Antonio Salieri's Revenge

[RedParrot]

As someone that enjoyed the film Amadeus, I found this New Yorker article on Mozart’s film nemesis rather enlightening.

Antonio Salieri’s Revenge

Excerpt: Two centuries of calumny have created sympathy for the musical devil: I found Salieri’s grave festooned with bouquets. These were evidence that the man and his music are enjoying a modest comeback. Of his forty-odd operas, more than a dozen have been revived, and artists such as Riccardo Muti, Cecilia Bartoli, and Christophe Rousset have pleaded his case. I was in Vienna to attend Rousset’s performance of Salieri’s French opera “Tarare” at the Theater an der Wien. A German-language biography of Salieri, by the composer and musicologist Timo Jouko Herrmann, was published earlier this year. In 2015, Herrmann discovered the score of a cantata, “Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia,” with one section composed by Salieri and another by Mozart. The find made clear what scholars have long known: that the two were more colleagues than rivals, and that their relationship was complicated mainly by Mozart’s tendency to see plots arrayed against him.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/03/antonio-salieris-revenge

[JoeOtterbein]

1. Great article! Thanks for posting! nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Very interesting! Thanks!

I knew Salieri didn't kill Mozart and that they weren't even enemies, but I loved Amadeus anyhow. This is a really interesting article about a composer who should be given more credit.

[Aristus]

3. I own a number of CD's of Salieri's music.

He wrote themes that both Mozart and Beethoven were not shy about borrowing and adapting into their own works. He was a pretty good composer.

I once asked former Seattle Opera General Director Speight Jenkins if he thought there would ever be a revival of Salieri's numerous operas. Jenkins said no.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because they're boring!"

I guess Jenkins was wrong about the revival.

[bif]

4. It was an excellent article. As you'd expect from the New Yorker.

I've been getting it since high school. And I'm in my early 60s now. The finest magazine in the English speaking world.