40 Facts About Antonio Salieri

1.

Antonio Salieri was an Italian classical composer, conductor, and teacher.

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2.

Antonio Salieri was born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy.

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3.

Antonio Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera.

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4.

Antonio Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.

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5.

The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 at the age of 35 was followed by rumors that he and Antonio Salieri had been bitter rivals, and that Antonio Salieri had poisoned the younger composer, yet this has been proven false, and it is likely that they were, at least, mutually respectful peers.

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6.

Antonio Salieri started his musical studies in his native town of Legnago; he was first taught at home by his older brother Francesco Antonio Salieri, and he received further lessons from the organist of the Legnago Cathedral, Giuseppe Simoni, a pupil of Padre Giovanni Battista Martini.

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7.

Antonio Salieri remembered little from his childhood in later years except passions for sugar, reading, and music.

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8.

Antonio Salieri twice ran away from home without permission to hear his elder brother play violin concertos in neighboring churches on festival days, and he recounted being chastised by his father after failing to greet a local priest with proper respect.

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9.

Antonio Salieri responded to the reprimand by saying the priest's organ playing displeased him because it was in an inappropriately theatrical style.

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10.

Sometime between 1763 and 1764, both of Antonio Salieri's parents died, and he was briefly taken in by an anonymous brother, a monk in Padua, and then for unknown reasons in 1765 or 1766, he became the ward of a Venetian nobleman named Giovanni Mocenigo, a member of the powerful and well connected Mocenigo family.

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11.

Antonio Salieri's education included instruction in Latin and Italian poetry by Fr.

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12.

Antonio Salieri quickly impressed the Emperor, and Gassmann was instructed to bring his pupil as often as he wished.

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13.

Antonio Salieri wrote several bravura arias for a soprano playing the part of a middle-class character that combined coloratura and concertante woodwind solos, another innovation for comic opera that was widely imitated.

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14.

Antonio Salieri had never truly mastered the German language, and he now felt no longer competent to continue as assistant opera director.

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15.

Antonio Salieri was left with few financial options and he began casting about for new opportunities.

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16.

From Milan, Antonio Salieri included stops in Venice and Rome before returning to Milan.

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17.

Antonio Salieri then returned to his rounds of rehearsing, composition and teaching.

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18.

Antonio Salieri next turned to Giambattista Casti as a librettist; a more successful set of collaboration flowed from this pairing.

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19.

In 1785 Antonio Salieri produced one of his greatest works with the text by Casti, La grotta di Trofonio, the first opera buffa published in full score by Artaria.

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20.

Antonio Salieri collaborated with Casti to produce a parody of the relationship between poet and composer in Prima la musica e poi le parole .

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21.

In 1788 Antonio Salieri returned to Vienna, where he remained for the rest of his life.

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22.

Antonio Salieri continued to write new operas per imperial contract until 1804, when he voluntarily withdrew from the stage.

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23.

Antonio Salieri continued to conduct publicly, including the performance on 18 March 1808 of Haydn's The Creation during which Haydn collapsed, and several premieres by Beethoven including the 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos and Wellington's Victory.

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24.

Antonio Salieri continued to help administer several charities and organize their musical events.

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25.

Antonio Salieri's remaining secular works in this late period fall into three categories: first, large scale cantatas and one oratorio Habsburg written on patriotic themes or in response to the international political situation, pedagogical works written to aid his students in voice, and finally simple songs, rounds or canons written for home entertainment; many with original poetry by the composer.

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26.

Antonio Salieri composed one large scale instrumental work in 1815 intended as a study in late classical orchestration: Twenty-Six Variations for the Orchestra on a Theme called La Folia di Spagna.

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27.

Antonio Salieri's setting is a brooding work in the minor key, which rarely moves far from the original melodic material, its main interest lies in the deft and varied handling of orchestral colors.

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28.

Antonio Salieri's teaching of budding young musicians continued, and among his pupils in composition were Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert.

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29.

Antonio Salieri instructed many prominent singers throughout his career, including Caterina Canzi.

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30.

Antonio Salieri was committed to medical care and suffered dementia for the last year and a half of his life.

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31.

Antonio Salieri's monument is adorned by a poem written by Joseph Weigl, one of his pupils:.

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32.

Antonio Salieri's earliest surviving work is a Mass in C major.

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33.

Antonio Salieri would write four major orchestral masses, a requiem, and many offertories, graduals, vesper settings, and sacred cantatas and oratorios.

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34.

Carl Maria von Weber, a relative of Mozart by marriage whom Wagner has characterized as the most German of German composers, is said to have refused to join the Ludlamshohle, a social club of which Antonio Salieri was a member, and avoided having anything to do with him.

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35.

Ironically, Antonio Salieri's music was much more in the tradition of Gluck and Gassmann than of the Italians like Paisiello or Cimarosa.

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36.

Biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer believes that Mozart's rivalry with Antonio Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781, when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of Princess Elisabeth of Wurttemberg, and Antonio Salieri was selected instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher.

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37.

For example, when Antonio Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788, he chose to revive Figaro instead of introducing a new opera of his own, and when he attended the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790, Antonio Salieri had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage.

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38.

Antonio Salieri has yet to fully re-enter the general repertory, but performances of his works are progressively becoming more regular.

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39.

Antonio Salieri has even begun to attract some attention from Hollywood.

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40.

The Antonio Salieri piece is used as the warden's theme music, seemingly to invoke the image of jealousy of the inferior for his superior.

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