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.

Through a series of assignments given to him by Don Salieri, Tommy quickly becomes deeply involved in the activities of the Salieri business, concerning extortion, collecting protection money, bootlegging, assassination, arson jobs and a lot of unexpected gunfights, often with the opposing Don Morello, whose power Tommy describes as " built on violence ".

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.

Through Sam as his proxy, Salieri says he is impressed with Tommy's grace under fire and that he is indebted to Tommy for doing so ; at some future time Tommy may come back to Salieri for help.

Having visited England together with Pückler for studying landscape gardens ( and being deeply impressed by Eliza O ' Neill on the stage ), Schefer studied composition under Antonio Salieri in Vienna 1816-17, and travelled to Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey.

Beginning in 1766 Gassmann introduced Salieri to the daily chamber music performances held during Emperor Joseph II's evening meal.

On more than one occasion it is only the direct intervention of the Emperor himself that allows Mozart to continue ( interventions which Salieri opposes, and then is all too happy to take credit for when Mozart assumes it was he who intervened ).

Salieri also humiliates Mozart's wife when she comes to Salieri for aid, and smears Mozart's character with the Emperor and the court.

In 1787, he was given a paid position in the court of the Austrian Emperor, as Kammercompositeur (" chamber composer "), but authority in matters musical at the court was exercised primarily by Antonio Salieri.

* Antonio Salieri appointed Imperial Royal Kapellmeister by Emperor Joseph II of Austria.

* Antonio Salieri is appointed court composer to the Emperor Joseph II.

In 1781, when Mozart meets the Emperor, Salieri presents Mozart with a " March of Welcome ," which he toiled to create.

At Mozart's next opera, Salieri serves the Emperor ( Montgomery Burns ) wine spiked with a sleeping potion.

As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages.

Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on 15 June 1766.

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.

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.

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.

In 1772, Empress Maria Theresa commented on her preference of Italian composers over Germans like Gassmann, Salieri or Gluck.

Antonio Salieri ( 18 August 17507 May 1825 ) was a classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, 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.

Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.

This revival was due to the dramatic and highly fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer's 1979 play Amadeus, which was given its greatest exposure in its 1984 film version, directed by Miloš Forman.

Antonio 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 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 and 1764 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.

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.

His musical theory training in harmony and counterpoint was rooted in Johann Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, which Salieri translated during each Latin lesson.

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.

In 1774 Salieri married Therese Helferstorfer on 10 October, she was the daughter of a recently deceased financier and official of the court treasury.

During the next three years Salieri was primarily concerned with rehearsing and conducting the Italian opera company in Vienna and teaching.

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.

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 re-worked version of Salieri's recent success La scuola de ' gelosi.

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.

At a formal commemoration on 8 April 1788 his friend and pupil Salieri conducted Gluck's De profundis and a requiem by the Italian composer Niccolò Jommelli was given.

Feodor Chaliapin, who originated the role of Salieri, claimed to have often sung the piece as a monodrama, as the role of Mozart goes no higher than g and was within his range.

A few directors like Luca Damiano, Mario Salieri, and Alain Payet continue with the " older " cinematographic and dramatic styles that often distinguish European pornography from those of other cultures.

Portrait of Salieri by Joseph Willibrord Mähler.

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.

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.

Salieri would recall little from his childhood in later years except a passion for sugar, reading and music.

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.

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.

Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi better known as Metastasio and Christoph Willibald Gluck during this period at the famous Sunday morning salons held at the home of the Martinez family.

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.