Salieri, Antonio (EN)

Salieri Antonio, *18 August 1750 Legnago (near Venice), †7 May 1825 Vienna, Italian composer. He was taught violin by his brother, Francesco Salieri, and harpsichord and organ by G. Simoni. After the death of his parents, around 1765, Salieri moved to Venice, where he continued his studies under the supervision of F. Pacini (singing) and G.B. Pescetti (composition). In 1766, F.L. Gassmann, composer of the imperial court, who was residing in Venice, took him to Vienna and provided him with further musical education. In 1769, Salieri wrote his first opera, Le donne letterate. He quickly gained the support of the already influential P. Metastasio, and his fame came from the opera Armida, performed in Vienna in June 1771, which drew on the principles of Gluck’s operatic reform. As Gassmann’s successor, Salieri became court Kammerkomponist in 1774, as well as Kapellmeister of the Italian Opera. Emperor Joseph II’s support also helped him in Italy and France. For the grand opening of La Scala in Milan (then under Austrian rule) in 1778, he wrote the opera seria L’Europa riconosciuta, and in 1781, at the emperor’s request, the singspiel Der Rauchfangkehrer for the Burgtheater in Vienna. In 1782, Gluck submitted a commission to Salieri from the Paris Opera for a lyrical tragedy; Salieri then wrote Les Danaïdes, successfully performed in 1784, and received commissions for two further French operas, the second of which, Tarare to a libretto by P.A. de Beaumarchais, brought him great triumph.

In 1783, an Italian opera troupe was hired at the Viennese court, raising the profile of opera buffa. With this ensemble, Salieri staged his own opera, La scuola de’ gelosi, at the Burgtheater, and subsequently conducted the premieres of operas by G. Paisiello, V. Martín y Soler, and W.A. Mozart, among others. He collaborated with L. Da Ponte and G.B. Casti; in 1788, Joseph II commissioned him to compose an Italian version of Tarare, with a libretto by L. Da Ponte, and an opera performed in 1788, Axur, re d’Ormus, celebrated the wedding of Archduke Francis and Duchess Elizabeth of Württemberg. That same year, Salieri assumed the position of Kapellmeister at the imperial court, a position he held until his retirement in 1824. After the death of Joseph II (1790), he was dismissed from his position at the court theatre, but instead oversaw the recruitment of instrumentalists, singers, and even organ builders. He was responsible for collecting instruments and maintaining the court’s musical archive, and above all, he was responsible for planning the musical direction for events such as the Congress of Vienna (he favoured religious works by J.G. Albrechtsberger, J. and M. Haydn, G. Reutter the Younger, J. Eybler, L. Hofmann, and W.A. Mozart). As president of the Tonkünstler-Sozietät, he organised and conducted concerts for charity. Of all his late operas (three to librettos by G. De Gamerra and three by C.P. Defranceschi), his greatest successes were Palmira, regina di Persia and (currently being revived) Falstaff. Salieri’s last completed stage work – the singspiel Die Neger, performed in 1804 – did not arouse much interest.

Salieri devoted much of his time to teaching, particularly after 1804. He specialised in the training of coloratura sopranos, teaching, among others, Catharina Cavalieri and Gassmann’s daughters, Therese Rosenbaum and Maria Anna Fux. His composition students included L. van Beethoven, F. Schubert, J.N. Hummel, I. Moscheles, G. Meyerbeer, C. Czerny, and F. Liszt. Salieri was one of the founders of the Musikakademie (1817) and the Gesellschaft für Musikfreunde in Vienna. In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1815 and the Gold Medal in 1816, awarded on the 50th anniversary of his arrival in Vienna.

Both his tastes and his positions predisposed Salieri to composing operas, a pursuit he pursued for over 30 years. However, as interest in this genre waned, his involvement in religious music increased. Salieri wrote operas in nearly every stage genre of the time. These included various types of comic operas (the Italian opera buffa with elements of commedia dell’arte, also known as commedia per musica, the intermezzo, the humorous one-act divertimento teatrale, the Arcadian-themed azione pastorale, and the German singspiel) and serious operas (the Italian dramma per musica, the French tragédie lyrique). Like Mozart in Don Giovanni, Salieri enjoyed creating semiseria operas, called dramma giocoso (e.g. La cifra), dramma tragicomico (Axur) or dramma eroicomico (Palmira), in which, alongside characters typical of opera buffa, there were seria characters with deeper psychological characteristics (e.g. Eurillo in La cifra).

Salieri possessed a profound knowledge and sense of the possibilities of musical and theatrical conventions within specific stage genres. In his early operas, he continued Gassmann’s style, creating light comedies with deftly drawn characters and abounding with comic onstage situations. He displayed a fondness for virtuoso arias, particularly soprano arias with coloratura and concertante writing, as in Calloandra’s aria Vi sono sposa e amante from La fiera di Venezia (solo flute, oboe, and bassoon parts). In his youth, Salieri was an artist receptive and open to modern concepts of opera, eagerly developing the models of the most distinguished composers he encountered. He quickly established himself as the principal follower of Gluck’s reforms. In his serious works, particularly Armida, L’Europa riconosciuta, and his tragédies lyriques, he valued the choir, entrusting it with an active role in the work’s dramaturgy. He placed importance on impeccable musical declamation of the text, sought to integrate the overture expressively and thematically with the work as a whole, and to utilize the instruments’ coloristic qualities (he entrusted solo parts to cellos, bassoons, clarinets, and even the English horn). He emphasised the emotional tension of the characters through exuberant melodic lines in accompagnato recitatives, as well as in brilliantly constructed love duets (e.g., Hypermnestra and Lusceus in Les Danaïdes), yet he did not forgo bravura arias, especially when he had outstanding singers at his disposal. Following Gluck’s example, he often employed seamless transitions between accompagnato recitative, arioso, aria, ensemble parts, and chorus. A more recent trend was to emphasise characteristic, conventionally exotic elements (Tarare), a mood of awe and horror (Les Danaïdes), using vocal means, but also harmonic (a sequence of diminished chords), coloristic (e.g., the timbre of the trombones), and articulatory (e.g., the persistent tremolo of the strings). In the 1980s, Salieri’s operas displayed clear analogies with Mozart’s, stemming from mutual influences and collaborations with the same singers and librettists, particularly L. Da Ponte.

Of Salieri’s numerous religious works, most were written as occasional pieces for the Habsburg court. In accordance with Pope Benedict XIV’s 1749 encyclical Annus qui, the composer adhered to the imperative of textual clarity. He eschewed virtuosity and operatic influences, as well as elaborate polyphony, while giving the choir a prominent role, ensuring impeccable declamation and dramatic expression, and also developing symphonic means. Among his instrumental works, composed mostly in his early period, the concertos stand out (the most famous being the Triple Concerto in D major and the orchestral variations on the theme of La follia di Spagna).

During his lifetime, Salieri enjoyed the continued recognition and respect of both his principals and his listeners and students, and his operas were performed on numerous European stages. However, after the composer’s death, they almost completely disappeared from the repertoire, perceived as stylistically outdated. A rumour spread in the 19th century that Salieri, driven by envy, contributed to Mozart’s premature death was never proven (although Salieri, suffering a nervous breakdown in the final years of his life, became the source of the rumour, and A. Schindler witnessed his confession), but it overshadowed the composer’s undoubted contributions to Austrian, Italian, and French musical culture. A related theme of revenge (A. Pushkin, Mozart, and Salieri) appeared in Romantic literature, later taken up in N. Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera. P. Shaffer returned to this issue in the play Amadeus (1979), adapted for the screen by M. Forman in 1984. The authors of both works, posing the question of the essence of musical genius, delve more deeply into the psychological sphere of the Mozart–Salieri relationship than Pushkin, but in many instances, they substitute fiction for historical fact. The popularity of the play and film, in turn, contributed to a renaissance of interest in Salieri and his work (stagings, publications, recordings, monographs).