Mozart and Salieri

An opera in one act by Rimsky-Korsakov

with vocal works by Mozart

Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera premiered in 1898, based on a play by Pushkin. It’s a compact undertaking (just two singing roles, with a run time of barely 45 minutes) If Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov were alive today, he would have to smile at the enormous success of Peter Shaffer’s Broadway hit, ”Amadeus.” Or would he, like the wittily embittered Antonio Salieri whom ”Amadeus” so brilliantly immortalizes, gnash his teeth in envy? For in 1897 – fully 84 years ago – Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a fine little one-act opera, ”Mozart and Salieri,” that covers the same territory as ”Amadeus”’: the rumor that Salieri, official composer for the Hapsburg court in Vienna, poisoned Mozart out of envy for his musical talent. But ”Mozart and Salieri” passed almost unnoticed outside Russia – undeservedly so.