SALIERI AND HIS PUPILS

In 2025, we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death and 275th anniversary of the birth of the Italian composer Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), one of the most important opera composers and influential teachers of his time. Today, however, his legacy as a composer is unfortunately unknown to very few people, and Salieri's music has practically disappeared from theatre and concert stages. What's more, his name is shrouded in the shadow of a legend according to which Salieri was a stuffy and less inventive rival (or even murderer) of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the wider public associates him with this legend because of the "thread" of works of art, which begins with Pushkin's drama Mozart and Salieri (1830), adapted by Rimsky-Korsakov into an opera (1898), and ends with Forman's film Amadeus (1984), based on Peter Shaffer's 1980 play of the same name.