Editing Antonio Salieri (section)

==Relationship with Mozart==
[[File:Mozart (unfinished) by Lange 1782.jpg|thumb|Detail of Lange's 1782–83 Mozart portrait]]
In the 1780s, while Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father [[Leopold Mozart|Leopold]] wrote in their letters that several "cabals" of Italians led by Salieri were actively putting obstacles in the way of Mozart's obtaining certain posts or staging his operas. For example, Mozart wrote in December 1781 to his father that "the only one who counts in the Emperor's eyes is Salieri".{{sfn|Spaethling|2000|p=294}} Their letters suggest that both Mozart and his father, being Austrians who resented the special place that Italian composers had in the courts of the Austrian nobility, blamed the Italians in general and Salieri in particular for all of Mozart's difficulties in establishing himself in Vienna. Mozart wrote to his father in May 1783 about Salieri and Da Ponte, the court poet: "You know those Italian gentlemen; they are very nice to your face! Enough, we all know about them. And if Da Ponte is in league with Salieri, I'll never get a text from him, and I would love to show him what I can really do with an Italian opera."<ref>'' Mozart's Letters'', Little, Brown & Co, London, 1990 pp. 184–185.</ref> In July 1783, he again wrote to his father of "a trick of Salieri's",{{sfn|Spaethling|2000|p=357}} one of several letters in which Mozart accused Salieri of trickery.

Decades after Mozart's death, a rumor began to circulate that Mozart had been poisoned by Salieri. This rumor has been attributed by some to a rivalry between the German and the Italian schools of music.<ref>{{cite news | title=For Mozart's Arch rival, an Italian Renaissance | author=Jason Horowitz | date=28 December 2004 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/arts/music/28sali.html | work=The New York Times}}</ref> [[Carl Maria von Weber]], a relative of Mozart by marriage{{sfn|Braunbehrens|1992|p=5|ps=: "Apparently Weber, who could claim family ties with Mozart, believed the rumors."}} whom Wagner has characterized as the most German of German composers, is said to have refused to join the [[Ludlamshöhle]] (Ludlam's cave), a social club of which Salieri was a member, and avoided having anything to do with him.{{sfn|Braunbehrens|1992|p=220|ps=: "Carl Maria von Weber was also invited to join the society, but is said to have refused as long as Salieri was a member."}} These rumors then made their way into popular culture. [[Albert Lortzing]]'s Singspiel ''Szenen aus Mozarts Leben'' LoWV28 (1832) and the popular 1984 film ''Amadeus'' uses the cliché of the jealous Salieri trying to hinder Mozart's career.

Ironically, Salieri's music was much more in the tradition of Gluck and Gassmann than of the Italians like [[Giovanni Paisiello]] or [[Domenico Cimarosa]]. In 1772, Empress [[Maria Theresa]] commented on her preference for Italian composers over Germans like Gassmann, Salieri, or Gluck. While Italian by birth, Salieri had lived in imperial Vienna for almost 60 years and was regarded by such people as the music critic [[Johann Friedrich Rochlitz|Friedrich Rochlitz]] as a German composer.<ref>See Salieri's obituary by [[Johann Friedrich Rochlitz|Friedrich Rochlitz]] in ''[[Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung]]'', 27 June 1825, reprinted in {{harvnb|Thayer|1989|pp=170–175}}</ref>

The biographer [[Alexander Wheelock Thayer]] believes that Mozart's rivalry with Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781, when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of [[Duchess Elisabeth of Württemberg|Princess Elisabeth of Württemberg]], and Salieri was selected instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher. The following year Mozart once again failed to be selected as the princess's piano teacher.<ref>{{cite book|last=Abert|first=Hermann|author-link=Hermann Abert|author2=Spencer, Stewart|author3=Eisen, Cliff|author-link3=Cliff Eisen|title=W. A. Mozart|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2007|page=623|isbn=978-0-300-07223-5}}</ref> "Salieri and his tribe will move heaven and earth to put it down", Leopold Mozart wrote to his daughter [[Maria Anna Mozart|Nannerl]].{{sfn|Thayer|1989|p=85}} But at the time of the premiere of ''Figaro'', Salieri was busy with his new French opera ''[[Les Horaces]]''. In addition, when Da Ponte was in [[Prague]] preparing the production of Mozart's setting of his ''[[Don Giovanni]]'', the poet was ordered back to Vienna for a royal wedding at which Salieri's ''[[Axur, re d'Ormus]]'' would be performed. Mozart was not pleased by this.

The rivalry between Salieri and Mozart became publicly visible as well as audible during the opera composition competition held by Emperor Joseph II in 1786 in the Orangery at Schönbrunn. Mozart was considered the loser of this competition.<ref>{{cite book|last=Budroni|first=Paolo|title=Mozart und Salieri: Partner oder Rivalen?: Das Fest in der Orangerie zu Schönbrunn vom 7. February 1786|publisher=Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress|year=2008|pages=49–66|isbn=978-3899714777}}</ref> Mozart's 1791 opera ''[[The Magic Flute]]'' echoes that competition because the Papageno–Papagena duet is similar to the Cucuzza cavatina in Salieri's ''Prima la musica e poi le parole''.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Mozart's Competition with Antonio Salieri and ''The Magic Flute''|journal=The Opera Journal|publisher=National Opera Association|volume=48|number=2|pages=3–20|date=2015|last=Shaked|first=Guy}}</ref> ''The Magic Flute'' also echoes Salieri's music in that Papageno's whistle is based on a motif borrowed from Salieri's Concerto for Clavicembalo in B-flat major.<ref>{{cite thesis |type=PhD |last=Litai-Jacoby |first=Ruth |date=2008 |title=Mozart Vacherie: Hatsagat Dmut Ha'acher 'Umashma'uta Ba'operot Hakomiot she Mozart|trans-title=Mozart and Others: Representing the Image of the Other and Its Meaning in Mozart's Comic Operas|publisher=[[Bar-Ilan University]]|page=247}}</ref>

However, there is also evidence attesting to Mozart and Salieri sometimes appearing to support each other's work. For example, when 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, Salieri had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even jointly composed a cantata for voice and piano, ''[[Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia]]'', which celebrated the return to the stage of the singer [[Nancy Storace]]. This work, although it had been printed by [[Artaria]] in 1785, was considered [[Lost literary work|lost]] until 10 January 2016, when the ''[[Schwäbische Zeitung]]'' reported on the discovery by musicologist and composer [[Timo Jouko Herrmann]] of a copy of its text and music while doing research on Antonio Salieri in the collections of the Czech Museum of Music.<ref>{{cite web|title=Lost Mozart Composition for Nancy Storace Rediscovered|url=http://www.mozarteum.at/en/content/news/276|publisher=The Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg|access-date=27 January 2016|date=19 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160131111125/http://www.mozarteum.at/en/content/news/276|archive-date=31 January 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref> Mozart's ''Davide penitente'' (1785), his [[Piano Concerto No. 22 (Mozart)|Piano Concerto KV 482]] (1785), the [[Clarinet Quintet (Mozart)|Clarinet Quintet]] (1789) and the [[Symphony No. 40 (Mozart)|40th Symphony]] (1788) had been premiered on the suggestion of Salieri, who supposedly conducted a performance of it in 1791. In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart told his wife that he had picked up Salieri and [[Caterina Cavalieri]] in his carriage and driven them both to the opera; about Salieri's attendance at his opera ''The Magic Flute'', speaking enthusiastically: "He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture, to the last choir there was not a piece that didn't elicit a 'Bravo!' or 'Bello!' out of him [...]."<ref>[[Maynard Solomon|Solomon, Maynard]], ''Mozart: A Life'', Harper Perennial (1996)</ref>

Salieri, along with Mozart's protégé [[Johann Nepomuk Hummel]] educated Mozart's younger son [[Franz Xaver Mozart]], who was born about four months before his father's death.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.mozarteum.at/en/museums/mozarts-residence/exchibition-franz-xaver-wolfgang-mozart.html| title=Exhibition Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart| website=Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg| access-date=2018-01-22| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180220134004/http://www.mozarteum.at/en/museums/mozarts-residence/exchibition-franz-xaver-wolfgang-mozart.html| archive-date=20 February 2018| url-status=dead}}</ref>