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15 February 2016, 14:50 | Updated: 24 February 2016, 09:53
Everyone likes to think of Mozart and Salieri as huge rivals, but it turns out they actually wrote a cantata together.
A discovery in the Czech National Museum has called into question the long-debated rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri: a score for a cantata, apparently written together by the two composers.
A spokesperson for the museum, Sarka Dockalova, told AFP that the opera was “a really valuable work... long thought to have been lost.”
“It's a joint composition by Mozart and Salieri, a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte put to music.”
Scholars remain disdainful of the notion that Mozart and Salieri were rivals, a legend that has gained traction thanks to the composers’ portrayal in the film Amadeus.
Persistent rumours also include Salieri’s supposed role in Mozart’s death - some believe that the elder composer poisoned Mozart in a fit of jealousy over his prodigious talent.
Now that it's been discovered, someone has inevitably recorded it: