SALIERIANA -- melodrammi

Speranza

For Mozart's Archrival, there is an Italian Renaissance.

Demand is growing in Italy for the clearing of Antonio Salieri's name. a   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.       Silvia Lelli/European Pressphoto Agency Salieri's "Europa Riconosciuta" at La Scala. It had not been performed since the theater's inauguration in 1778.

For more than 200 years, Antonio Salieri's obscure opera "Europa Riconosciuta" was forgotten.

Before its return to La Scala the opera had not been performed since the theater's inauguration in 1778, when castrati sang the leading roles.

That was also long before nasty gossip,
literary hyperbole and Hollywood
myth helped to sink the Italian
composer into musical history's footnotes as
Mozart's murderer, and thrust his operas into oblivion.

People think he was a bad guy and a poor composer, but that's not fair.

For too long people have seen him as uninteresting, and if they take an interest at all, it is a negative one.

But La Scala's decision to restage the opera for the theatre's s reopening, after a three-year restoration, has turned the site into a kind of rehabilitation center for the 18th-century composer's reputation.

Some of Italy's greatest opera stars are
performing Salieri arias, while critics
praise him and Italy swells with national pride.

Suddenly, demand has increased for his recordings and for the clearing of his name.

 Few names in music have been vilified so unfairly.

People tend to think of Salieri as the Iago to Mozart's Othello: a spinner of diabolical schemes who eventually is undone by his own jealousy.

The Salieri of his portraits in La Scala's museum - the prominent nose, pursed lips and intelligent, if tired, eyes - has nearly been eclipsed by the villainous visage of, well, F. Murray Abraham.

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In the 1984 Milos Forman film "Amadeo," Mr. Abraham portrays Salieri as an urbane Viennese court figure and a grimacing hack so threatened by Mozart's genius that he plotted to do away with him.

Shaffer's "Amadeo" increased Salieri's notoriety, but its tag line, "Everything you've heard is true," only enforced centuries of character assassination.

Now, however, Salieri scholars are thrilled at what they regard as vindication.

We see a renaissance for Salieri.

Much of the renewed interest is owed to La Scala.

But some opera specialists believe it is a combination of developments - and divas - that has led to Salieri's resurgence.

The soprano Cecilia Bartoli recorded a
selection of Salieri pieces  to promote what she has called a forgotten and talented composer.

Original scores and letters by Salieri are on display at the Palazzo Reale
through January, while one of the composer's largely unknown manuscripts of a 1774 aria fetched an unexpectedly high bid at Sotheby's auction house in London.

It's not as easy as sitting down and deciding together if this will be the Salieri year," said Nick Williams, director of international marketing for Decca Records, which released Ms. Bartoli's best-selling CD.

While a trend was clearly developing,  it is difficult to trace the source.

It's a sort of chicken and egg situation but Salieri's profile has been raised.

Music historians have long held that Salieri's compositions merit attention, even if only to better explore the Viennese musical world that orbited Mozart's brilliant star.

Both Salieri and Mozart composed at the Hapsburg court, where Salieri served in various roles for 50 years, 36 of them as court Kappelmeister.

Riccardo Muti, La Scala's music director, recently told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that without the stepping stone of Salieri, it is more difficult to understand Mozart and his masterpieces.

Muti also praised the score for "Europa riconosciuta" which he helped rebuild from a nearly illegible manuscript, saying it showed moments of brilliance that in certain places rivaled portions of "The Magic Flute" by Mozart.

Yet to some critics, Salieri excels only in short arias
and lacks the imagination to sustain longer, more complex pieces.

So not everyone is thrilled about the return of Salieri to the Italian opera scene.

It's not going to enter into the repertoire of any other opera house.

This was the only occasion that justified it.

Maybe it's good for 'Europa Riconosciuta' to resurface every 200 years, but we can safely wait another couple of centuries for the next performance.


That is an unwelcome prospect for the singers who spent as much as a year and a half learning roles marked by flurries of coloratura and lyrical leaps across the scales.

It's the most difficult part I ever sang," said Diana Damrau, one of two sopranos cast as Europa.

"If it's only this one time, it's precious to me.

Plus, maybe I can sing at concerts."

In the neoclassical opera, involving love, violence and political discord in ancient times, Europa, once the lover of Zeus, helps resolve all disagreements after she discloses her identity - thus the title "Europa Riconosciuta"

Ms. Damrau, like many Salieri defenders, argues that Salieri should not be forgotten.

After all, he wrote more than 40 operas and wielded influence on some of music's greatest names.

He counted Beethoven and Schubert among his pupils and often collaborated with Mozart.

When Mozart died in 1791, his widow entrusted Salieri with the tutelage of their young son, a fact that seems to conflict with the murder myth -- unless she was _perverse_.

That tale started circulating decades after Mozart's death, in the last years of Salieri's life - born in Italy in 1750, he died in Vienna in 1825 - because of a rivalry between Italian and German schools of music.

The Germans began spreading rumors that Salieri, an Italian, had had a hand in the death of Mozart, an Austrian.

Years later, the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin used verse to depict Salieri as venomous, an opinion that informed Peter Shaffer's ambiguous but nevertheless accusatory play "Amadeus," which was adapted into the Milos Forman movie.

For many years, the guy was a murderer who poisoned our greatest composer, said Mr. Williams, of Decca Records.

Now, at the Ricordi music store in the arcade across the square from La Scala, there are not enough Salieri librettos to keep up with demand.

And Decca, Mr. Williams said, had to ship more copies of Bartoli's recording to Italian stores to keep them in stock for holiday shoppers.

At La Scala, theatergoers spilling out between the heavy carmine curtains after a recent performance of "Europa riconosciuta" seemed more excited about Salieri the composer than Salieri the alleged murderer.

"It's been a long time since they let him back on the stage," said one audience member, Roberto Gilardi. "And even if he DID kill Mozart, the music is beautiful all the same."