Antonio Salieri
Encyclopedia
Classical period (music)
The dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or...
composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago
Legnago
Legnago is a town and comune in the Province of Verona, Veneto, northern Italy. It is located on the Adige river, c. 43 km from Verona.Its fertile land produces crops of rice, other cereals, sugar, and tobacco.-History:...
, south of Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
, in the Republic of Venice
Republic of Venice
The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...
, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
monarchy.
Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann
Florian Leopold Gassmann
Florian Leopold Gassmann was a German-speaking Bohemian opera composer of the transitional period between the baroque and classical eras. He was one of the principal composers of dramma giocoso immediately before Mozart....
, and a protege of Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.
Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 to 1792, Salieri dominated Italian language opera in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. During his career he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Venice, Rome, and Paris. His dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister
Kapellmeister
Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...
from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought after teachers of his generation and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
were among the most famous of his pupils.
Salieri's music slowly disappeared from the repertoire between 1800 and 1868, and was rarely heard after that period until the revival of his fame in the late 20th century. This revival was due to the dramatic and highly fictionalized depiction of Salieri in the play and film Amadeus
Amadeus
Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979...
(play 1979, film 1984), directed by Peter Shaffer
Peter Shaffer
Sir Peter Levin Shaffer is an English dramatist and playwright, screenwriter and author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.-Early life:...
and Milos Forman
Miloš Forman
Jan Tomáš Forman , better known as Miloš Forman , is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for...
respectively. His music today has regained some modest popularity via recordings. It is also the subject of increasing academic study and a small number of his operas have returned to the stage. In addition there is now a Salieri Opera Festival sponsored by the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and dedicated to rediscovering his work and those of his contemporaries. It is developing as an annual autumn event in his native town of Legnago where a theater has been re-named in his honor.
Biography
Antonio Salieri began his musical studies in his native town of LegnagoLegnago
Legnago is a town and comune in the Province of Verona, Veneto, northern Italy. It is located on the Adige river, c. 43 km from Verona.Its fertile land produces crops of rice, other cereals, sugar, and tobacco.-History:...
; he was first taught at home by his older brother Francesco Salieri (a former student of the violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini
Giuseppe Tartini
Giuseppe Tartini was an Italian baroque composer and violinist.-Biography:Tartini was born in Piran, a town on the peninsula of Istria, in the Republic of Venice to Gianantonio – native of Florence – and Caterina Zangrando, a descendant of one of the oldest aristocratic Piranian families.It...
), and he received further lessons from the organist of the Legnago Cathedral, Giuseppe Simoni, a pupil of Padre Giovanni Battista Martini
Giovanni Battista Martini
Giovanni Battista Martini , also known as Padre Martini, was an Italian musician.-Biography:Martini was born at Bologna....
. Salieri would recall little from his childhood in later years except a passion for sugar, reading and music. He twice ran away from home without permission to hear his elder brother play violin concertos in neighboring churches on festival days (resulting in the loss of his beloved sugar), and he also recounted being chastised by his father after failing to greet a local priest with proper respect. Salieri responded to the reprimand by saying that the priest's organ playing displeased him because it was in an inappropriately theatrical style. Sometime between 1763 and 1764 Salieri suffered the death of both parents and was briefly taken in by an anonymous brother, a monk in Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
, and then for unknown reasons in 1765 or 1766 he became the ward of a Venetian nobleman named Giovanni Mocenigo (which Giovanni is at this time unknown), a member of the powerful and well connected Mocenigo family. It is possible that Antonio's father and Giovanni were friends or business associates, but this is obscure. While living in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
Salieri continued his musical studies with the organist and opera composer Giovanni Battista Pescetti
Giovanni Battista Pescetti
Giovanni Battista Pescetti was an organist and composer. Born in Venice around 1704, he studied under Antonio Lotti for some time...
, then following Pescetti’s sudden death he studied with the opera singer Ferdinando Pacini or Pasini. It was through Pacini that Salieri gained the attention of the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann
Florian Leopold Gassmann
Florian Leopold Gassmann was a German-speaking Bohemian opera composer of the transitional period between the baroque and classical eras. He was one of the principal composers of dramma giocoso immediately before Mozart....
, who, impressed with his talents and concerned for his future, took the young orphan to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
where he personally directed and paid for the remainder of his musical education.
Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on 15 June 1766. Gassmann's first act was to take Salieri to the Italian Church to consecrate his teaching and service to God, an event that left a deep impression on Salieri for the rest of his life. Salieri's education included instruction in Latin and Italian poetry by Fr. Don Pietro Tommasi, instruction in the German language, and European literature. His music studies revolved around vocal composition, and thoroughbass. His musical theory training in harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
was rooted in Johann Fux
Johann Fux
Johann Joseph Fux was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. He is most famous as the author of Gradus ad Parnassum, a treatise on counterpoint, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrina style of Renaissance polyphony...
's Gradus ad Parnassum, which Salieri translated during each Latin lesson. As a result Salieri continued to live with Gassmann even after Gassmann’s marriage, an arrangement that lasted until the year of Gassmann's death and Salieri's own marriage in 1774. Few of Salieri’s compositions have survived from this early period. In his old age Salieri hinted that these works were either purposely destroyed, or had been lost with the exception of a few works for the church. Among these sacred works there survives a Mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
in C major written without a "Gloria" and in the antique a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
style (presumably for one of the church’s penitential seasons) and dated 2 August 1767. A complete opera composed in 1769 (presumably as a culminating study) La Vestale
La vestale
La vestale is an opera composed by Gaspare Spontini to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy. It was first performed at the Paris Opéra in Paris on December 15, 1807 and is regarded as Spontini's masterpiece...
("The Vestal Virgin") has also been lost.
Beginning in 1766 Gassmann introduced Salieri to the daily chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
performances held during Emperor Joseph II's evening meal. Salieri quickly impressed the Emperor, and Gassmann was instructed to bring his pupil as often as he wished. This was the beginning of a relationship between monarch and musician that would last until Joseph's death in 1790. Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi better known as Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...
and Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
during this period at the famous Sunday morning salons held at the home of the Martinez family. Here Metastasio had an apartment and participated in the weekly gatherings. Over the next several years Metastasio gave Salieri informal instruction in prosody and the declamation of Italian poetry, and Gluck became an informal advisor, friend and confidante. It was toward the end of this extended period of study that Gassmann was called away on a new opera commission and a gap in the theater’s program allowed for Salieri to make his debut as a composer of a completely original opera buffa. Salieri's first full opera was composed during the winter and carnival season of 1770; Le donne letterate
Le donne letterate
Le donne letterate composed by Antonio Salieri , is an Italian opera in three acts, stylistically it is an opera buffa and is very similar to the mid-18th century librettos of Carlo Goldoni...
and was based on Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's Les Femmes Savantes
Les Femmes Savantes
Les Femmes savantes is a play by Molière in five acts, written in verse. A satire on academic pretention, female education, and préciosité , it was one of his most popular comedies...
("The Learned Ladies") with a libretto by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini a dancer in the court ballet, and a brother of the famous composer. The modest success of this opera would launch Salieri's 34 year operatic career as a composer of over 35 original dramas.
Early Viennese period and operas (1770–1778)
Following the modest success of Le donne letterate Salieri received new commissions writing two additional operas in 1770 both with libretti by Boccherini. The first a pastoral opera, L'amore innocenteL'amore innocente
L'amore innocente composed by Antonio Salieri , is an Italian-language opera in two acts, stylistically it is a pastoral opera and is very similar to the mid-18th century Roman Intermezzo...
("Innocent Love") was a light hearted comedy set in the Austrian mountains, and the second was based on an episode from Cervantes
Cervantes
-People:*Alfonso J. Cervantes , mayor of St. Louis, Missouri*Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 16th-century man of letters*Ignacio Cervantes, Cuban composer*Jorge Cervantes, a world-renowned expert on indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cannabis cultivation...
Don Quixote – Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamace ("Don Quixote at the Marriage of Camacho"). In these first works, drawn mostly from the traditions of mid-century opera buffa, Salieri showed a penchant for experimentation and for mixing the established characteristics of specific operatic genres. Don Chisciotte was a mix of ballet and opera buffa, and the lead female roles in L'amore innocente were designed to contrast and highlight the different traditions of operatic writing for soprano, even borrowing stylistic flourishes from opera-seria in the use of coloratura in what was a short pastoral comedy more in keeping with a Roman Intermezzo
Intermezzo
In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...
. The mixing and pushing against the boundaries of established operatic genres would be a continuing hallmark of Salieri's own personal style, and in his choice of material for the plot (as in his first opera), he manifested a lifelong interest in subjects drawn from classic drama and literature.
Salieri's first great success was in the realm of serious opera. Commissioned for an unknown occasion Salieri's Armida
Armida (Salieri)
Armida is an operatic 'dramma per musica' by Antonio Salieri in three acts, set to a libretto by Marco Coltellini. The plot is based on the epic poem by Torquato Tasso, and Lully, Traetta, and Handel had already composed operas based on the situations that Tasso originally developed...
was based on Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...
's epic poem La Gerusalemme liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered") and premiered on 2 June 1771. Armida is a tale of love and duty in conflict and is saturated in magic. The opera is set during the First Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...
and it features a dramatic mix of ballet, aria, ensemble and choral writing combining theatricality, scenic splendor and high emotionalism. The work clearly followed in Gluck's footsteps and embraced his reform of serious opera begun with Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice
Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing...
and Alceste
Alceste (Gluck)
Alceste is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck from 1767. The libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi and based on the play Alcestis by Euripides. The premiere took place in Vienna.-Preface and reforms:...
. The libretto to Armida was by Marco Coltellini
Marco Coltellini
Marco Coltellini was an Italian opera librettist and printer.He was probably born in Livorno and embarked on a career in the Church, but had to leave after fathering four daughters. He set up a printing shop in Livorno to publish the works of Enlightenment figures such as Francesco Algarotti and...
the house poet for the imperial theaters. While Salieri followed the precepts set forth by Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi
Ranieri de' Calzabigi
Ranieri de' Calzabigi was an Italian poet and librettist, most famous for his collaboration with the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck on his "reform" operas....
in the preface to Alceste; Salieri also drew on some musical ideas from the more traditional opera-seria and even opera buffa, creating a new synthesis in the process. Armida was translated into German and widely performed, especially in the northern German states, where it helped to establish Salieri's reputation as an important and innovative modern composer It would also be the first opera to receive a serious preparation in a piano and vocal reduction by Carl Friedrich Cramer in 1783.
Armida was soon followed by Salieri's first truly popular success; a commedia per musica in the style of Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
La fiera di Venezia
La fiera di Venezia
La fiera di Venezia is a three-act opera buffa, described as a commedia per musica, by Antonio Salieri, set to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini.-Performance history:...
("The Fair of Venice"). La fiera was written for Carnival in 1772 and premiered on 29 January. Here Salieri returned to his collaboration with the young Boccherini who crafted an original plot. La fiera would feature characters singing in three languages, a bustling portrayal of the Ascension-tide Fair and Carnival in Venice, and large and lengthy ensembles and choruses. It also included an innovative scene that would combine a series of on stage dances with singing from both solo protagonists and the chorus. A pattern to be imitated by later composers, most famously and successfully by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
in Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
. Salieri would also write several bravura aria's for a soprano playing the part of a middle class character that would combine coloratura and concertante woodwind solos, another innovation for a comic opera that was to be widely imitated.
Salieri's next two operas were not particular or lasting successes, of the two only La secchia rapita
La secchia rapita
La secchia rapita is a mock-heroic epic poem by Alessandro Tassoni based on the real-life event of the same name, War of the Oaken Bucket was first published in 1622 . It tells of a war between the Italian cities of Modena and Bologna over the possession of a wooden bucket...
("The Stolen Bucket"), deserves mention. A parody of Metastasian opera-seria it featured dazzling parodies of the high flown and emotive aria's found in that genre, as well as bold and innovative orchestrations, including the first known use of three tympani. Again a classic of Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
literature was the basis of the libretto by Boccherini, in this case a comic mock-epic by Tassoni, in which a war between Modena
Modena
Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
and Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
ensues over a stolen bucket. This uneven work was followed by another popular comedic success La locandiera ("Mine Hostess"), an adaptation of the classic and popular spoken stage comedy La locandiera by Carlo Goldoni, the libretto was prepared by Domenico Poggi.
The majority of Salieri's modest number of instrumental works also date from this time. Salieri's instrumental works have been judged by various critics and scholars to lack the inspiration and innovation found in his writing for the stage. These orchestral works are mainly in the gallant style and though they show some development toward the late classical they reflect a general weakness in comparison to his operatic works of the same and later periods. These works were written for mostly unknown occasions and artists. They include two concertos for pianoforte, one in C major and one in B flat major, (both 1773); a concerto for organ in C Major in two movements, (the middle movement is missing from the autograph score, or perhaps, it was an improvised organ solo) (also 1773); two concertante works: a concerto for oboe, violin and cello in D major (1770), and a flute and oboe concerto in C major (1774). These works are among the most frequently recorded of Salieri's compositions.
Upon Gassmann's death on 22 January, most likely due to complications from an accident with a carriage some years earlier, Salieri succeeded him as assistant director of the Italian opera in early 1774. In 1774 Salieri married Therese Helferstorfer on 10 October, she was the daughter of a recently deceased financier and official of the court treasury. Sacred music was not a high priority for the composer during this stage of his career, but he did compose an Alleluia for chorus and orchestra in 1774, perhaps for his own wedding, or in thanksgiving for it.
During the next three years Salieri was primarily concerned with rehearsing and conducting the Italian opera company in Vienna and teaching. His three complete operas written during this time show the development of his compositional skills, but included no great success, either commercially, or artistically. His most important compositions during this period were a symphony in D major, performed in the summer of 1776, and the oratorio La passione di Gesù Cristo
La passione di Gesù Cristo
La Passione di Gesù Cristo is the title of a libretto by Metastasio which was repeatedly set as an azione sacra or oratorio by many composers of the late baroque, "rococo", and early classical period.-Writing and original setting:...
with a text by Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...
performed during Advent of 1776.
After the financial collapse of the Italian opera company in 1777 due to financial mis-management, Joseph II decided to end the performance of Italian opera, French spoken drama, and ballet. Instead the two court owned theaters would be reopened under new management, and partly subsidized by the Imperial Court, as a new National Theater. The re-launched theaters would promote German language plays and musical productions that reflected Austrian (or as Joseph II would have said) German values, traditions and outlook. The Italian opera buffa company was therefore replaced by a German language Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...
troupe. For Joseph and his supports of Imperial reform, besides encouraging any first buddings of pan-national pride that would unite his multi-lingual and ethnic subjects under one common language; they also hoped to save a considerable amount of money in the process. Beginning in 1778 Emperor wished to have new works, in German, composed by his own subjects and brought on the stage with clear Imperial support. This in effect left Salieri's role as assistant court composer in a much reduced position. Salieri also had never truly mastered the German language, and he now felt no longer competent to continue as assistant opera director. A further blow to his career was landed when the spoken drama and musical Singspiel were placed on an equal footing. For the young composer there would be few, if any, new compositional commissions to receive from the court. Salieri was left with few financial options and he began casting about for new opportunities.
Italian tour (1778–1780)
However, in 1778 Gluck turned down an offer to compose the inaugural opera for La ScalaLa Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
in Milan; upon the suggestion of Joseph II and with the approval of Gluck, Salieri was offered the commission, which he gratefully accepted. Joseph II granted Salieri permission to take a year long leave of absence (later extended) thus enabling him to write for La Scala and to undertake a tour of Italy. Salieri's Italian tour of 1778–80 began with the production of Europa riconosciuta
Europa riconosciuta
Europa riconosciuta is an opera in two acts by Antonio Salieri, designated as a dramma per musica, set to an Italian libretto by Mattia Verazi.The opera takes place in Tyre and tells a story of love, violence and political discord in ancient times...
("Europa Recognized") for La Scala (which was revived in 2004 for the same opera house's re-opening following extensive renovations). From Milan Salieri included stops in Venice and Rome and finally a return to Milan. During this tour he wrote three new comic operas and he also collaborated with Giacomo Rust
Giacomo Rust
Giacomo Rust or Rusti was an Italian opera composer, probably of German ancestry.Not a great deal is known about Rust. Between 1763 and 1777, Rust was active in Venice, where his first opera, a dramma giocoso, La contadina in corte, to a libretto by Niccolò Tassi, was performed in 1763...
on one opera, Il Talismano ("The Talismand"). Of his Italian works one, La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi is a dramma giocoso in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Caterino Mazzolà.-Performance history:It was first performed at the Teatro S Moisè in Venice on 27 December 1778...
("The School for Jealousy"), a witty study of amorous intrigue and emotion, would prove a popular and lasting international success.
Middle Viennese period and Parisian operas (1780–1788)
Upon his return at imperial behest to Vienna in 1780, he wrote one German singspiel Der RauchfangkehrerDer Rauchfangkehrer
Der Rauchfangkehrer, oder Die Unentbehrlichen Verräther ihrer Herrschaften aus Eigennutz is an opera in three acts by Antonio Salieri to a German libretto by Leopold Auenbrugger...
or (The Chimney Sweep) which premiered in 1781. Salieri's Chimney Sweep and Mozart's work for the same company in 1782, Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...
("The Abduction from the Seraglio") would be the only two major successes to emerge from the German singspiel experiment, and only Mozart's opera would survive on the stage beyond the close of the 18th century. In 1783 the Italian opera company was revived with singers partly chosen and vetted by Salieri during his Italian tour, the new season would open with a slightly re-worked version of Salieri's recent success La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi is a dramma giocoso in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Caterino Mazzolà.-Performance history:It was first performed at the Teatro S Moisè in Venice on 27 December 1778...
. Salieri then returned to his rounds of rehearsing, composition and teaching. However, his time at home in Vienna would be quickly brought to a close when an opportunity to write an opera for Paris arose, again through the patronage of Gluck Salieri traveled abroad to fulfill an important commission.
The opera Les Danaïdes
Les Danaïdes
Les Danaïdes is an opera by Antonio Salieri, in 5 acts: more specifically, it is a tragédie lyrique. The opera was set to a libretto by Leblanc du Roullet and Baron Tschudi, who in turn adapted the work of Ranieri de' Calzabigi...
("The Danaids") is a five-act tragédie lyrique; the plot was based on an ancient Greek legend that had been the basis for the first play in a trilogy by Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
, entitled The Suppliants
The Suppliants
The Suppliants may refer to:* The Suppliants by Aeschylus, an ancient Greek play where the Danaides seek protection from King Pelasgus...
. The original commission that reached Salieri in 1783–84 was to assist Gluck in finishing a work for Paris that had been all but completed; in reality, Gluck had failed to notate any of the score for the new opera and gave the entire project over to his young friend. Gluck feared that the Parisian critics would denounce the opera by a young composer known mostly for comic pieces and so the opera was originally billed in the press as being a new work by Gluck with some assistance from Antonio Salieri, then shortly before the premiere of the opera the Parisian press reported that the work was to be partly by Gluck and partly by Salieri, and finally after popular and critical success were won on stage the opera was acknowledged in a letter to the public by Gluck as being wholly by the young Antonio. Les Danaïdes was received with great acclaim and its popularity with audiences and critics alike produced several further requests for new works for Paris audiences by Salieri. Les Danaïdes followed in the tradition of reform that Gluck had begun in the 1760s and that Salieri had emulated in his earlier opera Armida. Salieri's first French opera
French Opera
French opera is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy, Poulenc and Olivier Messiaen...
contained scenes of great solemnity and festivity; yet overshadowing it all was darkness and revenge. The opera depicted politically motivated murder, filial duty and love in conflict, tryannicide and finally eternal damnation. The opera with its dark overture, lavish choral writing, many ballet scenes, and electrifying finale depicting a glimpse of hellish torture kept the opera on the stage in Paris for over forty years. A young Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
recorded the deep impression this work made on him in his Mémoires.
Upon returning to Vienna following his success in Paris, Salieri met and befriended Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He wrote the librettos for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte....
and had his first professional encounters with Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
. Da Ponte would write his first opera libretto for Salieri, Il ricco d'un giorno
Il ricco d'un giorno
Il ricco d'un giorno is a dramma giocoso in three acts composed by Antonio Salieri. The Italian libretto was by Lorenzo Da Ponte after a work by Giovanni Bertati.-Performance history:...
("A Rich Man for a Day") in 1784, it was not a success. Salieri next turned to Giambattista Casti as a librettist, a more successful set of collaboration flowed from this pairing. In the mean time Da Ponte would begin work with Mozart on Le nozze di Figaro ("The Marriage of Figaro"). (For the famous relationship between Mozart and Salieri please see below.) Salieri soon produced one of his greatest works with the text by Casti La grotta di Trofonio
La grotta di Trofonio
La grotta di Trofonio is an opera, described as an opera comica, in two acts composed by Antonio Salieri to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Battista Casti....
("The Cave of Trofonius") in 1785, the first opera buffa published in full score by Artaria
Artaria
Artaria and company was one of the most important music publishing firms of the late 18th and 19th century. Founded in the 18th century in Vienna, the company is associated with many leading names of the classical era.- History :...
. Shortly after this success Joseph II had Mozart and Salieri each contribute a one-act opera and/or singspiel for production at a banquet in 1786. Salieri collaborated with Casti to produce a parody of the relationship between poet and composer in Prima la musica e poi le parole
Prima la musica e poi le parole
Prima la musica e poi le parole , also called Prima la musica, poi le parole is an opera in one act by Antonio Salieri. It was first performed on February 7, 1786 in Vienna, following a commission by the Emperor Joseph II...
("First the Music and then the Words"). This short work also highlighted the typical backstage antics of two high flown sopranos. Salieri then returned to Paris for the premiere of his tragédie lyrique Les Horaces
Les Horaces
Les Horaces is an operatic tragédie lyrique by Antonio Salieri. The text was by Nicolas-François Guillard after Pierre Corneille's Horace....
("The Horati") which proved a failure. However the failure of this work was more than made up for with his next Parisian opera Tarare
Tarare (Salieri)
Tarare is an opéra composed by Antonio Salieri to a French libretto by Pierre Beaumarchais. It was first performed by the Paris Opera at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin on June 8, 1787...
with a libretto by Beaumarchais. This was intended to be the nec plus ultra of reform opera, a completely new synthesis of poetry and music that was an 18th-century anticipation of the ideals of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
. He also created a sacred cantata Le Jugement dernier ("The Last Judgement"). The success of his opera Tarare was such that it was soon translated into Italian at Joseph II behest by Lorenzo Da Ponte as Axur, Re d'Ormus
Axur, re d'Ormus
Axur, re d'Ormus is an operatic dramma tragicomico in five acts by Antonio Salieri. The libretto was by Lorenzo da Ponte....
("Axur, King of Hormuz") and staged at the royal wedding of Franz II in 1788.
Late Viennese operas (1788–1804)
In 1788 Salieri returned to Vienna where he remained for the rest of his life. In that year he became Kappellmeister of the Imperial Chapel upon the death of Joseph Bonno; as Kappellmeister he conducted the music and musical school connected with the chapel until shortly before his death, being official retired from the post in 1824.His Italian adaptation of Tarare, Axur would prove to be his greatest international success. Axur was widely produced throughout Europe and it even reached South America with the exiled royal house of Portugal in 1824. Axur and his other new compositions completed by 1792 would mark the height of Salieri's popularity and his influence. Just as his apogee of fame was being reached abroad, his influence in Vienna would begin to diminish with the death of Joseph II in 1789. Joseph's death deprived Salieri of his greatest patron and protector. During this period of imperial change in Vienna and revolutionary ferment in France, Salieri composed two additional extremely innovative musical dramas to libretti by Giovanni Casti. Due, however, to their satiric and overtly liberal political inclinations, both operas were seen as unsuitable for public performance in the politically reactive cultures of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold II , born Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary and Bohemia from 1790 to 1792, Archduke of Austria and Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790. He was a son of Emperor Francis I and his wife, Empress Maria Theresa...
and later Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor
Francis II was the last Holy Roman Emperor, ruling from 1792 until 6 August 1806, when he dissolved the Empire after the disastrous defeat of the Third Coalition by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz...
. This resulted in two of his most original operas being consigned to his desk drawer, namely Cublai, gran kan de' Tartari ("Kublai Grand Kahn of Tartary") a satire on the autocracy and court intrigues at the court of the Russian Czarina, Catherine the Great, and Catilina ("Cataline") a semi-comic-semi-tragic account of the Catiline conspiracy that attempted to overthrow the Roman republic during the consulship of Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
. These operas were composed in 1787 and 1792 respectively. Two other operas of little success and longterm importance were composed in 1789, and one great popular success La Cifra
La cifra
La cifra is an opera by Antonio Salieri in two acts, set to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.The work, a dramma giocoso, is set in Scotland, and was written for Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, the first Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte....
("The Cipher").
As Salieri's political position became very insecure he was retired as director of the Italian opera in 1792. He continued to write new operas per imperial contract until 1804, when he voluntarily withdrew from the stage. Of his late works for the stage only two works gained wide popular esteem during his life, Palmira, regina di Persia
Palmira, regina di Persia
Palmira, regina di Persia is an opera by Antonio Salieri: more specifically, it is a dramma eroicomico. The opera is in two acts and is set to a libretto by Giovanni de Gamerra....
("Palmira, Queen of Persia") 1795 and Cesare in Farmacusa ("Caesar on Pharmacusa"), both drawing on the heroic and exotic success established with Axur. His late opera based on William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
, Falstaff
Falstaff (Salieri)
Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle is a dramma giocoso in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi after William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor....
, ossia Le tre burle ("Falstaff, or the Three Tricks"), (1799) has found a wider audience in modern times than its original reception promised. His last opera was a German language singspiel Die Neger, ("The Negroes"), a melodrama set in colonial Virginia with a text by Georg Friedrich Treitschke
Georg Friedrich Treitschke
Georg Friedrich Treitschke was a German librettist, translator and lepidopterist....
(the author of the libretto for Beethoven's Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
) performed in 1804 and was a complete failure.
Life after opera (1804–1825)
When Salieri retired from the stage, he recognized that artistic styles had changed and he felt that he no longer had the creative capacity to adapt or the emotional desire to continue. Also as Salieri aged he moved slowly away from his more liberal political stances as he saw the enlightened reform of Joseph II's reign, and the hoped for reforms of the French revolution, replaced with more radical revolutionary ideas. As the political situation threatened and eventually overwhelmed Austria, which was repeatedly crushed by French political forces, Salieri's first and most important biographer Mosel described the emotional effect that this political, social, and cultural upheaval had on the composer. Mosel noted that these radical changes, especially the invasion and defeat of Austria, and the occupation of Vienna intertwined with the personal losses that struck Salieri in the same period led to his withdrawal from operatic work. Related to this Mosel quotes the aged composer concerning the radical changes in musical taste that were underway in the age of Beethoven, "From that period [circa 1800] I realized that musical taste was gradually changing in a manner completely contrary to that of my own times. Eccentricity and confusion of genres replaced reasoned and masterful simplicity."As his teaching and work with the imperial chapel continued, his duties required the composition of a large number of sacred works, and in his last years it was almost exclusively in religious works and teaching that Salieri occupied himself. Among his compositions written for the chapels needs were two complete sets of vespers, many graduals, offertories, and four orchestral masses. During this period he lost his only son in 1805 and his wife in 1807.
Salieri continued to conduct publicly (including the performance of Haydn's The Creation, during which Haydn collapsed, and several premiers by Beethoven including the 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos and Wellington's Victory
Wellington's Victory
Wellington's Victory, or, the Battle of Vitoria, Op. 91 is a minor orchestral work composed by Ludwig van Beethoven to commemorate the Duke of Wellington's victory over Joseph Bonaparte's forces at the Battle of Vitoria in Basqueland on June 21, 1813...
). He also continued to help administer several charities and organize their musical events.
His remaining secular works in this late period fall into three categories: first, large scale cantatas and one oratorio Habsburg written on patriotic themes or in response to the international political situation, pedagogical works written to aid his students in voice, and finally simple songs, rounds or canons written for home entertainment; many with original poetry by the composer. He also composed one large scale instrumental work in 1815 intended as a study in late classical orchestration: Twenty-Six Variations for the Orchestra on a Theme called La Folia di Spagna. The theme is likely folk derived and is known as La Folia
Folia
La Folia is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes, or primary material, generally melodic, of a composition, on record. The theme exists in two versions, referred to as early and late folias, the earlier being faster.-History:The epithet 'Folia' has several meanings in music...
. This simple melodic and harmonic progression had served as an inspiration for many baroque composers, and would be used by later romantic and post-romantic composers. Salieri's setting is a brooding work in the minor key, which rarely moves far from the original melodic material, its main interest lies in the deft and varied handling of orchestral colors. La Folia was the most monumental set of orchestral variations before Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
' Variations on a Theme by Haydn.
His teaching of budding young musicians continued, and among his pupils in composition (usually vocal) were Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, Antonio Casimir Cartellieri
Antonio Casimir Cartellieri
Antonio Casimir Cartellieri was a Bohemian composer, violinist, conductor, and voice teacher. His son was the spa physician Paul Cartellieri.-Life and career:...
, Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
and many other luminaries of the early Romantic period. He also instructed many prominent singers throughout his long career. All but the wealthiest of his pupils received their lessons for free, a tribute to the kindness Gassmann had shown Salieri as a penniless orphan.
Salieri was committed to medical care and suffered dementia
Dementia
Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...
for the last year and a half of his life. He died in Vienna on 7 May 1825, and was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof on 10 May. At his memorial service on 22 June 1825 his own Requiem in C minor — composed in 1804 – was performed for the first time. His remains were later transferred to the Zentralfriedhof
Zentralfriedhof
The Zentralfriedhof is one of the largest cemeteries in the world, largest by number of interred in Europe and most famous cemetery among Vienna's nearly 50 cemeteries.-Name and location:...
. His monument is adorned by a poem written by Joseph Weigl
Joseph Weigl
Joseph Weigl , was an Austrian composer and conductor.The son of Joseph Franz Weigl , the principal cellist in the orchestra of the Esterházy family, he was born in Eisenstadt and studied music under Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri...
, one of his pupils:
Rest in peace! Uncovered by dust
Eternity shall bloom for you.
Rest in peace! In eternal harmonies
Your spirit now is dissolved.
It expressed itself in enchanting notes,
Now it is floating to everlasting beauty.
Opera
During his time in Vienna, Salieri acquired great prestige as a composer and conductor, particularly of opera, but also of chamberChamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
and sacred music. Among the most successful of his 37 operas staged during his lifetime were Armida
Armida (Salieri)
Armida is an operatic 'dramma per musica' by Antonio Salieri in three acts, set to a libretto by Marco Coltellini. The plot is based on the epic poem by Torquato Tasso, and Lully, Traetta, and Handel had already composed operas based on the situations that Tasso originally developed...
(1771), La fiera di Venezia
La fiera di Venezia
La fiera di Venezia is a three-act opera buffa, described as a commedia per musica, by Antonio Salieri, set to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini.-Performance history:...
(1772), La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi
La scuola de' gelosi is a dramma giocoso in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Caterino Mazzolà.-Performance history:It was first performed at the Teatro S Moisè in Venice on 27 December 1778...
(1778), Der Rauchfangkehrer
Der Rauchfangkehrer
Der Rauchfangkehrer, oder Die Unentbehrlichen Verräther ihrer Herrschaften aus Eigennutz is an opera in three acts by Antonio Salieri to a German libretto by Leopold Auenbrugger...
(1781), Les Danaïdes
Les Danaïdes
Les Danaïdes is an opera by Antonio Salieri, in 5 acts: more specifically, it is a tragédie lyrique. The opera was set to a libretto by Leblanc du Roullet and Baron Tschudi, who in turn adapted the work of Ranieri de' Calzabigi...
(1784), which was first presented as a work of Gluck's
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
, La grotta di Trofonio
La grotta di Trofonio
La grotta di Trofonio is an opera, described as an opera comica, in two acts composed by Antonio Salieri to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Battista Casti....
(1785), Tarare
Tarare (Salieri)
Tarare is an opéra composed by Antonio Salieri to a French libretto by Pierre Beaumarchais. It was first performed by the Paris Opera at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin on June 8, 1787...
(1787) (Tarare was reworked and revised several times as was Les Danaïdes ), Axur, Re d'Ormus
Axur, re d'Ormus
Axur, re d'Ormus is an operatic dramma tragicomico in five acts by Antonio Salieri. The libretto was by Lorenzo da Ponte....
(1788), La Cifra
La cifra
La cifra is an opera by Antonio Salieri in two acts, set to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.The work, a dramma giocoso, is set in Scotland, and was written for Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, the first Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte....
(1789), Palmira, regina di Persia
Palmira, regina di Persia
Palmira, regina di Persia is an opera by Antonio Salieri: more specifically, it is a dramma eroicomico. The opera is in two acts and is set to a libretto by Giovanni de Gamerra....
(1795), Il mondo alla rovescia (1795), Falstaff
Falstaff (Salieri)
Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle is a dramma giocoso in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi after William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor....
(1799), and Cesare in Farmacusa (1800).
In November 2009 at Teatro Salieri, Legnago (Italy), first staging in modern times of the opera Il mondo alla rovescia by Antonio Salieri; it is a co-production between the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and the Fondazione Arena di Verona for the Salieri Opera Festival
Sacred works
Salieri's earliest surviving work is a Mass in C major. He would write four major orchestral masses, a requiem, and many offertories, graduals, vesper settings, and sacred cantatas and oratorios. Much of his sacred music dates from after his appointment as Hofkapellmeister in 1788.Instrumental works
His small instrumental output includes two piano concertiPiano concerto
A piano concerto is a concerto written for piano and orchestra.See also harpsichord concerto; some of these works are occasionally played on piano...
, a concerto for organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
written in 1773, a concerto for flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
and orchestra (1774), and a set of twenty-six variations on La follia di Spagna (1815).
Salieri and Mozart
In the 1780s while MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father Leopold wrote in their letters that several "cabals" of Italians led by Salieri were actively putting roadblocks in the way of Mozart's obtaining certain posts or staging his operas. For example, Mozart wrote in December 1781 to his father that “the only one who counts in [the Emperor’s] eyes is Salieri”. Their letters suggest that both Mozart and his father, being Austrians who resented the special place that Italian composers had in the courts of the Austrian princes, blamed the Italians in general and Salieri in particular for all of Mozart's difficulties in establishing himself in Vienna. Mozart wrote to his father in May 1783 about Salieri and Lorenzo 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 here what I can really do with an Italian opera.” In July 1783 Mozart wrote to his father of “a trick of Salieri’s”, one of several letters in which he accused Salieri of trickery. Decades after Mozart's death, a rumour began to circulate that Mozart had been poisoned by Salieri. This rumour has been attributed by some to a rivalry between the German and the Italian schools of music. Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
, a relative of Mozart by marriage whom Wagner has characterized as the most German of German composers, is said to have refused to join Ludlams-Höhle, a social club of which Salieri was a member and avoided having anything to do with him. These rumors then made their way into popular culture. Albert Lortzing
Albert Lortzing
Gustav Albert Lortzing was a German composer, actor and singer. He is considered to be the main representative of the German Spieloper, a form similar to the French opéra comique, which grew out of the Singspiel.-Biography:Lortzing was born in Berlin to Johann Gottlieb Lortzing and Charlotte Sophie...
's Singspiel Szenen aus Mozarts Leben LoWV28 (1832) uses the cliché of the jealous Salieri trying to hinder Mozart's career.
Ironically, Salieri's music was much more in the tradition of Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
and Gassmann than of the Italians like Paisiello or Cimarosa. In 1772, Empress Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa of Austria
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma...
commented on her preference of Italian composers over Germans like Gassmann, Salieri or Gluck. While Venetian by birth, Salieri had lived in imperial Vienna for almost 60 years and was regarded by such people as the music critic Friedrich Rochlitz as a German composer.
The biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer
Alexander Wheelock Thayer
Alexander Wheelock Thayer , was a librarian and journalist who became the author of the first scholarly biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, still after many updatings regarded as a standard work of reference on the composer.-Life:Originally a librarian at Harvard law school, Thayer became aware of...
believes that Mozart's rivalry with Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781 when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of Princess Elisabeth of Württemberg
Duchess Elisabeth of Württemberg
Elisabeth of Württemberg was by birth a Duchess of Württemberg and by marriage an Archduchess of Austria.-Family:...
, and Salieri was selected instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher. In the following year Mozart once again failed to be selected as the Princess's piano teacher. "Salieri and his tribe will move heaven and earth to put it down", Leopold Mozart
Leopold Mozart
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...
wrote to his daughter Nannerl
Maria Anna Mozart
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart , nicknamed "Nannerl", was a musician, the older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and daughter of Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart.-Childhood:...
. But at the time of the premiere of Figaro, Salieri was busy with his new French opera Les Horaces
Les Horaces
Les Horaces is an operatic tragédie lyrique by Antonio Salieri. The text was by Nicolas-François Guillard after Pierre Corneille's Horace....
. In addition, when Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He wrote the librettos for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte....
was in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
preparing the production of Mozart's setting of his Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, the poet was ordered back to Vienna for a royal wedding for which Salieri's Axur, re d'Ormus would be performed. Obviously, Mozart was not pleased by this.
However, even with Mozart and Salieri being rivals for certain jobs, there is very little evidence that the relationship between the two composers was at all acrimonious beyond this; rather, they appeared to usually see each other as friends and colleagues and supported each others' work. For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788 he revived Figaro instead of bringing out a new opera of his own; and when he went to the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790 he had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even composed a cantata for voice and piano together, called Per la ricuperata salute di Ophelia which was celebrating the return to stage of the singer Nancy Storace
Nancy Storace
Nancy Storace , , was an English operatic soprano...
. This work has been lost
Lost work
A lost work is a document or literary work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work. Deliberate destruction of works...
, although it had been printed by Artaria
Artaria
Artaria and company was one of the most important music publishing firms of the late 18th and 19th century. Founded in the 18th century in Vienna, the company is associated with many leading names of the classical era.- History :...
in 1785. Mozart's Davide penitente (1785), his Piano Concerto in E flat major (1785), the Clarinet Quintet (1789) and the great Symphony in G minor had been premiered on the suggestion of Salieri, who supposedly conducted a performance of it in 1791. In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri
Caterina Cavalieri
Maddalena Giuseppa Caterina Cavalieri was an Austrian soprano.-Biography:Born in Lichtental, Vienna, Cavalieri studied voice with composer Antonio Salieri, and performed the role of Konstanze in the 16 July 1782 world premiere of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Donna Elvira in the...
in his carriage and drove them both to the opera, and about Salieri's attendance at his opera The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
, speaking enthusiastically: "He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was not a piece that didn't elicit a "Bravo!" or "Bello!" out of him [...]."
Fictional treatments
- Within a few years of Salieri's death in 1825, Alexander Pushkin wrote his "little tragedy" Mozart and Salieri (1831) as a dramatic study of the sin of envyEnvyEnvy is best defined as a resentful emotion that "occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it."...
. Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-KorsakovNikolai Rimsky-KorsakovNikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
adapted Pushkin's play as an opera of the same nameMozart and SalieriMozart and Salieri is a one-act opera in two scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, written in 1897 to a Russian libretto taken almost verbatim from Alexander Pushkin's 1830 verse drama of the same name....
in 1898. - A hugely popular perpetuation of the story came in Peter ShafferPeter ShafferSir Peter Levin Shaffer is an English dramatist and playwright, screenwriter and author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.-Early life:...
's play AmadeusAmadeusAmadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979...
(1979) and the OscarAcademy AwardsAn Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
-winning 1984 filmAmadeus (film)Amadeus is a 1984 period drama film directed by Miloš Forman and written by Peter Shaffer. Adapted from Shaffer's stage play Amadeus, the story is based loosely on the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, two composers who lived in Vienna, Austria, during the latter half of the...
directed by Miloš FormanMiloš FormanJan Tomáš Forman , better known as Miloš Forman , is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for...
based upon it. He is depicted as a Machiavellian character, who uses his connections to keep Mozart as the underdog. Salieri is characterized as both in awe of and insanely jealous of Mozart, going so far as to renounce God for blessing his adversary; "Amadeus" means love of God, or God's love, and the play can be said to be about God-given talent. Or the lack thereof: Salieri is hospitalized in a mental institution, where he announces himself as "the Patron SaintPatron saintA patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
of mediocrity". Salieri was portrayed in the award-winning play at London's National Theatre by Paul ScofieldPaul ScofieldDavid Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...
. In the film he is played by F. Murray AbrahamF. Murray AbrahamFahrid Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface...
, who won the Academy Award for Best ActorAcademy Award for Best ActorPerformance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
. - Salieri's supposed hatred for Mozart is also alluded to in a spoofParodyA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
opera entitled A Little Nightmare MusicA Little Nightmare MusicA Little Nightmare Music is an opera in "one irrevocable act" by Peter Schickele under the pseudonym he uses for parodies and comical works P. D. Q. Bach. The title of the work refers to the English translation of Mozart's famous Eine kleine Nachtmusik...
, by P.D.Q. Bach. In the opera, Salieri attempts to poisonPoisonIn the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
an anachronisticAnachronismAn anachronism—from the Greek ανά and χρόνος — is an inconsistency in some chronological arrangement, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other...
Shaffer but is bumped by a "clumsy oaf", which causes him to inadvertently poison Mozart instead and spill wine on his favorite coat. - Patrick StewartPatrick StewartSir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...
played Salieri in the 1985 production The Mozart Inquest. - Florent MotheFlorent MotheFlorent Mothe is a French singer, actor and musician.He plays the role of Antonio Salieri in Mozart, l'opéra rock. In this role, he has performed on a number of singles including Vivre à en crever, l'Assasymphonie, and Le bien qui fait mal.- Biography :Florent Mothe was born on May 13, 1981 in...
portrays Salieri in the 2009 French musical "Mozart, l'opéra rockMozart, l'opéra rockMozart, l'opéra rock is a French musical directed by Olivier Dahan and produced by Dove Attia and Albert Cohen. The show uses both pop-rock compositions and music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.-Productions:...
". - In a segment of The SimpsonsThe SimpsonsThe Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
episode "Margical History TourMargical History Tour"Margical History Tour" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons fifteenth season. The episode was first broadcast on February 8, 2004. This is one of several Simpsons episodes that features mini-stories.-Plot:...
", Salieri is represented by Lisa SimpsonLisa SimpsonLisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...
, to BartBart SimpsonBartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
's Mozart. They are interpreted as competitive siblings, with Lisa/Salieri being a serious, unappreciated professional and Bart/Mozart the successful, uncouth rock star (complete with an opera based on "Beans, Beans, the Musical FruitBeans, Beans, the Musical Fruit"Beans, Beans, The Musical Fruit" is a schoolyard saying and children's song about the capacity for beans to contribute to flatulence. The song is also variously known as "Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit", "Beans, Beans, the Miracle Fruit", and "Beans, Beans, the Wonderful Fruit"...
" to the music of Eine kleine NachtmusikEine kleine NachtmusikThe Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K. 525 was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787. The work is more commonly known by the title Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The German title means "a little serenade", though it is often rendered more literally but less accurately as "a little night music"...
). - In episode 2, season 4 of "How I Met Your MotherHow I Met Your MotherHow I Met Your Mother is an American sitcom that premiered on CBS on September 19, 2005, created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays.As a framing device, the main character, Ted Mosby with narration by Bob Saget, in the year 2030 recounts to his son and daughter the events that led to his meeting...
", entitled "The Best Burger in New YorkThe Best Burger in New York"The Best Burger in New York" is the second episode in the fourth season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 66th overall. It originally aired on September 29, 2008.- Plot :...
", Marshall's description of the taste of the best burger uses music that alludes to the 1984 film Amadeus, when Antonio Salieri describes the same music (by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) with the same accuracy and passion with which Marshall speaks of the burger. - In episode 17, season 5 of "Family GuyFamily GuyFamily Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
", entitled "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One", the Griffin FamilyGriffin familyThe Griffin family is a family from the animated television series Family Guy. The Griffins are a nuclear family consisting of the married couple Peter and Lois, their three children Meg, Chris, and Stewie, and their dog Brian. They live at 31 Spooner Street in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode...
is wearing powdered wigs in their living room and Stewie GriffinStewie GriffinStewie Griffin is a fictional character from the animated television series Family Guy. Once obsessed with world domination and matricide, Stewie is the youngest child of Peter and Lois Griffin, and the brother of Chris and Meg....
begins playing several classical compositions, including those by Joseph HaydnJoseph HaydnFranz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
and George Frideric HandelGeorge Frideric HandelGeorge Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, when Peter GriffinPeter GriffinPeter Griffin is a fictional character and the protagonist of the animated comedy series Family Guy and the patriarch of the Griffin family. He is voiced by cartoonist Seth MacFarlane and first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family in the 15-minute short on December 20, 1998....
, as Salieri, says "Play Peter Griffin", alluding to the 1984 film Amadeus, when the disguised Salieri character requests that Mozart imitate his compositional style. Just as in the film, Stewie, as Mozart, plays a painfully simplistic tune while hunched with a brutish facial expression, ending with audible flatulence. Mirroring the film further, Peter is then in the same setting in which the much older Salieri was when he says "Go ahead, mock me. But it wasn't Stewie who was laughing at me. It was God!"
2000s popularity
In 2003, mezzo-sopranoMezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli is an Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano opera singer and recitalist. She is best-known for her interpretation of the music of Mozart and Rossini, as well as for her performances of lesser-known Baroque and classical music...
released The Salieri Album, a CD with 13 arias from Salieri's operas, most of which had never been recorded before. Patrice Michaels sang a number of his arias on the CD Divas of Mozart's Day. In 2008, another female opera star, Diana Damrau
Diana Damrau
Diana Damrau is a German lyric coloratura soprano of the operatic stage.-Biography:Diana Damrau was born in 1971 in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany, and began her operatic studies with Carmen Hanganu at the Musikhochschule in Würzburg. After graduating from music conservatory she worked in Salzburg...
, released a CD with seven Salieri coloratura arias. Since 2000, there have also been complete recordings issued or re-issued of the operas Axur Re d'Ormus, Falstaff
Falstaff (Salieri)
Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle is a dramma giocoso in two acts by Antonio Salieri, set to a libretto by Carlo Prospero Defranceschi after William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor....
, Les Danaïdes
Les Danaïdes
Les Danaïdes is an opera by Antonio Salieri, in 5 acts: more specifically, it is a tragédie lyrique. The opera was set to a libretto by Leblanc du Roullet and Baron Tschudi, who in turn adapted the work of Ranieri de' Calzabigi...
, La Locandiera, La grotta di Trofonio
La grotta di Trofonio
La grotta di Trofonio is an opera, described as an opera comica, in two acts composed by Antonio Salieri to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Battista Casti....
, Prima la musica e poi le parole
Prima la musica e poi le parole
Prima la musica e poi le parole , also called Prima la musica, poi le parole is an opera in one act by Antonio Salieri. It was first performed on February 7, 1786 in Vienna, following a commission by the Emperor Joseph II...
and Il mondo alla rovescia . Salieri has yet to fully re-enter the general repertory, but performances of his works are progressively becoming more regular.
His operas Falstaff (1995 production) and Tarare (1987 production) have been released on DVD. In 2004, the opera Europa Riconosciuta
Europa riconosciuta
Europa riconosciuta is an opera in two acts by Antonio Salieri, designated as a dramma per musica, set to an Italian libretto by Mattia Verazi.The opera takes place in Tyre and tells a story of love, violence and political discord in ancient times...
was staged in Milan for the reopening of La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
in Milan, with soprano Diana Damrau
Diana Damrau
Diana Damrau is a German lyric coloratura soprano of the operatic stage.-Biography:Diana Damrau was born in 1971 in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany, and began her operatic studies with Carmen Hanganu at the Musikhochschule in Würzburg. After graduating from music conservatory she worked in Salzburg...
in the title role. This production was also broadcast on television, with a future DVD release possible.
Salieri has even begun to attract some attention from Hollywood. In 2001, his triple concerto was used in the soundtrack of The Last Castle
The Last Castle
The Last Castle is a 2001 American drama film directed by Rod Lurie, starring Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, and Mark Ruffalo.The film portrays a struggle between inmates and the warden of the prison, based on the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. Eugene Irwin, a highly...
, featuring Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. It is a story that builds on the rivalry between a meticulous but untested officer (Gandolfini) serving as the warden of a military prison and an imprisoned but much admired and highly decorated general (Redford). The Salieri piece is used as the warden's theme music, seemingly to invoke the image of jealousy of the inferior for his superior. In 2006, the movie Copying Beethoven referred to Salieri in a more positive light. In this movie a young female music student hired by Beethoven to copy out his Ninth Symphony is staying at a monastery. The abbess tries to discourage her from working with the irreverent Beethoven. She notes that she too once had dreams, having come to Vienna to study opera singing with Salieri. Most recently the 2008 movie Iron Man
Iron Man (film)
Iron Man is a 2008 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Directed by Jon Favreau, the film stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, an industrialist and master engineer who builds a powered exoskeleton and becomes the technologically advanced superhero, Iron...
used the Larghetto movement from Salieri's Piano Concerto in C major. The scene where Obadiah Stane, the archrival of 'Tony' Stark, the wealthy industrialist turned Ironman, tells Tony that he is being ousted from his company by the board, Obadiah plays the opening few bars of the Salieri concerto on a piano in Stark's suite.
External links
- Salieri: Truth or Fiction
- Quiz: Mozart or Salieri?
- Teatro Salieri Official web site.
- Podcast interview about Salieri http://radio.nac-cna.ca/podcast/NACOcast/NACOcast_20110115.mp3
Scores
- Works by Salieri in the University of North Texas Music Library's Virtual Rare Book Room