Antonio Salieri (18 August 1750 - 7 May 1825) was an Italian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protege of Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers. Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 to 1792, Salieri dominated Italian language opera in Vienna. During his career he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Venice, Rome, and Paris. His dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought after teachers of his generation and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Schubert, Beethoven, and Liszt were among the most famous of his pupils. Salieri's music slowly disappeared from the repertoire between 1800 and 1868, and was rarely heard after that period until the revival of his fame in the late 20th century. This revival was due to his dramatic and highly fictionalized depiction in the play and film Amadeus (1979, 1984) by Peter Shaffer. His music today has regained some modest popularity via recordings, it is also the subject of increasing academic study and a small number of his operas have returned to the stage. In addition there is now a Salieri Opera Festival sponsored by the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and dedicated to rediscovering his work and those of his contemporaries. It is developing as an annual autumn event in his native town of Legnago where a theater has been re-named in his honor.

Antonio Salieri was born on 18 August 1750 to Antonio Salieri and his second wife, Anna Maria Salieri (née Scachi) in the Venetian town of Legnago. Salieri was baptized the next day, 19 August. Throughout his long life Salieri would celebrate August 19 as his birthday. Antonio's father was a merchant of agricultural products and active in the civic life of his town. Antonio Salieri began his musical studies in his native town of Legnago; he was first taught at home by his older brother Francesco Salieri (a former student of the violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini), and he received further lessons from the organist of the Legnago Cathedral, Giuseppe Simoni, a pupil of Padre Giovanni Battista Martini. Salieri would recall little from his childhood in later years except a passion for sugar, reading and music. He twice ran away from home without permission to hear his elder brother play violin concertos in neighboring churches on festival days (resulting in the loss of his beloved sugar), and he also recounted being chastised by his Father after failing to greet a local priest with proper respect. Salieri responded to the reprimand by saying that the priest's organ playing displeased him because it was in an inappropriately theatrical style. Sometime between 1763-64 Salieri suffered the death of both parents and 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 (which Giovanni is at this time unknown), a member of the powerful and well connected Mocenigo family. It is possible that Antonio's Father and Giovanni were friends or business associates, but this is obscure. While living in Venice Salieri continued his musical studies with the organist and opera composer Giovanni Battista Pescetti, then following Pescetti’s sudden death he studied with the opera singer Ferdinando Pacini or Pasini. It was through Pacini that Salieri gained the attention of the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, who, impressed with his talents and concerned for his future, took the young orphan to Vienna where he personally directed and paid for the remainder of his musical education.

Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on June 15, 1766. Gassmann's first act was to take Salieri to the Italian Church to consecrate his teaching and service to God, an event that left a deep impression on Salieri for the rest of his life. Salieri's education included instruction in Latin and Italian poetry by Fr. Don Pietro Tommasi, instruction in the German language, and European literature. His music studies revolved around vocal composition, and thoroughbass. His musical theory training in harmony and counterpoint was rooted in Johann Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, which Salieri translated during each Latin lesson. During the initial phase of his instruction Gassmann did not allow Salieri to compose anything, punishing him once for stealing note paper and working on his own. Gassmann later guided Salieri more directly in compositional technique in both sacred and secular styles. Salieri's first original works were heard in 1768; these were short insertion and replacement pieces for opera performances under Gassmann's direction in the court leased theaters. Under Gassmann's tutelage all of Salieri's studies were designed to be self-reinforcing leading to a consummate understanding of vocal music, theatrical technique, genres of musical literature and composition. As part of this regimen Salieri began to play the harpsichord during both opera rehearsals and performances and in general he acted as a directorial deputy and assistant for Gassmann. Gassmann and Salieri would both look at this relationship more as one of father and son than teacher and pupil. As a result Salieri continued to live with Gassmann even after Gassmann’s marriage, an arrangement that lasted until the year of Gassmann's death and Salieri's own marriage in 1774. Few of Salieri’s compositions have survived from this early period. In his old age Salieri hinted that these works were either purposely destroyed, or had been lost with the exception of a few works for the church. Among these sacred works there survives a Mass in C major written without a "Gloria" and in the antique a cappella style (presumably for one of the church’s penitential seasons) and dated 2 August 1767. A complete opera composed in 1769 (presumably as a culminating study) La Vestale ("The Vestal Virgin") has also been lost.

Beginning in 1766 Gassmann introduced Salieri to the daily chamber music performances held during Emperor Joseph II's evening meal. Salieri quickly impressed the Emperor, and Gassmann was instructed to bring his pupil as often as he wished. This was the beginning of a relationship between monarch and musician that would last until Joseph's death in 1789. Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi better known as Metastasio and Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck during this period at the famous Sunday morning salons held at the home of the Martinez family. Here Metastasio had an apartment and participated in the weekly gatherings. Over the next several years Metastasio gave Salieri informal instruction in prosody and the declamation of Italian poetry, and Gluck became an informal advisor, friend and confidante. It was toward the end of this extended period of study that Gassmann was called away on a new opera commission and a gap in the theater’s program allowed for Salieri to make his debut as a composer of a completely original opera buffa. Salieri's first full opera was composed during the winter and carnival season of 1770; Le donne letterate and was based on Molière's Les Femmes Savantes ("The Learned Ladies") with a libretto byGiovanni Gastone Boccherini a dancer in the court ballet, and a brother of the famous composer. The modest success of this opera would launch Salieri's 34 year operatic career as a composer of over 35 original dramas.

Following the modest success of Le donne letterate Salieri received new commissions writing two additional operas in 1770 both with libretti by Boccherini. The first a pastoral opera, L'amore innocente ("Innocent Love") was a light hearted comedy set in the Austrian mountains, and the second was based on an episode from Cervantes Don Quixote - Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamace ("Don Quixote at the Marriage of Camacho"). In these first works, drawn mostly from the traditions of mid-century opera buffa, Salieri showed a penchant for experimentation and for mixing the established characteristics of specific operatic genres. Don Chisciotte was a mix of ballet and opera buffa, and the lead female roles in L'amore innocente were designed to contrast and highlight the different traditions of operatic writing for soprano, even borrowing stylistic flourishes from opera-seria in the use of coloratura in what was a short pastoral comedy more in keeping with a Roman Intermezzo. The mixing and pushing against the boundaries of established operatic genres would be a continuing hallmark of Salieri's own personal style, and in his choice of material for the plot (as in his first opera), he manifested a lifelong interest in subjects drawn from classic drama and literature.

Salieri's first great success was in the realm of serious opera. Commissioned for an unknown occasion Salieri's Armida was based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem La Gerusalemme liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered") and premiered on 2 June 1771. Armida is a tale of love and duty in conflict and is saturated in magic. The opera is set during the First Crusade and it features a dramatic mix of ballet, aria, ensemble and choral writing combining theatricality, scenic splendor and high emotionalism. The work clearly followed in Gluck's footsteps and embraced his reform of serious opera begun with Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste. The libretto to Armida was by Marco Coltellini the house poet for the imperial theaters. While Salieri followed the precepts set forth by Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi in the preface to Alceste; Salieri also drew on some musical ideas from the more traditional opera-seria and even opera buffa, creating a new synthesis in the process. Armida was translated into German and widely performed, especially in the northern German states, where it helped to establish Salieri's reputation as an important and innovative modern composer. It would also be the first opera to receive a serious preparation in a piano and vocal reduction by Carl Friedrich Cramerin 1783.

Armida was soon followed by Salieri's first truly popular success; a commedia per musica in the style of Carlo Goldoni La fiera di Venezia ("The Fair of Venice"). La fiera was written for Carnival in 1772 and premiered on January 29. Here Salieri returned to his collaboration with the young Boccherini who crafted an original plot. La fiera would feature characters singing in three languages, a bustling portrayal of the Ascension-tide Fair and Carnival in Venice, and large and lengthy ensembles and choruses. It also included an innovative scene that would combine a series of on stage dances with singing from both solo protagonists and the chorus. A pattern to be imitated by later composers, most famously and successfully by Mozart in Don Giovanni. Salieri would also write several bravura aria's for a soprano playing the part of a middle class character that would combine coloratura and concertante woodwind solos, another innovation for a comic opera that was to be widely imitated.

Salieri's next two operas were not particular or lasting successes, of the two only La secchia rapita ("The Stolen Bucket"), deserves mention. A parody of Metastasian opera-seria, it featured dazzling parodies of the high flown and emotive aria's found in that genre, as well as bold and innovative orchestrations, including the first known use of three tympani. Again a classic of Renaissance literature was the basis of the libretto by Boccherini, in this case a comic mock-epic by Tassoni, in which a war between Modena and Bologna ensues over a stolen bucket. This uneven work was followed by another popular comedic success La locandiera ("Mine Hostess"), an adaptation of the classic and popular spoken stage comedy La locandiera by Carlo Goldoni, the libretto was prepared by Domenico Poggi.

The majority of Salieri's modest number of instrumental works also date from this time. Salieri's instrumental works have been judged by various critics and scholars to lack the inspiration and innovation found in his writing for the stage. These orchestral works are mainly in the gallant style and though they show some development toward the late classical they reflect a general weakness in comparison to his operatic works of the same and later periods. These works were written for mostly unknown occasions and artists. They include two concertos for pianoforte, one in C Major and one in B flat Major, (both 1773); a concerto for organ in C Major in two movements, (the middle movement is missing from the autograph score, or perhaps, it was an improvised organ solo) (also 1773); two concertante works: a concerto for oboe, violin and cello in D Major (1770), and a flute and oboe concerto in C Major (1774). These works are among the most frequently recorded of Salieri's compositions.

Upon Gassmann's death on 22 January, most likely due to complications from an accident with a carriage some years earlier, Salieri succeeded him as assistant director of the Italian opera in early 1774. In 1774 Salieri married Therese Helferstorfer on October 10, she was the daughter of a recently deceased financier and official of the court treasury. Sacred music was not a high priority for the composer during this stage of his career, but he did compose an Alleluia for chorus and orchestra in 1774, perhaps for his own wedding, or in thanksgiving for it.

During the next three years Salieri was primarily concerned with rehearsing and conducting the Italian opera company in Vienna and teaching. His three complete operas written during this time show the development of his compositional skills, but included no great success, either commercially, or artistically. His most important compositions during this period were a symphony in D major, performed in the summer of 1776, and the oratorio La passione di Gesù Cristo with a text by Metastasio performed during Advent of 1776.

After the financial collapse of the Italian opera company in 1777 due to financial mismanagement, Joseph II decided to end the performance of Italian opera, French spoken drama, and ballet. Instead the two court owned theaters would be reopened under new management, and partly subsidized by the Imperial Court, as a new National Theater. The relaunched theaters would promote German language plays and musical productions that reflected Austrian (or as Joseph II would have said) German values, traditions and outlook. The Italian opera buffa company was therefore replaced by a German language Singspiel troupe. For Joseph and his supporters of Imperial reform, besides encouraging any first buddings of pan-national pride that would unite his multi-lingual and ethnic subjects under one common language, they also hoped to save a considerable amount of money in the process. Beginning in 1778 the Emperor wished to have new works, in German, composed by his own subjects and brought on the stage with clear Imperial support. This in effect left Salieri's role as assistant court composer in a much reduced position. Salieri also had never truly mastered the German language, and he now felt no longer competent to continue as assistant opera director. A further blow to his career was landed when the spoken drama and musical Singspiel were placed on an equal footing. For the young composer there would be few, if any, new compositional commissions to receive from the court. Salieri was left with few financial options and he began casting about for new opportunities.

However, in 1778 Gluck turned down an offer to compose the inaugural opera for La Scala in Milan; upon the suggestion of Joseph II and with the approval of Gluck, Salieri was offered the commission, which he gratefully accepted. Joseph II granted Salieri permission to take a year long leave of absence (later extended) thus enabling him to write for La Scala and to undertake a tour of Italy. Salieri's Italian tour of 1778 - 80 began with the production of Europa riconosciuta ("Europa Recognized") for La Scala (which was revived in 2004 for the same opera house's reopening following extensive renovations). From Milan Salieri included stops in Venice and Rome and finally a return to Milan. During this tour wrote three new comic operas and he also collaborated with Giacomo Rust on one opera, Il Talismano ("The Talismand"). Of his Italian works one, La scuola de' gelosi ("The School for Jealousy"), a witty study of amorous intrigue and emotion, would prove a popular and lasting international success.

Upon his return at imperial behest to Vienna in 1780, he wrote one German singspiel Der Rauchfangkehrer or (The Chimney Sweep) which premiered in 1781. Salieri's Chimney Sweep and Mozart's work for the same company in 1782, Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio") would be the only two major successes to emerge from the German singspiel experiment, and only Mozart's opera would survive on the stage beyond the close of the 18th century. In 1783 the Italian opera company was revived with singers partly chosen and vetted by Salieri during his Italian tour, the new season would open with a slightly reworked version of Salieri's recent success La scuola de' gelosi. Salieri then returned to his rounds of rehearsing, composition and teaching. However, his time at home in Vienna would be quickly brought to a close when an opportunity to write an opera for Paris arose, again through the patronage of Gluck. Salieri traveled abroad to fulfill an important commission.

The opera Les Danaïdes ("The Danaids") is a five-act tragédie lyrique; the plot was based on an ancient Greek legend that had been the basis for the first play in a trilogy by Aeschylus, entitled The Suppliants. The original commission that reached Salieri in 1783–84 was to assist Gluck in finishing a work for Paris that had been all but completed; in reality, Gluck had failed to notate any of the score for the new opera and gave the entire project over to his young friend. Gluck feared that the Parisian critics would denounce the opera by a young composer known mostly for comic pieces and so the opera was originally billed in the press as being a new work by Gluck with some assistance from Antonio Salieri, then shortly before the premiere of the opera the Parisian press reported that the work was to be partly by Gluck and partly by Salieri, and finally after popular and critical success were won on stage the opera was acknowledged in a letter to the public by Gluck as being wholly by the young Antonio. Les Danaïdes was received with great acclaim and its popularity with audiences and critics alike produced several further requests for new works for Paris audiences by Salieri. Les Danaïdes followed in the tradition of reform that Gluck had begun in the 1760s and that Salieri had emulated in his earlier opera Armida. Salieri's first French opera contained scenes of great solemnity and festivity; yet overshadowing it all was darkness and revenge. The opera depicted politically motivated murder, filial duty and love in conflict, tryannicide and finally eternal damnation. The opera with its dark overture, lavish choral writing, many ballet scenes, and electrifying finale depicting a glimpse of hellish torture kept the opera on the stage in Paris for over forty years. A young Hector Berlioz recorded the deep impression this work made on him in his Mémoires.

Upon returning to Vienna following his success in Paris, Salieri met and befriended Lorenzo Da Ponte and had his first professional encounters with Mozart. Da Ponte would write his first opera libretto for Salieri, Il ricco d'un giorno ("A Rich Man for a Day") in 1784, it was not a success. Salieri next turned to Giambattista Casti as a librettist, a more successful set of collaboration flowed from this pairing. In the mean time Da Ponte would begin work with Mozart on Le nozze di Figaro ("The Marriage of Figaro"). Salieri soon produced one of his greatest works with the text by Casti La grotta di Trofonio ("The Cave of Trofonius") in 1785, the first opera buffa published in full score by Artaria. Shortly after this success Joseph II had Mozart and Salieri each contribute a one-act opera and/or singspiel for production at a banquet in 1786. Salieri collaborated with Casti to produce a parody of the relationship between poet and composer in Prima la musica e poi le parole ("First the Music and then the Words"). This short work also highlighted the typical backstage antics of two high flown sopranos. Salieri then returned to Paris for the premiere of his tragédie lyrique Les Horaces ("The Horati") which proved a failure. However the failure of this work was more than made up for with his next Parisian opera Tarare with a libretto by Beaumarchais. This was intended to be the nec plus ultra of reform opera, a completely new synthesis of poetry and music that was an 18th century anticipation of the ideals of Richard Wagner. He also created a sacred cantata Le Jugement dernier ("The Last Judgement"). The success of his opera Tarare was such that it was soon translated into Italian at Joseph II behest by Lorenzo Da Ponte as Axur, Re d'Ormus ("Axur, King of Hormuz") and staged at the royal wedding of Franz II in 1788.

In 1788 Salieri returned to Vienna where he remained for the rest of his life. Also in that year he became Kappellmeister of the Imperial Chapel upon the death of Joseph Bonno; as Kappellmeister he conducted the music and musical school connected with the chapel until shortly before his death, being official retired from the post in 1824.

His Italian adaptation of Tarare, Axur would prove to be his greatest international success. Axur was widely produced throughout Europe and it even reached South America with the exiled royal house of Portugal in 1824. Axur and his other new compositions completed by 1792 would mark the height of Salieri's popularity and his influence. Just as his apogee of fame was being reached abroad, his influence in Vienna would begin to diminish with the death of Joseph II in 1789. Joseph's death deprived Salieri of his greatest patron and protector. During this period of imperial change in Vienna and revolutionary ferment in France, Salieri composed two additional extremely innovative musical dramas to libretti by Giovanni Casti. Due, however, to their satiric and overtly liberal political inclinations, both operas were seen as unsuitable for public performance in the politically reactive cultures of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor and later Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor. This resulted in two of his most original operas being consigned to his desk drawer, namely Cublai, gran kan de' Tartari ("Kublai Grand Kahn of Tartary") a satire on the autocracy and court intrigues at the court of the Russian Czarina, Catherine the Great, and Catilina ("Cataline") a semi-comic semi-tragic account of the Catiline conspiracy that attempted to overthrow the Roman republic during the consulship of Cicero. These operas were composed in 1787 and 1792 respectively. Two other operas of little success and longterm importance were composed in 1789, and one great popular success La Cifra ("The Cipher").

As Salieri's political position became very insecure, he was retired as director of the Italian opera in 1792. He continued to write new operas per imperial contract until 1804, when he voluntarily withdrew from the stage. Of his late works for the stage only two works gained wide popular esteem during his life, Palmira, regina di Persia ("Palmira, Queen of Persia") 1795 and Cesare in Farmacusa ("Caesar on Pharmacusa"), both drawing on the heroic and exotic success established with Axur. His late opera based on William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff, ossia Le tre burle ("Falstaff, or the Three Tricks"), (1799) has found a wider audience in modern times than its original reception promised. His last opera was a German language singspiel Die Neger, ("The Negroes"), a melodrama set in colonial Virginia with a text by Georg Friedrich Treitschke (the author of the libretto for Beethoven's Fidelio) performed in 1804 and was a complete failure.

When Salieri retired from the stage, he recognized that artistic styles had changed and he felt that he no longer had the creative capacity to adapt or the emotional desire to continue. Also as Salieri aged he moved slowly away from his more liberal political stances as he saw the enlightened reform of Joseph II's reign, and the hoped for reforms of the French revolution, replaced with more radical revolutionary ideas. As the political situation threatened and eventually overwhelmed Austria, which was repeatedly crushed by French political forces, Salieri's first and most important biographer Mosel described the emotional effect that this political, social, and cultural upheaval had on the composer. Mosel noted that these radical changes, especially the invasion and defeat of Austria, and the occupation of Vienna intertwined with the personal losses that struck Salieri in the same period led to his withdrawal from operatic work. Related to this Mosel quotes the aged composer concerning the radical changes in musical taste that were underway in the age of Beethoven, "From that period [circa 1800] I realized that musical taste was gradually changing in a manner completely contrary to that of my own times. Eccentricity and confusion of genres replaced reasoned and masterful simplicity."

As his teaching and work with the imperial chapel continued, his duties required the composition of a large number of sacred works, and in his last years it was almost exclusively in religious works and teaching that Salieri occupied himself. Among his compositions written for the chapels needs were two complete sets of vespers, many graduals, offertories, and four orchestral masses. During this period he lost his only son in 1805 and his wife in 1807.

Salieri continued to conduct publicly (including the performance of Haydn's The Creation, during which Haydn collapsed, and several premiers by Beethoven including the 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos and Wellington's Victory). He also continued to help administer several charities and organize their musical events.

His 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. He also 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. The theme is likely folk derived and is known as La Folia. This simple melodic and harmonic progression had served as an inspiration for many baroque composers, and would be used by later romantic and post-romantic composers. 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. La Folia was the most monumental set of orchestral variations before Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn.

His teaching of budding young musicians continued, and among his pupils in composition (usually vocal) were Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert and many other luminaries of the early Romantic period. He also instructed many prominent singers throughout his long career. All but the wealthiest of his pupils received their lessons for free, a tribute to the kindness Gassmann had shown Salieri as a penniless orphan.

Salieri was committed to medical care and suffered dementia for the last year and a half of his life. He died in Vienna on 7 May 1825, and was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof on 10 May. At his memorial service on 22 June 1825 his own Requiem in C minor - composed in 1804 - was performed for the first time. His remains were later transferred to the Zentralfriedhof. His monument is adorned by a poem written by Joseph Weigl, one of his pupils:

Rest in peace! Uncovered by dust
Eternity shall bloom for you.
Rest in peace! In eternal harmonies
Your spirit now is dissolved.
It expressed itself in enchanting notes,
Now it is floating to everlasting beauty.