Whenever the composer Antonio Salieri comes up in conversation or in writing, one immediately senses an elephant in the room—the indestructible rumour that he was Mozart’s murderer, a jealous rival of inferior talent who used poison to eliminate a genius from his path. All assertions to the contrary—be they from music historians or from Salieri himself, who was confronted with this legend even during his own lifetime—have been of no help, here. So what to do? How might we extricate Salieri from this endless loop of fictions and misconceptions 200 years after his death? The following describes three ways forward that would appear particularly opportune in this jubilee year of 2025.
Understanding (Hi)stories
One of the factors underlying this stubborn misjudgement of Salieri is the idealisation of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart by his early biographers. Their narratives—oriented on the concept of genius and centred on their hero’s superior ability, restless life, and shockingly premature death—offer no space for any figures of equal rank: a genius, after all, has no colleagues but only admirers, enviers, or enemies. Contemporaries of the two, however, viewed them as being of equal rank—with Mozart surely perceived as the more versatile and Salieri as the more established figure. Salieri, who had come to Vienna from Venice at age 15 and trained under the protection of his mentor Florian Leopold Gassmann, was closely acquainted with Emperor Joseph II, celebrated resounding international successes as an operatic composer quite early in life, was appointed director of the Italian Opera in Vienna, and ultimately assumed the office of Hofkapellmeister in 1788. With that, Salieri had reached the top of the musical hierarchy—which, however, entailed focusing primarily on church music at the imperial court as well as the assumption of numerous administrative responsibilities. On the side, he was in high demand as a voice and composing teacher. Salieri thus enjoyed respect and a secure position: he had no need to fear Mozart as a competitor and even collaborated with him on occasion. For example, a recently rediscovered miniature cantata entitled Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia—which celebrates singer Nancy Storace’s recovery to good health—arose as a collaborative work by Salieri, Mozart, and an otherwise unknown personage referred to as “Herr Cornetti” based on a text by Lorenzo da Ponte.
Telling New Stories
Mozart and Salieri joining forces to compose a work for a singer whom they admired: it’s a story that’s not only new but also reports quite a bit more accurately on musical reality in 1780s Vienna than do 19th-century genius-narratives. Another equally surprising story is revealed by the memoires of Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who—like his friend Franz Schubert—was a composing student of Salieri’s. Looking back, he considered his teacher to have been “the greatest musical diplomat; he was the Talleyrand of music.”1 So here, as well, we discover a new perspective on past life realities: Hüttenbrenner steers our attention toward Salieri’s qualities as an administrator and organiser, which were presumably needed quite often in order to balance interests and manage conflicts—at the theatre, within the court music establishment, and last but not least in the context of his social engagement. For Salieri, after all, is the person we have to thank for the 1817 establishment of the Singing School of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, which later became that organisation’s conservatory and ultimately developed into our present-day University of Music and Performing Arts.
Diplomats are specialists in mediation, in bringing together conflicting or disparate elements. As an educator, the “musical diplomat” Antonio Salieri taught 19th-century greats such as Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Liszt; as a composer, however, he remained a creature of the 18th century, beholden to the operatic aesthetic of Christoph Willibald Gluck and the church music of his mentor Gassmann. He thus conveyed ideas, techniques, and positions across multiple eras that were to have unforeseeable effects in their new contexts.
Hearing, Playing, Staging
The third way forward is the most obvious one for a university of music: that of performing Salieri’s own works. And the present jubilee year offers the ideal opportunity to select from his operas the adorably funny La grotta di Trifonio with its libretto by Giovanni Battista Casti, which shares more than just its configurations of characters with Mozart’s Così fan tutte; from his church music, the Requiem (composed for himself); and from his few purely instrumental works, the orchestrally scintillating Twenty-Six Variations for the Orchestra on a Theme called La Folia di Spagna. All this and still more from Salieri’s pen absolutely deserves to be performed, put onstage, heard, and seen once more.
Markus Böggemann’s new reader on Antonio Salieri will be presented on 30 April 2025 at the Hofmusikkapelle. Find the event here.
