Anyone who knows the composer Antonio Salieri merely as a supposed rival of Mozart will have a chance to change this in 2025. In connection with the 200th anniversary of Salieri’s death and his upcoming 275th birthday, we take a fresh look here at the man whom we have to thank for today’s mdw.

In a departure from this year’s large-scale celebrations of Johann Strauss, SALIERI 2025 creator Jürgen Partaj is devoting his 2025 entirely to the (re)discovery of Antonio Salieri. In conversation with mdw Magazine, he revealed his personal SALIERI 2025 highlights, spoke of his research trip to Italy, and pointed out how Salieri even appeared on The Simpsons.

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?

“Salieri, by the way, was quite gregarious. His most cherished entertainment was amidst the circle of his students.” This assessment in an 1825 obituary for Antonio Salieri refers not only to Salieri’s composing students such as Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Giacomo Meyerbeer, or Johann Nepomuk Hummel, but in equal measure to those individuals whose vocal training had been close to Antonio Salieri’s heart throughout his life.

If one turns off of Michaelerplatz onto Kohlmarkt and looks up at the building facade on the right, one will notice a memorial plaque: “In this building | lived and died | Pietro Metastasio.” As imperial court poet, Metastasio authored librettos that provided the textual basis for hundreds of operas—and Antonio Salieri, our jubilarian of 2025, was among those who made use of his texts. Metastasio was hence not just an authority where literature was concerned but also a key intellectual node in mid-18th-century Vienna.