On this date in 1778, the world’s most famous opera house, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala (La Scala for short), was opened with “L’Europa Riconosciuta,” or “Europa Revealed,” a work composed especially for the occasion by Antonio Salieri. What better opportunity to remind you that this year’s Bard Music Festival, “Mozart and His World,” will commence this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY?

Playwright Peter Shaffer and his forebears (notably Pushkin) would have us believe that a rivalry between the two composers drove a jealous Salieri to scheme “the monster” into an early grave. But the actual relationship between the two was much more nuanced, with Salieri promoting Mozart’s works and even instructing one of his children (as well as Beethoven, Hummel, Czerny, Schubert, and Liszt). Mozart and Salieri even collaborated on a work, rediscovered in 2015, “Per la ricuperate salute di Ofelia” (“For the recovered health of Ophelia”), which will be heard at the festival.

In the theater and at the movies (and now television), there is no obligation for artists to adhere to historical fact in pursuit of their own dramatic ends. But I’m confident the scholars at Bard are not going to let the enduring Salieri legend slip past without comment.

Bard missed a trick in not reviving Salieri’s La Scala opera. Instead, the festival will conclude with the Mozart opera most performed during his lifetime – not “Figaro,” “Don Giovanni,” “Cosi,” or “The Magic Flute,” but “The Abduction from the Seraglio.”

Even so, while the focus is always on the music, the Bard experience is so much more. The programming – a careful juxtaposition of works and composers – is further illuminated by biographical, historical, and musicological context.

This year, there are a few more familiar selections than has been the custom (the subject is, after all, Mozart), but there are more than enough detours to maintain interest. And all the concerts are organized around a particular theme. It’s possible for one to go to Bard either for the deep dive, attending preconcert talks and panels and chatting up the resident scholars, or for the simple diversion and enjoyment of musicmaking at a very high level in two venues, on a pleasant, green campus situated in the Hudson Valley against the backdrop of the Catskills.

Some of Mozart’s well-known works will be presented to establish context, but there will be plenty of music I guarantee you will have never heard and composers you will only know perhaps from reading about them in music histories.

As more detailed information has become available, I am delighted to find that Princeton’s Scott Burnham will be among the visiting scholars, Byron Adams will deliver the pre-concert talk for this Saturday afternoon’s concert, “Fathers and Sons” (featuring music of Mozart’s dad, Leopold, and some by the Bach boys), and pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform two Mozart concertos on Saturday night (alongside works by Christoph Willibald Gluck and Josef Myslivecek).

Salieri wouldn’t be the only one envious to attend.

“Mozart and His World” will be held at Bard College August 7-16. Here’s the complete schedule at a glance.

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/what-we-do/bard-music-festival/

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IMAGE: Illustration for Pushkin’s “Mozart and Salieri,” 1830