Everything about Antonio Salieri totally explained
Antonio Salieri (
August 18,
1750 –
May 7,
1825), was an
Italian composer and
conductor. As the Austrian imperial
Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was one of the most important and famous musicians of his time.
Biography
Raised in a prosperous family of merchants in
Legnago, Salieri studied
violin and
harpsichord with his brother
Francesco, who was a student of
Giuseppe Tartini. After the early death of his parents, he moved to
Padua, then to
Venice, where he studied
thoroughbass with
Giovanni Battista Pescetti. There, he met
Florian Leopold Gassmann in 1766, who invited him to attend the court of
Vienna, and there trained him in composition based on
Johann Joseph Fux's
Gradus ad Parnassum. Salieri remained in Vienna for the rest of his life. In 1774, after Gassmann's death, Salieri was appointed court composer by
Emperor Joseph II. He met Therese von Helferstorfer in 1774, and in the same year the two were married. The couple went on to have eight children. Salieri became Royal and Imperial
Kapellmeister in 1788, a post which he held till 1824. He was president of the "Tonkünstler-Societät" (society of musical artists) from 1788 to 1795, vice-president after 1795, and in charge of its concerts until 1818.
Salieri attained an elevated social standing, and was frequently associated with other celebrated composers, such as
Joseph Haydn and
Louis Spohr. He played an important role in late 18th and early 19th century
classical music. He was a teacher to many famous composers, including
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Carl Czerny,
Johann Nepomuk Hummel,
Franz Liszt,
Giacomo Meyerbeer,
Ignaz Moscheles,
Franz Schubert, and
Franz Xaver Süssmayr. He also taught
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's younger son,
Franz Xaver, some years after the death of Franz's illustrious father.
Salieri was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof (his remains were later transferred to the
Zentralfriedhof) in
Vienna, Austria. At his funeral service his own Requiem in C minor - composed in 1804 - was performed for the first time. His monument is adorned by a poem written by
Joseph Weigl, 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.
He expressed himself in enchanting notes,
Now he's floating to everlasting beauty.
Original German poem:
Ruh sanft! Vom Staub entblößt,
Wird Dir die Ewigkeit erblühen.
Ruh sanft! In ew’gen Harmonien
Ist nun Dein Geist gelöst.
Er sprach sich aus in zaubervollen Tönen,
Jetzt schwebt er hin zum unvergänglich Schönen.
Works
During his time in Vienna, Salieri acquired great prestige as a composer and conductor, particularly of
opera, but also of
chamber and
sacred music. The most successful of his more than 40 operas included
Europa riconosciuta (1778),
Armida (1771),
La scuola de' gelosi (1778),
Der Rauchfangkehrer (1781),
Les Danaïdes (1784), which was first presented as a work of
Gluck's,
Tarare (1787),
Axur, Re d'Ormus (1788),
Palmira, regina di Persia (1795), and
Falstaff (1799). He wrote comparatively little instrumental music, however his limited output includes two
piano concertos and a concerto for
organ written in 1773, a concerto for
flute,
oboe and orchestra (1774), and a set of 26 variations on
La folia di Spagna (1815).
Salieri and Mozart
In Vienna in the late 1780s,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart mentioned several "cabals" of Salieri concerning his new opera
Così fan tutte. As Mozart's music became more popular over the decades, Salieri's music was largely forgotten. At the beginning of the 19th century, increasing
nationalism led to a tendency to transfigure the
Austrian Mozart's character, while the
Italian Salieri was given the role of his evil
antagonist.
Albert Lortzing's
Singspiel Szenen aus Mozarts Leben LoWV28 (1832) uses the cliché of the jealous Salieri trying to hinder Mozart's career. In 1772, Empress
Maria Theresa commented on her preference of Italian composers over
Germans like Gassmann, Salieri or
Gluck. While Italian by birth, Salieri had lived in imperial Vienna since he was 16 years old and was regarded as a German composer.
The biographer
Alexander Wheelock Thayer believes that Mozart's suspicions of Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781 when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of the Princess of Württemberg, 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 wrote to his daughter Nannerl. But at the time of the premiere of
Figaro, Salieri was busy with his new
French opera
Les Horaces.
In addition, when da Ponte was in
Prague preparing the production of Mozart's setting of his
Don Giovanni, the poet was ordered back to Vienna for a royal wedding for which Salieri's
Axur, re d'Ormus would be performed. Obviously, Mozart wasn't pleased by this.
There is, however, far more evidence of a cooperative relationship between the two composers than one of real enmity. 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'd 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. This work has been
lost, although it had been printed by
Artaria in 1785. Mozart's
Davide penitente K.469 (1785), his piano concerto in E flat major K.482 (1785), the clarinet quintet K.581 (1789) and the great Symphony in G minor K.550 had been premiered on the suggestion of Salieri, who supposedly conducted a performance of it in 1791. In his last surviving letter from October 14 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri and
Catharina Cavalieri in his carriage and drove them both to the opera, and about Salieri's attendance at his opera
Die Zauberflöte K 620, speaking enthusiastically:
"He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was no piece that didn't elicit a bravo or bello out of him [...]."
Salieri's health declined in his later years, and he was hospitalized shortly before his death. It was shortly after he died that gossip first spread that he'd confessed to Mozart's murder on his deathbed. Salieri's two nurses, Gottlieb Parsko and Georg Rosenberg, as well as his family doctor Joseph Röhrig, attested that he never said any such thing. At least one of these three people was with him throughout his hospitalization.
Within a few months of Salieri's death in 1825,
Aleksandr Pushkin wrote his "little tragedy"
Mozart and Salieri (1831) as a dramatic study of the sin of
envy. Russian composer
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov adapted Pushkin's play as an
opera of the same name in 1898. A popular perpetuation of the story was in
Peter Shaffer's play
Amadeus (1979) and the
Oscar-winning
1984 film directed by
Miloš Forman based upon it.
Salieri was portrayed in the film by
F. Murray Abraham, who won the
Academy Award for Best Actor. Salieri is characterized as both in awe of and insanely resentful towards Mozart, going so far as to renounce
God for blessing his adversary. Salieri's later hospitalization is portrayed as a stay in a
mental hospital, where he announces himself as "the Patron Saint of mediocrity".
These rumors are also alluded to in a
spoof opera entitled
A Little Nightmare Music: an opera in one irrevocable act, by
P.D.Q. Bach. In the opera, Salieri attempts to
poison an
anachronistic Shaffer but is bumped by a "clumsy oaf", which causes him to inadvertently poison Mozart instead and spill wine on his favorite coat.
Recent popularity
More and more of Salieri's music is being recorded. Many of his overtures and most of his limited symphonic music have now been released on CD. But Salieri wrote primarily for the voice and so it isn't surprising that much of his operatic music is now being recorded. 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 sang a number of his arias on the CD Divas of Mozart's Day. In 2008, another female opera star,
Diana Damrau, 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,
Les Danaïdes,
La Locandiera and
La grotta di Trofonio. 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" was staged in Milan for the reopening of
La Scala in
Milan, with soprano
Diana Damrau in the title role. This production was also broadcast on television, with a future DVD release possible.
In 2001, his triple concerto was used in the soundtrack of a Hollywood film, The Last Castle, featuring Robert Redford.
The
Finnish progressive metal outfit
Warmen, led by the classically trained pianist and keyboardist
Janne Wirman of
Children Of Bodom fame, have been tributing Salieri in all of their albums. Warmen's first album
Unknown Soldier (2000) included the song
Warcry of Salieri, the second long-player
Beyond Abilites (2002) had a song titled as
Salieri Strikes Back and the latest work,
Accept The Fact (2005) tributed Salieri with the composition titled as
Return of Salieri, all of which paying tribute to Salieri's works.
Scores
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