DBWI : Antonio Salieri did not poison Mozart

Yuelang

Banned
OOC: Yes, the POD for this DBWI is simple, Antonio Salieri really poison Mozart, and Mozart actually buried in clear, marked, non excavated grave, enough for 20th century investigators to gain the sample of his remains and finally confirm the murder. Salieri also keep a set of diaries that only discovered posthumously somewhere late in 19th century that gave us his written confession.

IC:

As you know, 20th century investigations on the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart proves that the high amount of Arsenic within his remains matches the confession written inside the diary of Antonio Salieri, his murderer.

While the murder didn't even get caught in his lifetime, and even Salieri later end up tutoring Mozart's son Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart in the arts of music (and from his diary he write this as the result of his guilt that he agreed to tutor him without payments). What resulted on this murder is certain, the world lost one genius in musical talents because of the others' envy.

Still some of their contemporaries actually did suspect the murder, but cannot really touch Salieri because of his closeness to the court and the Emperor, but still, 1830 play of Alexander Pushkin, "Mozart and Salieri" managed to shed some early light on this murder case (despite the artistic liberty taken by pushkin over his portayal of Mozart and Salieri).

So, what if Antonio Salieri actually managed to rein his envy and choose to not poison Mozart?
 
OOC: You'd need Alien Space Bats to hijack Salieri's brain and fundamentally change his personality. From Maynard Solomon's Mozart: A life,

...even with Mozart and Salieri being rivals for certain jobs, there is very little evidence that the relationship between the two composers was at all acrimonious beyond this, especially after 1785 or so when Mozart had become established in Vienna. Rather, they appeared to usually see each other as friends and colleagues and supported each other's work. For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788 he revived Figaro instead of bringing out a new opera of his own; and when he went to the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790 he had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even composed a cantata for voice and piano together, called Per la ricuperata salute di Ophelia, which celebrated the return to stage of the singer Nancy Storace. This work has been lost, although it had been printed by Artaria in 1785. Mozart's Davide penitente (1785), his Piano Concerto KV 482 (1785), the Clarinet Quintet (1789) and the 40th Symphony (1788) had been premiered on the suggestion of Salieri, who supposedly conducted a performance of it in 1791. In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri in his carriage and drove them both to the opera; about Salieri's attendance at his opera The Magic Flute, speaking enthusiastically: "He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was not a piece that didn't elicit a 'Bravo!' or 'Bello!' out of him [...]."

This so-called "point of divergence" is as likely as Lyndon B. Johnson becoming jealous of Kennedy's bedroom escapades, organizing the assassination, and leaving evidence behind in his diary. A Salieri conspiracy makes for good drama, and I love Amadeus as much as the next guy, but it has zero basis in fact, and stains the reputation of a great composer who trained many even greater composers of the next generation, including Beethoven, Liszt, and Schubert.

As far as a marked grave goes, Mozart would need noble blood to be buried without fear of excavation, also an unlikely turn of events in the Austrian Empire.
 
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