Birthplace of Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri was born in Legnago on 18 August 1750. He was the seventh son of the merchant Antonio Salieri and his second wife Anna Maria Scachi. Salieri senior, raised in a family where there was no lack of musical suggestions, soon decided to start his son to study the violin. In 1766, after the death of his parents, Antonio Salieri left Legnago for Venice where he was taken under the protection of the noble Giovanni Mocenigo who took care of his training. Ferdinando Pacini, tenor of the chapel of San Marco, in May 1766 introduced him to the Viennese chamber composer Florian Leopold Gaßmann who took him with him to Vienna. From there the career of the young composer from Legnano took off. He died in Vienna on May 7, 1825.

The house where Salieri was born, considerably altered, is still visible today, only from the outside, in via Disciplina (a plaque commemorates the birth of the famous musician); the original entrance portal is instead located in the courtyard of Palazzo Fioroni.

A few steps from Salieri's birthplace stood the ancient fortress theater, probably built during the second half of the 1600s. The "municipal place", as it is often called in the sources, was public and was located in the so-called Contrada Teatro, between the Contrada del Duomo and the Contrada della Disciplina (today roughly on the corner of via Disciplina and via Rosselli). The ancient theater, in which Salieri also played in 1807, during his only visit to Legnago, was abandoned in 1903 due to precarious static conditions; it became a barracks for firefighters and was then definitively destroyed by the bombings of the Second World War. After a short period in which the people of Leghorn remained in fact without a real stable theater, the need for a place suitable for opera performances and the urban growth of the city was felt at the beginning of the twentieth century by the anonymous theater company. A new and ambitious project was thus defined during 1911; in 1914 the structure of the new building was already at a good point when the works had to be interrupted for the outbreak of the Great War. They were later resumed but the theater was only able to open its doors in 1933. The following year the title was given to the famous musician Antonio Salieri who still distinguishes the great theater in via XX Settembre.

In via Disciplina, just in front of the musician's house, there was also a church, built in the mid-thirteenth century and then restored several times. In 1640 the structure on an octagonal plan was enlarged (typical of buildings contra pestem). The disciplined gathered there, for religious practices and public penances that were inflicted. The building was demolished in 1892 to make way for the road connecting the bridge; today only the bell tower remains.

To continue the tour on the places of Salieri click here: SALIERI THEATER
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