Salieri Sifra

In its day La scuola de’ gelosi (1778) was one of the best-known comic operas by Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), remaining a box-office hit for decades. All the more astonishing is the fact that it could sink into obscurity. Even Goethe was excited by this masterpiece: “The opera is the audience’s favourite, and the audience is right. It contains an astonishing richness and variety, and the subject is treated with the most exquisite taste. I was moved by every aria.” In the wake of its world premiere in Venice in 1778, La scuola de’ gelosi was performed in opera houses all over Europe, from Dresden, Vienna, Prague and Paris to cities as far away as London and St Petersburg, before it passed into near-oblivion.

‘One evening I paid a visit to the Opéra. There I saw Les Danaïdes, by Salieri. The gorgeous splendour of the spectacle, the rich fullness of the orchestra and the chorus, the wonderful voice and pathetic charm of Madame Branchu, Dérivis’s rugged power […] filled me with an excitement and enthusiasm that I cannot attempt to describe.’ Thus Berlioz related his encounter with one of the most revolutionary operas of the ancient régime, written by an eminent pupil of Gluck, Antonio Salieri. Feeling the stirrings of early Romanticism, the latter imbued the tragic fate of Hypermnestra with pathos and vehemence such as were rarely attained even by his teacher. The horrible plot fomented by Danaus with his daughters, the Danaids, takes us from palatial splendour to the sinister darkness of a secret temple, and finally to the Underworld itself, where a vulture, serpents, demons and the Furies avenge the mass murder of the sons of Ægyptus.

Christophe Rousset and his Talens Lyriques release the first world recording of Antonio Salieri’s Les Horaces, which they recreated at Versailles in 2016!
To bring this score to life again, Christophe Rousset gathers a dream vocal cast: tenor Cyrille Dubois, Judith van Wanroij, Julien Dran or Jean-Sebastien Bou embody the fate of the characters inspired by the fratricidal struggle of Horatius and Curiatius in Ancient Rome, dramatically revived by an already romantic Salieri in his musical boldness. Fights, vows and great crowd scenes, the tears heroine Camilla, the Curiatius’ dilemma, or the implacable determination of old Horatius offer intense and original drama.

Now unfairly stigmatised (due to Pushkin and the film Amadeus) as Mozart’s sinister Nemesis, Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) enjoyed the more successful career as an opera composer. His comedy Trofonio’s Cave, written to a clever libretto by Giambattista Casti, was staged at Vienna’s Burgtheater in October 1785, just a few months before Figaro debuted there, and kept its place in the repertory for 30 years. If posterity gave the palm to Mozart, his contemporaries preferred Salieri. And indeed the Italian’s attractive score to this text describing the effects of entering a magic cave upon two pairs of lovers – one quiet and earnest, the other noisy hedonists – is full of good things.

The April 26, 1784 Paris Opera premiere of this work was still noted under the name of the composer actually commissioned to compose it, Ch.W. Gluck, but it soon came out that in reality, the 33-year-old assistant to Gluck (who had suffered a stroke), Antonio Salieri, had written the work “in tutto”. The sensation was perfect, and due to Salieri’s success, French opera underwent a significant development. For beginning with Gluck’s operatic style, Salieri managed with “Danaïdes” to make the transition from number opera to the dramatically more consequent through-composed scenic opera. The Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele production, recorded here under studio conditions, follows historical performance practice and presents the opera in nearly uncut form.

Antonio Salieri is, unfortunately, best known as Mozart's great Viennese rival. Some of his work has appeared on recordings, and he was clearly an interesting composer of well-crafted, entertaining music. But now that a singer with the stature and prodigious gifts of Cecilia Bartoli has undertaken an entire CD of his opera arias, he may just become a quasi-household name. Here he proves himself a composer who wrote for virtuosos; Bartoli is nothing if not a vituoso. And, indeed, this CD opens with an impressive bang: An aria from La secchia rapita features a wild vocal line complete with wild coloratura, huge leaps, a range from low G to high D flat (Bartoli flirts more and more with the soprano range while using her chest register even more forcefully!), and vast dynamic changes accompanied by a full orchestra augmented with grand, martial trumpets.

Axur, re d'Ormus is an operatic dramma tragicomico in five acts by Antonio Salieri. The libretto was by Lorenzo da Ponte. Axur is the Italian version of Salieri's 1787 French-language work Tarare which had a libretto by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Axur premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 8 January 1788, the title role being sung by Francesco Benucci, Mozart's first Figaro. It became one of the most famous operas in Vienna, being performed much more frequently than Mozart's Don Giovanni, which was first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1788.

Spirited performances by the Budapest Strings, with a major assist from the always estimable Lajos Lencsés, make a strong case for Salieri’s music. Lencsés teams with concertmaster Béla Bánfalvi and cellist Károly Botvay, the group’s artistic director, in the triple concerto and makes beautiful music with flutist János Bálint in the flute and oboe concerto. It all adds up to a most enjoyable disc.

Antonio Salieri’s Falstaff is not Verdi’s and never will be. That out of the way, it’s a charming evening’s entertainment, occasionally quite funny, with nicely characterized roles, swell, brief melodies, excellent, spicy wind writing (vividly played here on period instruments and recorded in such a way that the sonics favor them), and nice forward propulsion. The action moves quickly and pointedly, the dry recitatives are frequent but never too long, and when they do go on, the cast here is clever and involved enough to make them dramatically viable.

The recordings of Reinhard Goebel's project "Beethoven's World" have received great attention and excellent reviews worldwide. For the first album with violin concertos by Franz Clement, the Welt am Sonntag wrote: "If the discovery of Beethoven contemporaries, which Goebel has just signed up for the Beethoven Year, continues in this way, it will be a fine year". For the second album with double cello concertos by Reicha and Romberg, sr2 wrote: "Music for cello and orchestra is rare, concertos for two cellos and orchestra almost non-existent (…) The well-proportioned sound of the cellos blends perfectly with the attentive orchestra. Deutschlandfunk added: "This recording (…) sets new standards."