Mozart and Salieri (opera)

Mozart and Salieri
Opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Vasiliy Shkafer as Mozart and Fyodor Shalyapin as Salieri in the premiere
Native title
Russian: Моцарт и Сальери
LanguageRussian
Based onMozart and Salieri
by Alexander Pushkin
Premiere
1898 (1898)

Mozart and Salieri (Russian: Моцарт и Сальери, romanized: Motsart i Salyeri listen) is a one-act opera in two scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, written in 1897 to a Russian libretto taken almost verbatim from Alexander Pushkin's 1830 verse drama of the same name.

The story follows the apocryphal legend that Antonio Salieri poisoned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart out of jealousy over the latter's music.[1] Rimsky-Korsakov incorporated quotations from Mozart's Requiem and Don Giovanni into the score. Richard Taruskin has placed this opera in the historical context of the development of the realistic tradition in Russian opera.[2]

  1. ^ Davies, Peter J., "Mozart's Illnesses and Death - 2. The Last Year and the Fatal Illness" (October 1984). The Musical Times, 125 (1700): pp. 554-557, 559-561.
  2. ^ Taruskin, Richard (1970). "Realism as Preached and Practiced: The Russian Opera Dialogue". The Musical Quarterly. LVI (3): 431–454. doi:10.1093/mq/LVI.3.431.