Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life.

He twice ran away from home without permission to hear his elder brother play violin concertos in neighboring churches on festival days and he recounted being chastised by his father after failing to greet a local priest with proper respect.

His musical theory training in harmony and counterpoint was rooted in Johann Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum,[11] which Salieri translated during each Latin lesson.

[14] Among these sacred works there survives a Mass in C major written without a "Gloria" and in the antique a cappella style (presumably for one of the church's penitential seasons) and dated 2 August 1767.

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

[25] 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.

[26] The mixing and pushing against the boundaries of established operatic genres was a continuing hallmark of Salieri's own personal style, and in his choice of material for the plot (as in his first opera), he manifested a lifelong interest in subjects drawn from classic drama and literature.

Commissioned for an unknown occasion, Salieri's Armida was based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered); it premiered on 2 June 1771.

The opera is set during the First Crusade and features a dramatic mix of ballet, aria, ensemble, and choral writing, combining theatricality, scenic splendor, and high emotionalism.

La Fiera featured characters singing in three languages, a bustling portrayal of the Ascension-tide Fair and Carnival in Venice, and large and lengthy ensembles and choruses.

Salieri also wrote several bravura arias for a soprano playing the part of a middle-class character that combined coloratura and concertante woodwind solos, another innovation for comic opera that was widely imitated.

Upon Gassmann's death on 21 January,[30] most likely due to complications from an accident with a carriage some years earlier, Salieri succeeded him as assistant director of the Italian opera in early 1774.

The re-launched theaters would promote German-language plays and musical productions that reflected Austrian (or as Joseph II would have said) German values, traditions, and outlook.

Joseph and his supporters of Imperial reform wanted to encourage pan-national pride that would unite his multi-lingual and ethnic subjects under one common language and hoped to save a considerable amount of money in the process.

Joseph II granted Salieri permission to take a year-long leave of absence (later extended), enabling him to write for La Scala and to undertake a tour of Italy.

Of his Italian works one, La Scuola de' gelosi (The School for Jealousy), a witty study of amorous intrigue and emotion, proved a popular and lasting international success.

In 1785 Salieri produced one of his greatest works with the text by Casti, La grotta di Trofonio (The Cave of Trophonius), the first opera buffa published in full score by Artaria.

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).

Salieri then returned to Paris for the premiere of his tragédie Lyrique Les Horaces (The Horatii), which proved a failure, which was more than made up for with his next Parisian opera Tarare, with a libretto by Beaumarchais.

During this period of imperial change in Vienna and revolutionary ferment in France, Salieri composed two additional extremely innovative musical dramas to libretti by Giovanni Casti.

His last opera was a German-language Singspiel Die Neger [de] (The Negroes), a melodrama set in colonial Virginia with a text by Georg Friedrich Treitschke (the author of the libretto for Beethoven's Fidelio); it was performed in 1804 and was a complete failure.

When Salieri retired from the stage, he recognized that artistic styles had changed and he felt that he no longer had the creative capacity to adapt or the emotional desire to continue.

Mosel noted that these radical changes, especially the invasion and defeat of Austria, and the occupation of Vienna intertwined with the personal losses that struck Salieri in the same period, led to his withdrawal from operatic work.

He also composed one large-scale instrumental work in 1815 intended as a study in late classical orchestration: Twenty-Six Variations for the Orchestra on a Theme called La Folia di Spagna.

Salieri's setting is a brooding work in the minor key, which rarely moves far from the original melodic material, its main interest lies in the deft and varied handling of orchestral colors.

In addition, when Da Ponte was in Prague preparing the production of Mozart's setting of his Don Giovanni, the poet was ordered back to Vienna for a royal wedding at which Salieri's Axur, re d'Ormus would be performed.

[48] Mozart's 1791 opera The Magic Flute echoes that competition because the Papageno–Papagena duet is similar to the Cucuzza cavatina in Salieri's Prima la musica e poi le parole.

Salieri and Mozart even jointly composed a cantata for voice and piano, Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, which celebrated the return to the stage of the singer Nancy Storace.

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

[60] It is a story that builds on the rivalry between a meticulous but untested officer (Gandolfini) serving as the warden of a military prison and an imprisoned but much admired and highly decorated general (Redford).