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.

As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé 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.

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.

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.

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 quickly impressed the Emperor, and Gassmann was instructed to bring his pupil as often as he wished.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri in his carriage and drove 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!

The play ends with Salieri attempting suicide in a last attempt to be remembered, leaving a false confession of having murdered Mozart with arsenic.

Having been a scholar of Antonio Salieri, Schefer raised interest as a composer only in the very last years, especially when his 222nd birthday was celebrated in Bad Muskau, as a part of the Lausitzer Musiksommer.

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.

Don Salieri is arrested and sentenced to prison for life, but dies of old age during his first year in jail.

In 1788 Salieri returned to Vienna where he remained for the rest of his life.

Indeed, Salieri, who has been a devout Catholic all his life, cannot believe that God would choose Mozart over him for such a gift.

Eventually becoming disillusioned by his life of crime and violence, Tommy arranges to meet a detective ( Detective Norman ) in order to tell him his story, to be given witness protection, and to aid the detective in the destruction of the Salieri crime family.

Hard up for employment prospects in the Depression years and grateful to Salieri for saving his life, Tommy accepts the offer to work for the Salieri family, mostly working as a getaway driver.

At Mozart's deathbed, Salieri tells him she wanted to ruin his life, not kill him.

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.

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.

Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on 15 June 1766.

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

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.