Mikhail Vrubel. Salieri Pours Poison Into A Mozart’s Glass.1884. State Russian Museum

Mikhail Vrubel. Salieri Pours Poison Into A Mozart’s Glass.
1884. State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Antonio Salieri (1750 – 1825) was a central figure in the musical world of late eighteenth-century Vienna. Appointed by the Habsburg court as director of the Italian opera, he also served as the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824.

Salieri’s place in popular imagination as Mozart’s nemesis and even alleged murderer goes at least as far back as 1832, when Alexander Pushkin published his short poetic drama “Mozart and Salieri”. There, Pushkin has Salieri murdering Mozart by pouring poison in his drink, after acknowledging the latter’s undisputed musical genius. As Salieri exclaims in Pushkin’s play:

What profundity!
What symmetry and what audacity!
You, Mozart, are a god — and you don’t know it.
But I, I know.

However there is very little historical evidence found so far suggesting this theory is true. Moreover, rumour that Mozart had been poisoned by Salieri started to spread decades after Mozart’s death, further enhancing the theories behind Salieri’s alleged wicked character and malicious motives.