Page "Antonio Salieri" Paragraph 19

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 ).

( For the famous relationship between Mozart and Salieri please see below.

) 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.