Rediscovering Antonio Salieri’s final opera La bella Selvaggia
Hidden within the holdings of the Austrian National Library is a manuscript document authored by Antonio Salieri in 1802. It embodies a letter of sorts, addressed to “that person who will one day mount the world première of this opera”. For said opera’s two acts, the imperial court kapellmeister provided precise instructions concerning individual arias’ and ensembles’ intended effects, modulations, the instrumental ensemble, and how the various characters should be portrayed. The voice heard here is that of a composer who, realising that he would not live to see his final work for the stage premièred, took pains to lay down instructions that might be read by an unknown recipient in the future. Now, 224 years later, Salieri’s letter has received a response of sorts: this past May witnessed the world première of La bella Selvaggia in Valladolid, Spain as a co-production of the mdw’s Antonio Salieri Department of Vocal Studies and Vocal Research in Music Education, the Spanish university UNIR, and Fundación FEME.
The fact that the origins of this response lay in Vienna, of all places, is thoroughly in keeping with a story that began long ago. The young Antonio Salieri was brought to this city by Florian Leopold Gassmann following the premature death of his parents. At the imperial court, Gassmann’s pupil went on to become one of the most influential composers of his era—and simultaneously one of the most dedicated teachers in Viennese musical life. Salieri taught an entire generation of singers, frequently without remuneration. In doing so, he left his mark on music education in Vienna far beyond his own main sphere of artistic activity in the theatrical realm. It was at his initiative that the Singing School of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde—from which the organisation’s Conservatory and today’s mdw would eventually go forth—was founded in 1817. Consequently, the mdw department that now bears his name and has staged his final opera is a direct heir to Salieri’s pedagogical legacy.
La bella Selvaggia tells of a Spanish expedition that encounters an indigenous community on an Atlantic island. Initial interactions between the two groups soon develop into a web of love, jealousy, status, and power, at the centre of which stands the young Zeda. What begins as a colonial narrative culminates in an Enlightenment-inspired punchline: the Spanish commander Don Parafonio ultimately realises that love, jealousy, envy, and unfounded fear of the unfamiliar are human impulses shared by all, regardless of origin, gender, or faith. This message, somewhat reminiscent of the French Revolutionary motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité”, concludes a work that the imperial court kapellmeister composed in 1802—during a period of profound political upheaval.
The journey toward this opera’s world première originated with an encounter in Vienna. To mark the bicentennial of Salieri’s death, the Antonio Salieri Department had organised a series of special events in early 2025 that featured a symposium, scholarly lectures, master classes, and performances of works including Salieri’s Requiem and the opera Prima la musica e poi le parole. In this context, the conductor, musicologist, and Salieri scholar Ernesto Monsalve came all the way from Valladolid together with a group of his students to see Prima la musica performed. Shortly thereafter, Monsalve proposed the idea of mounting a co-production. Planning began in the summer of 2025, and internal auditions at the department to cast the solo roles for the performances in Valladolid followed in October. For the Antonio Salieri Department, an international opera project entailed entering entirely new territory—an undertaking coordinated on the Viennese side by Alexander Mayr and Amira El-Hamalawi.
Over the winter months, the singers worked together with Stephen Delaney and György Handl on their solo numbers, ensemble scenes, and recitatives. Piano student Iulia Cusnir accompanied their rehearsals on the harpsichord, and she also played continuo for the recitatives in the performances themselves. February and April of this year then saw stage director Alberto Trijueque come from Spain for two intensive rehearsal phases to develop the staging concept together with the soloists, a process in which assistant director Muhamed Hrustanovic provided support.
It was ultimately on 2 and 3 May 2026 that the opera’s first-ever public performances took place at the sold-out Teatro Calderón. Under the musical direction of Ernesto Monsalve, the Joven Orquesta Sinfónica de Valladolid and the choir of the Escuela de Arte de Valladolid completed the team that put Salieri’s final opera onstage. Both the audience and the press celebrated this rediscovery with great enthusiasm.
For Valladolid and Vienna, the twelve Antonio Salieri Department students Erica Alberini, Aaron Bauer, Mathias Crazzolara, Simon Helm, Susanna Hoppe, Anna Maria Krismer, Moritz Merten, Benjamin Prieger, Katharina Rothen, Markus Schiendorfer, Tanja Weiß, and Heidrun Wurm have been cast in the solo roles. And with this, Salieri’s previously unperformed work is affording a new generation of students and student-singers a unique artistic and educational experience more than two centuries after his passing. Particularly for the Antonio Salieri Department’s IGP students, the production of La bella Selvaggia embodies what Salieri himself stood for in a most special way: musical practice, vocal training, and a pedagogical approach to passing on a living art form. This historically significant world première has thus become an integral part of these students’ studies—with the stage doubling as a classroom.
La bella Selvaggia is now set to return to the city of its creation on 15 and 16 September 2026, when Salieri’s final opera will be heard for the first time in Austria at Schlosstheater Schönbrunn. And with this, a story sent into the future by Salieri in his letter of 1802 comes full circle right where it began. His unknown addressee has replied.
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