in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy.

Salieri played a key role in shaping late 18th-century opera. He studied under Florian Leopold Gassmann and was mentored by Christoph Willibald Gluck. Salieri wrote operas in three languages and helped develop many techniques used in opera writing. His music greatly influenced other composers of his time.

From 1774 to 1792, Salieri was the director of the Italian opera at the Habsburg court, making him a leading figure in Italian-language opera in Vienna. He also wrote works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice. His operas were performed across Europe during his lifetime. From 1788 to 1824, he served as the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister, overseeing music at the court chapel and its attached school. Even after he stopped writing new operas in 1804, Salieri remained a respected teacher. Many famous composers, including Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Eberl, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, studied under him.

Salieri’s music was rarely performed after 1800 and was almost forgotten until the late 20th century. His fame was revived in part because of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus (1979) and its 1984 film adaptation. After Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in 1791 at age 35, rumors spread that Salieri and Mozart had been rivals and that Salieri had poisoned Mozart. These claims have been proven false, as Mozart’s illness did not show signs of poisoning, and evidence suggests they respected each other. Salieri was deeply affected by the belief that he had caused Mozart’s death, which he denied. This belief contributed to his mental health struggles later in life.

Life and career

Antonio Salieri was born on August 18, 1750, to Antonio Salieri and his wife, Anna Maria. Salieri began his musical training in his hometown of Legnago. His older brother, Francesco Salieri, who had studied with the violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini, first taught him at home. Later, he received lessons from Giuseppe Simoni, the organist at the Legnago Cathedral, who had studied under Padre Giovanni Battista Martini. Salieri remembered little about his childhood except his love for sugar, reading, and music. He ran away from home twice to hear his brother play violin concertos in nearby churches during festivals. He was scolded by his father after failing to greet a local priest respectfully. Salieri explained that he disliked the priest’s organ playing because it was too dramatic. Between 1763 and 1764, both of Salieri’s parents died. He was briefly cared for by an anonymous monk in Padua and later became the ward of a Venetian nobleman named Giovanni Mocenigo, a member of a powerful family. It is possible that Salieri’s father and Mocenigo were friends, but this is unclear. In Venice, Salieri studied music with Giovanni Battista Pescetti, an organist and opera composer. After Pescetti’s death, he studied with Ferdinando Pacini, who introduced Salieri to the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann. Impressed by Salieri’s talent, Gassmann took him to Vienna in 1766 to continue his education.

Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on June 15, 1766. Gassmann first took Salieri to the Italian Church to honor his teaching and service to God, an event that deeply influenced Salieri. Salieri studied Latin and Italian poetry with Fr. Don Pietro Tommasi, learned German, and studied European literature. His music lessons focused on vocal composition and thoroughbass. His training in harmony and counterpoint was based on Johann Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum, which Salieri translated during his Latin lessons. Salieri lived with Gassmann even after Gassmann married, an arrangement that continued until Gassmann’s death and Salieri’s marriage in 1774. Few of Salieri’s early compositions have survived. In his old age, he suggested that some were lost or destroyed, except for a few church works. One surviving piece is a Mass in C major written in the a cappella style (without instruments) and dated August 2, 1767. A complete opera, La vestal (The Vestal Virgin), composed in 1769, is also lost.

In 1766, Gassmann introduced Salieri to the chamber music performances held during Emperor Joseph II’s evening meals. Salieri impressed the Emperor, and Gassmann was allowed to bring him frequently. This relationship lasted until Joseph II’s death in 1790. During this time, Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, known as Metastasio, and Christoph Willibald Gluck at the Martinez family’s Sunday salons. Metastasio, who lived in an apartment there, gave Salieri informal lessons in prosody and Italian poetry. Gluck became a friend and advisor. When Gassmann left for an opera commission, Salieri made his debut as a composer with an original opera buffa. His first full opera, Le donne letterate (The Learned Ladies), was based on Molière’s Les Femmes Savantes and premiered in 1770. This success began Salieri’s 34-year operatic career, during which he composed over 35 original dramas.

After Le donne letterate’s success, Salieri received commissions for two more operas in 1770, both with libretti by Giovanni Boccherini. The first, L’amore innocente (Innocent Love), was a light-hearted comedy set in the Austrian mountains. The second, Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamace (Don Quixote at the Marriage of Camacho), was based on an episode from Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. These works combined elements of opera buffa with innovations, such as blending ballet and opera in Don Chisciotte and using coloratura in L’amore innocente. Salieri’s style often mixed different operatic traditions.

Salieri’s first major success was Armida, a serious opera based on Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). It premiered on June 2, 1771, and told a story of love and duty set during the First Crusade. The opera featured ballet, arias, ensembles, and choruses, blending theatricality and emotion. It followed Gluck’s reforms in serious opera, as seen in Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste. The libretto was written by Marco Coltellini, the imperial theaters’ poet. Armida was translated into German and performed widely, helping establish Salieri’s reputation. It was also the first opera to be prepared in a piano and vocal reduction by Carl Friedrich Cramer in 1783.

Armida was followed by La Fiera di Venezia (The Fair of Venice), a commedia per musica in the style of Carlo Goldoni. Premiering in 1772, it featured characters singing in three languages and depicted the lively Venice Carnival. The opera included large ensembles, choruses, and an innovative scene combining on-stage dances with singing by soloists.

Works

During his time in Vienna, Salieri gained great respect as a composer and music director, especially for his operas, but also for his chamber and sacred music. Some of his most successful operas, which were performed during his lifetime, include Armida (1771), La fiera di Venezia (1772), La scuola de' gelosi (1778), Der Rauchfangkehrer (1781), Les Danaïdes (1784), which was originally thought to be by Gluck, La grotta di Trofonio (1785), Tarare (1787) (Tarare was rewritten and changed several times, as was Les Danaïdes), Axur, re d'Ormus (1788), La cifra (1789), Palmira, regina di Persia (1795), Il mondo alla rovescia (1795), Falstaff (1799), and Cesare in Farmacusa (1800).

Salieri's earliest surviving work is a Mass in C major. He composed four major orchestral masses, a requiem, and many offertories, graduals, vesper settings, and sacred cantatas and oratorios. Much of his sacred music was written after he became Hofkapellmeister in 1788.

His instrumental music includes two piano concertos, an organ concerto written in 1773, a concerto for flute, oboe, and orchestra (1774), a triple concerto for oboe, violin, and cello, and a set of twenty-six variations on "La follia di Spagna" (1815).

Relationship with Mozart

In the 1780s, while Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father, Leopold, wrote in their letters that several groups of Italians led by Salieri were trying to stop Mozart from getting certain jobs or having his operas performed. For example, Mozart wrote to his father in December 1781 that "the only one who counts in the Emperor's eyes is Salieri." Their letters suggest that both Mozart and his father, who were Austrians and felt upset about the special treatment Italian composers received in Austrian courts, blamed Italians in general and Salieri in particular for Mozart's struggles in Vienna. In May 1783, Mozart wrote to his father about Salieri and Da Ponte, the court poet: "You know those Italian gentlemen; they are very nice to your face! Enough, we all know about them. And if Da Ponte is in league with Salieri, I'll never get a text from him, and I would love to show him what I can really do with an Italian opera." In July 1783, he again wrote to his father about "a trick of Salieri's," one of several letters in which Mozart accused Salieri of trickery.

Decades after Mozart's death, a rumor began to spread that Salieri had poisoned Mozart. Some people believe this rumor started because of a rivalry between German and Italian musicians. Carl Maria von Weber, a relative of Mozart by marriage and a composer described by Wagner as "the most German of German composers," is said to have refused to join a social club called Ludlamshöhle, where Salieri was a member, and avoided connecting with him. These rumors later appeared in popular culture, such as in Albert Lortzing's opera Szenen aus Mozarts Leben (1832) and the 1984 film Amadeus, which both show Salieri trying to stop Mozart's career.

Salieri's music was more similar to the styles of Gluck and Gassmann than to Italian composers like Giovanni Paisiello or Domenico Cimarosa. In 1772, Empress Maria Theresa said she preferred Italian composers over German ones like Gassmann, Salieri, or Gluck. Although Salieri was born in Italy, he lived in Vienna for nearly 60 years and was considered a German composer by people like the music critic Friedrich Rochlitz.

The biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer believes Mozart's rivalry with Salieri might have started in 1781, when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of Princess Elisabeth of Württemberg, but Salieri was chosen instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher. The next year, Mozart failed again to be selected as the princess's piano teacher. Leopold Mozart wrote to his sister Nannerl that "Salieri and his tribe will move heaven and earth to put it down." However, at the time of the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro, Salieri was working on his new French opera Les Horaces. Additionally, when Da Ponte was in Prague preparing Don Giovanni, he was ordered to return to Vienna for a royal wedding where Salieri's opera Axur, re d'Ormus would be performed. Mozart was not happy about this.

The rivalry between Salieri and Mozart became public during a competition held by Emperor Joseph II in 1786 at the Orangery in Schönbrunn. Mozart was seen as the loser of this competition. His 1791 opera The Magic Flute reflects this competition because the Papageno–Papagena duet is similar to a musical piece in Salieri's Prima la musica e poi le parole. The Magic Flute also echoes Salieri's music, as Papageno's whistle uses a melody from Salieri's Concerto for Clavicembalo in B-flat major.

There is also evidence that Mozart and Salieri sometimes supported each other's work. For example, when Salieri became Kapellmeister in 1788, he chose to stage The Marriage of Figaro instead of introducing a new opera of his own. When he attended the coronation of Leopold II in 1790, Salieri carried three of Mozart's masses with him. Salieri and Mozart even co-wrote a cantata called Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, which celebrated the return of the singer Nancy Storace to the stage. This work, published by Artaria in 1785, was considered lost until 2016, when a copy was found in the Czech Museum of Music. Salieri also helped premiere several of Mozart's works, including Davide penitente (1785), his Piano Concerto KV 482 (1785), the Clarinet Quintet (1789), and the 40th Symphony (1788). In his final letter from October 1791, Mozart wrote to his wife that he had picked up Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri in his carriage and taken them to the opera. He praised Salieri's enthusiastic reaction to The Magic Flute, saying Salieri gave "Bravo!" and "Bello!" throughout the performance.

Salieri, along with Mozart's student Johann Nepomuk Hummel, helped educate Mozart's younger son, Franz Xaver Mozart, who was born about four months before his father's death.

Legacy

Salieri and his music were mostly forgotten from the 19th century until the late 20th century. This change happened because of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus (1979), which showed Salieri in a dramatic and fictional way. The play became widely known after its 1984 film version, directed by Miloš Forman. Today, Salieri’s music is gaining some popularity again through recordings. Scholars are studying his work more, and a few of his operas are being performed again. There is also a Salieri Opera Festival, organized by the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri, that focuses on rediscovering his music and the work of his contemporaries. The festival happens every autumn in Legnago, his hometown, where a theater has been renamed in his honor.

In 2003, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli released The Salieri Album, a CD with 13 arias from Salieri’s operas, most of which had never been recorded before. Patrice Michaels performed some of Salieri’s arias on the CD Divas of Mozart’s Day. In 2008, Diana Damrau released a CD with seven of Salieri’s coloratura arias. Since 2000, complete recordings of operas such as Axur Re d’Ormus, Falstaff, Les Danaïdes, La Locandiera, La grotta di Trofonio, Prima la musica e poi le parole, and Il mondo alla rovescia have been released or re-released. Salieri’s music is not yet widely performed, but his works are being performed more often now.

His operas Falstaff (from a 1995 production at the Schwetzingen Festival) and Tarare (from a 1987 production at the same festival) have been released on DVD. In 2004, the opera Europa riconosciuta was performed in Milan for the reopening of La Scala, with soprano Diana Damrau in the title role. This production was also shown on television.

In November 2009, Il mondo alla rovescia was performed for the first time in modern times at the Teatro Salieri in Legnago. This was a joint production between the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and the Fondazione Arena di Verona for the Salieri Opera Festival. Antonio Giarola directed the festival from 2009 to 2011 and also directed Varietas Delectat, a contemporary dance show inspired by Salieri’s music, from 2009 to 2012.

In 2009, Salieri’s opera Der Rauchfangkehrer was given its first modern production in Graz, Austria, the hometown of its librettist, Leopold Auenbrugger. Another modern production of this opera took place in 2014 in Sydney, Australia, where it was performed by the Pinchgut Opera as The Chimneysweep. The Sydney Morning Herald called it a "long-forgotten treasure."

Salieri’s music has also appeared in Hollywood films. In 2001, his triple concerto was used in the soundtrack of The Last Castle, starring Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. In 2006, the movie Copying Beethoven mentioned Salieri in a more positive way, showing a character who once studied with him. In 2008, the film Iron Man used the Larghetto movement from Salieri’s Piano Concerto in C major during a scene involving Obadiah Stane.

Salieri’s life and his relationship with Mozart have been the subject of many stories in different forms of media. For example:

• In 1831, Alexander Pushkin wrote a short play titled Mozart and Salieri, which explored the theme of envy. This inspired Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus.
• In 1898, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov adapted Pushkin’s play into an opera of the same name.
• The 1979 play Amadeus and its 1984 film version, directed by Miloš Forman, portrayed Salieri as a jealous and manipulative character. This role was played by Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, and F. Murray Abraham (who won an Academy Award for his performance).
• A spoof opera titled A Little Nightmare Music (1982) by P. D. Q. Bach humorously depicted Salieri trying to poison Mozart.
• Patrick Stewart played Salieri in the 1985 production The Mozart Inquest.
• Florent Mothe portrayed Salieri in the French musical Mozart, l’opéra rock (2009).
• C. Ian Kyer wrote a historical novel titled Damaging Winds: Rumours that Salieri Murdered Mozart Swirl in the Vienna of Beethoven and Schubert (2013). He also co-authored a singspiel called Setting the Record Straight: Mozart and Salieri Redux, which was performed in 2016.
• The HBO drama Virtuoso (2015), directed by Alan Ball, focused on Salieri’s early life.

Notes, references, sources

• Berlioz, Hector (2002). The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz. Translated and edited by David Cairns. New York: Everyman.
• Braunbehrens, Volkmar (1992). Maligned Master – The Real Story of Antonio Salieri. Translated by Eveline L. Kanes. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation.
• Schatkin Hettrick, Jane; Rice, John A. (2001). "Salieri, Antonio". Grove Music Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.24378. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (Available with a subscription, through Wikilibrary, or with a UK public library membership.)
• Lorenz, Michael (2013). "Antonio Salieri's Early Years in Vienna".
• Rice, John A. (1998). Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-71125-6.
• Sadie, Stanley, ed. (1988). "Mozart". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-23111-1. OCLC 611992375.
• Solomon, Maynard (1995). Mozart: A Life (1st ed.). New York City: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-019046-0. OCLC 31435799.
• Spaethling, Robert (2000). Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393047196.
• Thayer, Alexander Wheelock (1989). Salieri: Rival of Mozart. Edited by Theodore Albrecht. The Philharmonia of Greater Kansas City. ISBN 978-0-932845-37-5.