"Did Salieri Kill Mozart?" by Agnes Selby, in Quadrant (Jan.–Feb. 1998), 46 George St., Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia.

Popular history has not been kind to Antonio Salieri (1750–1825). A favorite of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and one of the leading composers of operas in late-18th-century Vienna, he is now remembered as the jealous musical mediocrity who poisoned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91).

Leaving aside the question of music, the notion that Salieri murdered Mozart is a great injustice, according to Selby, a biographer of Mozart’s wife, Constanze. It is the product of Viennese Kaffeeklattsch society gossip that was repeated in an 1823 newspaper story and then took wing with Pushkin’s 1830 play The Murderer Salieri and a later opera. In the 20th century, playwright Peter Shaffer revived the Salieri-as-poisoner theme, and Amadeus, the 1984 film made from his play, gave it worldwide currency.

Salieri himself emphatically denied the 1823 story. In fact, Selby writes, he was "puzzled by the accusation. He had resigned from the Viennese Opera in 1790, well before Mozart’s death during the following year. What would he have gained by Mozart’s death? At the time Salieri’s fame as an opera composer was far more widely spread than Mozart’s, who was not even appointed to the position Salieri had vacated at the Viennese Opera."

When the little-known Mozart arrived in Vienna in 1781, Salieri was already touring Europe, conducting one of his own operas at the opening of La Scala in Milan. He returned with the applause of the whole continent ringing in his ears. He had been a favorite of the emperor almost from the day he arrived in Vienna as a teenager recognized for his immense talent. Salieri’s place was secure. But as Mozart’s star rose—he was named court composer in 1787—so did the level of gossip about the "German outsider," and Salieri has been seen as a source. Some writers have claimed, for example, that he opposed the premiere of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in 1786.

Nonsense, says Selby. Salieri actually revived Figaro in 1789 and frequently conducted Mozart compositions. Although not friends, the two men had a cordial relationship, Selby says. In 1789, Salieri was Mozart’s guest at a performance of The Magic Flute, and a flattered Mozart reported to his wife that "Salieri listened and watched most attentively and there was not a single number that did not call forth from him a ‘bravo’ or ‘bello.’ " In 1822, a visiting journalist found Salieri still enthusiastic about Mozart’s work. (Salieri also taught Mozart’s son, not to mention Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt.)

Mozart’s untimely death at age 35 aroused suspicions of foul play. But "in the light of contemporary evidence, one can only be amazed that Mozart survived as long as he did," Selby observes. He had suffered everything from smallpox to rheumatic fever, and colds with "repeated renal complications." Indeed, modern medical investigators believe it was kidney failure occasioned by Henoch-Schönlein purpura, not a dose of poison, that killed the great composer.