Remembered almost exclusively as a supporting role in someone else’s biopic, Antonio Salieri really deserves a film in his own right. A workaday composer, living in the shadow of a genius; a dull establishment figure to Mozart’s bohemian freelancer – these are the clichés that fiction and film (notably the revered 1984 Mozart biopic Amadeus) have passed down to posterity.
But in fact Salieri was an orphaned teenager who was ‘saved’ by the kindness of others, and who would ultimately find himself working for royalty, being courted by theatres all over Europe and associating with the most celebrated artistic figures of the era. Though the music textbooks have chosen to forget the fact, he was a composer of considerable historic significance, both through his own artistic reforms and through the influence he had on many of the major composers and singers of the early 19th century.
When was Salieri born?
Salieri was born in 1750 (interestingly, the same year that saw the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, a result of complications from unsuccessful surgery for his blindness carried out by notorious English eye surgeon John Taylor). He was born in Legnano, a small town that sat on the border between two Italian states, the Kingdom of Venice and the Duchy of Mantua. (Italy as we know it today would of course not be a unified country for over a century.) Details of his childhood are scant, but it is clear that he grew up in a household where music was encouraged and that he showed early promise.
What happened to Salieri as a child?
It was fortunate indeed that when he lost his parents, Salieri was taken under the wing of a wealthy family acquaintance. This was one Giovanni Mocenigo, who took him to Venice – then an extraordinarily vibrant and important operatic centre – for musical training. This led in turn to an even luckier break in the form of an introduction to the chamber composer to Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Florian Gassmann, who visited Venice regularly to write operas for the Carnival. Gassmann agreed to take the boy on as a pupil and musical apprentice, taking him back with him to Vienna.
Salieri soon became a recognised composer in his own right, composing six operas in the space of two years. Particularly popular and noteworthy was his Armida, based on Torquato Tasso’s libretto which, full of magic and romance in the time of the Crusades, would also inspire musical works by Lully, Handel, Gluck and, later, Rossini and Dvořák.
What jobs did Salieri have in Vienna?
Following Gassmann’s death in 1774, Salieri succeeded his teacher as court chamber composer and was also appointed director of the Italian Opera at the Nationaltheater. Italian opera was something of a lingua franca in the late 18th century, an art form enjoyed and patronised by the aristocracy all over Europe. To have an Italian opera composer in his personal employ would have been a mark of prestige for a patron such as Joseph II, even if Salieri had left the Italian peninsula at a very young age, been influenced by a variety of national trends and wholeheartedly embraced Austrian musical life.
Salieri rose through the ranks at the Viennese court, taking on a succession of progressively more responsible roles. By the 1880s, still only in his thirties, he was now the most important musician in the Austrian Empire and held one of the top musical jobs in the world (Hofkapellmeister), writing across all genres of music, organising court music-making, and acting as a singing teacher to the most important singers of the day.
However, he did not confine his musical activities to the Austrian capital. Rather, he was a true cosmopolitan and a frequent traveller, well-connected to theatres and musical communities all over the European continent, his works being performed in cities as far apart as Lisbon and Moscow.
What operas did Salieri write?
Between 1778 and ’83, when the new German genre of Singspiel became all the rage in Vienna, Salieri temporarily put his operatic activities on hold and began to explore opportunities further afield. He wrote an opera seria (L’Europa riconosciuta) for the opening of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and followed it up with a comedy for Venice, La scuola de’ gelosi, which would subsequently enjoy immense success all over Europe. Later, an opportunity to write an opéra lyrique (Les Danaïdes) for the Opéra de Paris led to other prestigious commissions for the French capital.
Salieri and Gluck
Key to opening the doors to La Scala and the Paris Opéra for Salieri was Christoph Willibald Gluck, with whom the young composer had become friendly in Vienna. Gluck was a highly important figure in his career, not only in helping him to network but in securing work for him. Somewhat duplicitously, Gluck secured the Parisian commission for Les Danaïdes for himself, but with every intention of giving the work to Salieri – thereby raising the fee and securing for the young composer an entrée into Parisian high society. (Marie Antoinette herself was in the audience.)
Gluck was also a profound influence on Salieri’s musical style and approach to writing opera. The German-Bohemian composer is still remembered today as a great operatic reformer, who made operas shorter, more engaging and dramatically more convincing, doing away with florid musical writing for its own sake.
He and his librettist Calzabigi famously set out a list of principles for the future of opera in the preface to their opera Alceste of 1767. Gluck’s influence is particularly strong in Salieri’s 1787 opera for Paris, Tarare, a radical work both in its libretto – an original subject by Pierre Beaumarchais with political bite – and in its score, which avoids traditional aria forms, instead using recitative and arioso passages in a flexible way designed to aid story-telling.
‘Salieri broke away from strict operatic conventions’
Eighteenth-century Italian opera was highly convention-bound. Opera seria and opera buffa each had their own distinctive conventions in terms of characterisation, aria types, structure and dramatic high points. Salieri was interested in breaking away from strict operatic conventions, and most of his works have labels such as ‘dramma giocoso’ or ‘dramma eroicomico’. He was also comfortable exploring other genres, including the ‘pasticcio’ and ‘pastorale’ and some of his works have very loose titles such as ‘divertimento teatrale’.
One genre in which he felt less at home, as a composer steeped in the Italian traditions, was the Singspiel, which interspersed light-hearted songs with spoken dialogue: Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) is, of course, the best-remembered example. But Joseph II had invested in hiring an ensemble specifically to perform this sort of work and insisted Salieri try his hand at one.
Written in 1781, the long-windedly titled Der Rauchfangkehrer, oder Die Unentbehrlichen Verräther ihrer Herrschaften aus Eigennutz (The Chimney Sweep, or The Indispensable Betrayers of Their Lordships out of Self-interest) was a cross between a Singspiel and an opera buffa. Fittingly, the subject matter, about a romance between an Italian chimney sweep and a German cook, allowed much opportunity to muse wittily on the differences between the two national characters.
Was Salieri’s work like Mozart’s?
Salieri’s works were based on a wide range of literary sources. Ancient legend, filtered through the pen of the famous librettist Metastasio, proved a fruitful source of inspiration for serious works such as Semiramide (1782) – a subject set by many other composers, most famously Rossini. However, Salieri also wrote contemporary comedies of manners, based on mix-ups or mistaken identities, some of which bear distinct resemblances to the Mozart-Da Ponte operas. (Indeed, Salieri worked regularly with poet and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, acting as an early mentor to him, and the relationship between the two men was warm.)
La grotta di Trofonio (1785), for instance, revolves around two couples whose personalities are reversed by a magician, though order is restored in the end. La scuola de’ gelosi (1778), a work about romantic intrigue across the class divide, is not only reminiscent in subject of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro but also cast some of the same stars.
‘Decidedly quirky and oddly forward-looking’
Some of the subjects of Salieri’s operas are decidedly quirky and oddly forward-looking, such as Il mondo alla rovescia, in which the roles of the men and women on an island are reversed, both in terms of occupations and conventional behaviour. Salieri was also one of the first composers to write an opera based on a play by Shakespeare, composing a Falstaff in 1799 that was reasonably popular in its day, but has been totally eclipsed by Verdi’s version of 1893.
It is important to remember, however, that Salieri was writing in a context where works were written at great speed and rarely reprised. In total he wrote more than 40 operas and inevitably there was some unevenness in quality to them: some were based on weak librettos and others were hastily staged. Salieri’s composing career ultimately petered out in 1804 with an unsuccessful Singspiel set on an American plantation whose music was sub-par and whose title is now unprintable. But that was by no means the end of his career.
So, did Salieri murder Mozart?
The 1984 movie Amadeus (great film, by the way: absolutely, indubitably one of the best classical music films of all time) puts forward the notion that Salieri was jealous of Mozart’s talent – and might even have played some role in the younger composer’s death. In fact, there is no historical evidence that Salieri killed Mozart, or even that he felt any envy towards him. Amadeus (wonderful film – did we mention that?) chooses to sensationalise their relationship and to make Salieri an envious, conniving, frustrated B-list composer – but that’s not a fair portrait.
In fact, historic accounts seem to suggest that Salieri and Mozart enjoyed a pretty cordial professional relationship – and even admired each other’s music. The myth of this rivalry probably arose in the 19th century, quite some time after the deaths of both composers.
Who were Salieri’s students?
As the 18th century gave way to the 19th, Salieri remained highly active, busying himself with running court music-making, composing sacred music, and conducting (apparently becoming furious if a rival conductor organised another concert on the same night). He had huge numbers of students, many of whom he taught for free in tribute to the generosity of his patron Gassmann, and among them were many famous names: Beethoven, Czerny, Meyerbeer, Schubert and the young Liszt included. Sadly, he ended his days mentally unstable and confused, rambling incoherently and resorting to self-harm. It was a sad ending for a man who had been so highly productive and helped so many.
When did Salieri die?
Antonio Salieri died in Vienna on 7 May 1825, aged 74. At his funeral his own Requiem in C minor was performed for the first time. He is buried in Vienna’s Matzleinsdorfer Protestant cemetery.
What is Salieri’s music like?
Salieri’s music has enjoyed something of a reappraisal of late, and his best works – such as the opera Armida, the Requiem, and the Sinfonia Veneziana – have been given performances and recordings. He’s still not in Mozart’s league. though…
Here are some elements to listen out for in Antonio Salieri’s music.
Looking forward
From his very earliest works, Salieri began to take on board the novel operatic reforms pioneered by Gluck, using accompanied rather than secco recitative and avoiding the da capo aria format that held up the dramatic action, preferring instead to write simpler two-part arias.
Overtures
Salieri is credited with having reformed the operatic overture. Previously, most overtures consisted of multi-partite orchestral works that bore no relation to the opera they prefaced, but Salieri attempted to evoke the character, moods and situations of the drama that was to follow.
Big occasions
Salieri’s works were generally written for specific occasions and thus part of the older ‘event-centred musical culture’ that prevailed before the 19th century. An example of such an ‘occasion piece’ was Prima la musica e poi le parole, written for an imperial function and performed at the Orangery at Vienna’s Schönnbrun Palace in double bill with Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor.
Multi-tasking
Like most jobbing composers of his era, Salieri was required to provide music for a variety of different civic and sacred purposes and his output was not confined to opera. His Requiem (1804) – one of his final works, later performed at his own funeral – is deeply expressive, of considerable melodic interest and worthy of the attention of present-day choral societies.
Pic: Matt Herring