Christoph Willibald Gluck

1.  MARIATERESA DELLABORRA
The essay investigates from an exclusively musical point of view the real reforming elements introduced by Tommaso Traetta into the works conceived between 1759 and 1763 - and particularly in Armida (1761) and Ifigenia in Tauride (1763), both of which were intended for the Viennese court - in agreement with the various men of letters with whom he cooperated.

2. GERHARD CROLL
Alceste, a reforming drama written by Calzabigi and Gluck, has almost certainly never been performed in its original form. The handwritten score used by Gluck and Salieri proves Salieri conducting this opera until 1810. Every new production inluded various bigger and smaller versions (performances in Vienna 1767/68, 1781, 1783, 1810). In 1767 Salieri accompanied the orchestra on the 2nd harpsicord, in 1770 he acted as a substitute for Gluck at the rehearsals and was then resposible for the new productions until 1810 (new closing of the first act).Corrections, additions, changes in the instrumentation and deletions were made by him - when exactly they were made cannot be determined until now.


3. MARINA MAYRHOFER
The paper addresses the problem of the genesis  of Armida, “dramma per musica “, in three acts, librettist Marco Coltellini, with Salieri debuted in the genre of opera seria,  on the second of June 1771, in Viennese Burgtheater.  In the second part of essay, the opera score is analyzed to highlight the more experimental aspects of drama

4. MARITA PETZOLDT MCCLYMONDS
Salieri composed mainly opera buffa or genres that mixed comic and serious elements. His few ventures into strictly serious opera are scattered throughout the first two decades of his career. They furthered efforts at rapprochement between French and Italian taste taking place in Italian opera seria during the third quarter of the century especially in German-speaking lands.

5. ELENA BIGGI PARODI
Salieri explained the intention of many of his Overtures with personally written notes, which were additions to many of his scores that were written in his own hand. In the Overtures the composer purposely mixes the styles together, using them as manifests for the varieties of genres that his compositions belong to. Many of his Overtures illustrate an action, sometimes only imagined through the music and others created on the stage. In all events, for Salieri, they are the ideal place to experiment his interest in the relationship between music and gesture, as well as the new genre of pantomime dance, and in particular his attention to depict action and movement with music. An emblematic example of the convergence of genres is the use of Sinfonia di introduzione from Europa riconosciuta (Milan, 1778) for Cesare in Farmacusa (Vienna, 1800).

6. ELISA GROSSATO
On 8th June 1773, the comic drama for music La Locandiera by Antonio Salieri was staged for the first time with great success at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The libretto for the La Locandiera was freely taken from Goldoni’s piéce, and written by the Italian tenor Domenico Poggi as his first work as librettist. A well-known artist, Poggi stood out for his role as the oracle in the premiere in Vienna of Alceste by Gluck, and, through his marriage to Clementina Baglioni, he became part of one of the most prestigious families of singers at that time. With his debut as librettist Poggi simplified and slightly emptied the text of La Locandiera, but the libretto he gave to Salieri was still very pleasant, graceful and, above all, functional in outlining the different characters, especially through the arias they all sing in varying quantities, depending on their importance within the opera.

7. JOHN RICE
Salieri's La secchia rapita is based on the mock-epic poem of the same name by the late Renaissance poet Alessandro Tassoni, who called his work a «poema eroicomico». The poem tells of a war between the neighboring cities of Modena and Bologna in 1325, during which the Modenese army, having invaded Bologna, stole a wooden bucket as symbol of its victory. The comedy in Tassoni's poem, which comes largely from its clever parody of the literary devices of epic poetry, appealed to eighteenth-century taste.

8.  RUDOLPH ANGERMUELLER
Cublai, gran Kan de'Tartari, completed in 1788 by Salieri, was never performed at the time.
The first part of this article shows the reasons for this:
It was the satire about the Russian court and not musical deficiencies.
Casti is attacking the stituation in czarist Russia, but also the Austrian alliances with Turkey (war agains the Turks 1788) and the censorship of the theater in Vienna at the time.

9. RUDOLPH ANGERMUELLER
The debut performance of Salieri’s Dramma per musica Annibale was held at the Teatro Nuovo  in Trieste on May 19th, 1801.This article decribes the sources for the music as well as the text, the singers of the debut performance (Marchesi, David, Gaetano Bianchi, Radicati, Angela Bianchi  - who stood at the forefront at the time) and the résumé of the librettist Sografi. Annibale is now seen as a big set-back in Salieri’s opera productions, as he made certain concessions to the singers and the audience

10 . FRANCESCO BLANCHETTI
Antonio Salieri's comic opera La grotta di Trofonio, based on a libretto by Giambattista Casti, received its première in Vienna on 12 October  1785. A few months later the libretto, heavily revised by Giuseppe Palomba, was set to music by Giovanni Paisiello and staged in Naples (December 1785). Even if the subject is the same, the two librettos are very different. Topics of various nature are introduced into the libretto by Casti: a mockery of erudition (a traditional theme in opera buffa); an illuministic criticism of magic and superstition; satiric hints, in a Voltairian spirit, against philosophical optimism.

11. FRANCESCO BLANCHETTI
In his writings, letters and annotations in the manuscript scores, Salieri invokes very often the search for "the truth" as a guideline for his theater music. The composer pursues the adherence to the dramatic basis not only by means of his thematic inventiveness, both vocal and instrumental, but also by paying very special attention to the harmonic treatment. A striking aspect in Salieri's style is a leaning for tonal surprises, interrupted cadences, emphasized dissonances.

12. INGRID FUCHS
The most favorite parts of Salieri’s operas were performed outside the theater – in public and private concerts, in musical academies, but also during music-making in the homes, which contributed to the popularization  of his works .These performances were normally not carried out in the original instrumentation, but by special orchestras reserved for the noble circles.
Arrangements with extraordinary intrumentations can also be found at the emperor’s court in the so-called „Harmoniemusik“ of Joseph II.

13. DOROTHEA LINK
The entertainments at the imperial country palace of Laxenburg are examined for the séjours held there in 1784, 1786, 1787, and 1791. The theatrical fare is assessed for its interaction with that presented at the imperial theatre in Vienna. Transcriptions of the expenditures for Laxenburg recorded in the theatre account books are provided in four appendices.

14.WALTHER BRAUNEIS
The court theater (Gesellschaftstheater) in Vienna using the example of Johann Adam von Auersperg and Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz with simultaneous consideration of the performance of the opera’s by Antonio Salieri.

15. WALTHER BRAUNEIS
For the Vienna Kaerntnertortheater Lorenzo Sacchetti created 1804 a new curtain. Salieri
appears on it.

16. JANE SCHATKIN HETTRICK
The pamphlet Ueber die Kirchenmusik in Wien, published anonymously in Vienna in 1781, describes the intrusion of secular elements into church music of the time: opera arias transformed into mass movements, singers behaving like stage actors, religious services turned into concerts—all factors leading to immorality by parishioners. The author specifically mentions three opera titles (one by Salieri) recently heard in churches. To strengthen his opinions, he draws from the encyclical Annus qui (1749), in which Pope Benedict XIV quotes ecclesiastical authorities who criticize theatrical music in the church.

17. PAOLOGIOVANNI MAIONE - FRANCESCA SELLER
The revolution that was brought about by Barbaja in 19th century theatrical organisation changed the impresarios’ typical 18th century methods, which had become obsolete by then. The new market requirements, no longer focused on the centrality of the Court, required greater attention to a more complex and modern entrepreneurial vision. The wave of novelty on the Neapolitan theatrical scene since 1809, the year of the impresario’s first contract, launched the new model onto the international scene: it was a system that was gradually defined over the years and finally affirmed in the Twenties, when gambling was definitively separated from the theatre management.

18. GIACOMO FORNARI
It was not just the change of epochs due to the Congress of Vienna, but also the advent
of a new musical language that determined a change in the expectations of the Viennese
public in those years. The passing of Antonio Salieri also permitted the slow yet steady disappearance of his works from the repertoire, leaving an empty space that was largely filled by
the music of Gioachino Rossini. The various documents presented allow us to retrace that
fundamental moment, which is also described in Le Haydine and Le Rossiniane by Giuseppe
Carpani, a valuable and particularly reliable witness to the musical changes of those times.

19. RUDOLPH ANGERMUELLER
In the last years 10 documents were found.