Antonio Salieri

May 7, 1825: Italian composer and conductor Antonio Salieri died in Vienna at age seventy-four. He had been committed to medical care and suffered dementia for the last year and a half of his life. A pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera, he was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages and helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary. He was also one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, his pupils including Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Contrary to "Amadeus", he did not have a murderous rivalry with Mozart and did not poison him to death.

http://www.salieri-online.com/bio1.php

[Portrait by Joseph Willibrord Mähler]