title: IMI Galil

text: When the IDF began the process of procuring a new, automatic rifle, the AK-47 was considered, but the difficulty of procurement limited its viability. Hence the IDF specifically sought a weapon that would offer the same benefits as AK-47, such as low maintenance requirements, but would also have the accuracy of the M16 and FN FAL. The would-be standard weapon was originally nicknamed the "Balashnikov". Several weapons were tendered to the Israeli Army, in response to its specifications for a standard-issue assault rifle. These included the M16A1 and Stoner 63 from the USA, and the HK33 (West Germany). An indigenous design was offered by Uziel Gal, creator of the Uzi submachine gun. This was found complex and unreliable.


title: IMI Galil

text: The successful design was offered by Yisrael Galil, based on the 7.62×39mm Valmet Rk 62, an AK-47 derivative from Finland. (The first Galils were manufactured with Valmet Rk 62 receivers.) At the time, the US was replacing European countries (especially France) as Israel's main partner and weapons supplier. Hence, Galil's rifle was chambered for the US 5.56×45mm round (originally the US M193 55-grain version). Tests conducted from the end of the 1960s to the early 1970s led to Galili's rifle emerging as the winner. However, issuance of the Galil was delayed by the sudden onset of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.


title: IMI Galil

text: Although the Galil was the official service rifle of Israel from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, it was never the principal rifle used (in terms of numbers). Around 1975, 60,000 M16A1s from the U.S. Military Aid Program (MAP) began to arrive in Israel that were quickly integrated into IDF service. The cost of producing the Galil for all IDF forces was very expensive, and Israel continued to purchase M16s and later M4s with military credit from the US, which had replaced many Galils then in service. In general, Israeli troops preferred the M16, because it was lighter and more accurate, if not quite as rugged and reliable. When the M4 came along, this weapon (with its short length and light weight) became even more attractive, along with the M4's versatility in using different optics without losing zeroing when the weapon was disassembled, plus other rail-mounted accessories. The M16 and M4 also proved to be better suited to the grenade launching role, using the US M203 integrated 40 mm launcher. Israeli paratroops in particular preferred the M4 carbine to the Galil, while the M16 was retained for training recruits, reservists, Artillery Corps, and the Armored Corps (Heil HaShiryon).


title: IMI Galil

text: By 2000, both the Galil ARM and AR variants were phased out from standard issue and replaced by M4 and M16 variants. The Galil SAR ("G'lilon") was kept in use by some rear-line services, including the Knesset Guard and the Artillery and Armored Corps, until around 2004.


title: IMI Galil

text: For a short time, the Galil was licensed by NWM (Nederlandsche Wapen-en Munitiefabriek) De Kruithoorn N.V. for sales to a NATO country.


title: IMI Galil

text: Currently they are only manufactured in Colombia by Indumil, alongside the Galil Ace and the Galil Córdova, the latter of which was designed by Indumil.


title: IMI Galil

text: The Galil series of rifles are selective fire weapons operated by a Kalashnikov-pattern gas-driven piston system with no regulator. The weapon is locked with a rotary bolt with two locking lugs that lock into recesses milled into the receiver.


title: IMI Galil

text: When fired, a portion of the propellant gases are evacuated into the gas cylinder through a port, drilled at a 30° angle in the barrel, and a channel in the gas block. The high-pressure gases drive the piston rod (which is attached to the bolt carrier) rearward. During this rearward movement, a cam slot machined into the bolt carrier engages a cam pin on the bolt and rotates the bolt, unlocking the action. The arrangement of parts on the bolt carrier assembly provides for a degree of free travel, allowing gas pressure in the barrel to drop to a safe level before unlocking. To the immediate rear of the chrome-plated piston head is a notched ring which provides a reduced bearing surface and alleviates excess gas build-up. As the bolt carrier travels back, it compresses the return spring guided in a hollowed section of the bolt carrier and the return energy contained in the spring drives the moving assembly back forward, stripping a new round from the magazine and locking the action. The cocking handle is attached to the bolt carrier on the right side of the receiver and reciprocates with each shot; the handle is bent upwards allowing for operation with the left hand while the shooting hand remains on the pistol grip.


title: IMI Galil

text: The ejection of spent cases from the Galil is sometimes a violent action. Cases can be dented by the ejector and be thrown as much as 40 ft away from the rifle in some cases, depending on position.


title: IMI Galil

text: The Galil is hammer-fired and has a trigger mechanism patterned after the trigger used in the American M1 Garand. The rifle's fire selector switch has three positions: S-A-R. The standard AK-47 style selector is retained on the right face of the receiver, and a dual thumb-selector is present on the left face above the pistol grip for easier manipulation. Pushing the left-selector to the rear position "R" (British terminology for "repetition"), provides semi-automatic fire. Pushing it to the middle position "A" produces fully automatic fire. Pushing the lever fully forward to "S" will activate the safety. Some models use a reverse-linkage RAS mechanism that performs the opposite action; pushing forward sets the rifle to Repetition or Automatic, and pulling rearward engages the safety,


title: IMI Galil

text: The Galil prototypes used a stamped and riveted sheet metal steel receiver, but due to the higher operating pressures of the 5.56×45mm cartridge, this solution was discarded and the designers turned to a heavy milled forging. As a testament to its heritage, early prototypes were fabricated using Valmet Rk 62 receivers manufactured in Finland. All exterior metal surfaces are phosphated for corrosion resistance and then coated with a black enamel (except for the barrel, gas block and front sight tower). The machined solid steel billet action avoided cracking problems the AK-series had with steel stamped sheet actions, but this made the Galil heavier.


title: IMI Galil

text: The Gas-Block, handguard retainers and folding-stock mechanism components are cast pieces that are finish-machined and accordingly fitted. The sighting arrangements are also entirely cast and machined for greater durability. The only stamped components on the Galil are the magazine-catch, trigger guard, dust cover (on the R5 and R6 the rear handguard-retainer is stamped versus cast) and the magazines.


title: IMI Galil

text: The weapon is fitted with a high-impact plastic handguard and pistol grip and a side-folding (folds to the right side) tubular steel skeleton stock. The rifle can be used with a sound suppressor. The weapon features a bottle opener in the front handguard and wire cutter built into the bipod. The bottle opener feature was included to prevent damage to magazines being used to open bottles, due to the large civilian reservist components of the IDF. Use of magazines to open bottles was a common source of magazine lip damage with Uzi submachine guns. Wire cutters were included to reduce the time necessary for IDF troops to cut down wire fences common to rural areas in Israel.


title: IMI Galil

text: Early production models were supplied with barrels that had six right-hand grooves and a 305 mm (1:12 in) rifling twist (optimized for use with M193 ammunition), while recent production models feature a 178 mm (1:7 in) twist barrel with six right-hand grooves (used to stabilize the heavier SS109/M855 projectile). The barrel has a slotted flash suppressor with 6 ports and can be used to launch rifle grenades (such as the BT/AT 52) or mount a bayonet lug attachment (it will accept the M7 bayonet).


title: IMI Galil

text: The Galil is fed from a curved, steel box magazine with a 35-round capacity (SAR and AR versions), a 50-round capacity (ARM model) or a special color-coded 12-round magazine blocked for use exclusively with ballistite (blank) cartridges, used to launch rifle grenades. The magazine is inserted front end first in a similar manner to the AK family. An optional magazine adaptor enables the use of M16 type STANAG magazines. Some who have used the Galil ARM with the 50-round magazine have noted that it is difficult to engage targets at elevated heights while firing on the ground in the prone position due to the magazine's extended length.


title: IMI Galil

text: The L-shaped rear sight has two apertures preset for firing at 0–300 m and 300–500 m respectively (the rear sight can only be adjusted for elevation). The front post is fully adjustable for both windage and elevation zero and is enclosed in a protective hood. Low-light flip-up front blade and rear sight elements have three self-luminous tritium capsules (betalights) which are calibrated for 100 m when deployed. When the rear night sight is flipped up for use, the rear aperture sights must be placed in an offset position intermediate between the two apertures. Certain variants have a receiver-mounted dovetail adapter that is used to mount various optical sights.


title: IMI Galil

text: The standard stock found on the Galil is a rough-copy of the FN-FAL Paratrooper stock, with modifications for simpler production and ease of use. Unlike the FAL folding stock, the Galil uses no locking button and is operated entirely by a pin and spring pivoting mechanism; to fold the stock, the "L" bracket on the stock portion is pressed down to where the spring is fully compressed and the entire stock is allowed to pivot on the buttstock hinge. The same operation is done for unfolding to the stock to the open-position.


title: IMI Galil

text: The bracket and knuckle assemblies feature camming surfaces that allow the emergency unfolding of the stock by simply pulling the buttstock rearwards, however this should generally be avoided as it will wear down the mechanism rapidly over time, and lead to the stock wobbling in both positions.


title: IMI Galil

text: There were six different types of Galil folding stock (not including the Micro or Galatz models) that were utilized over time on the Galil and R4 series of weapons. Wooden AK47 type buttstocks were also offered by request, although none are known to have been used by any militaries and were mostly relegated to the civilian market.


title: IMI Galil

text: Contrary to popular belief, all Galil folding stocks are made of tubular aluminum like its FAL rendition; steel was never used, as it would have added too much additional weight, and the aluminum stocks were more than durable for standard firing and rifle-grenade usage.


title: IMI Galil

text: This variant is the standard rifle version, fitted with a high-impact plastic handguard and pistol grip, a side-folding tubular metal skeleton stock that folds to the right side (fitted to all variants except the Galil Sniper). The 5.56mm NATO version uses a 35-round magazine and a has a barrel, while the 7.62mm NATO version uses a 25-round magazine and has a barrel.


title: IMI Galil

text: This variant (aka: G'lilon) is configured with a shorter barrel. Due to having a shorter barrel, a corresponding shorter piston and gas tube as well as a unique gas block are also found on the SAR. The SAR variant saw the longest service life in the IDF, being used with the Armored Corps until 2005. The 5.56mm NATO version uses a 35-round magazine and a has a barrel. While the 7.62mm NATO version uses a 25-round magazine and has a barrel.


title: IMI Galil

text: This variant is additionally equipped with a carrying handle, folding bipod and a larger wooden handguard. The wooden handguard remains cooler in temperature during sustained automatic fire, and also has grooves for bipod storage. When folded, the bipod's legs form a speed chute for rapid magazine insertion; the bipod will form a wire cutter and the rear handguard ferrule, which retains the bipod legs, can be used to open bottles by design (in order to prevent soldiers using magazine lips for this purpose, which damaged them). The 5.56mm NATO version uses a 35-round magazine and a has a barrel, while the 7.62mm NATO version uses a 25-round magazine and has a barrel.


title: IMI Galil

text: The most recent addition to the Galil family of weapons is the MAR compact carbine, which retains the internal features of the original Galil with a completely new frame, operating system and an even shorter barrel. Introduced to the public at the second International Defence Industry Exhibition in Poland in 1994, the weapon was developed for use with the army and police special units, vehicle crews, army staff, special operations personnel and airborne infantry.


title: IMI Galil

text: The MAR, or the Micro Galil, is a reduced-size version of the Galil SAR (706 mm stock extended / 465 mm folded), weighing 2.98 kg (6.57 pounds) empty. Compared to the original carbine, the MAR has a shortened barrel (210 mm), receiver, piston, gas tube and foregrip. The firearm is fed from a 35-round steel magazine which can be clipped together to increase reload speed. The MAR has a cyclic rate of fire of around 650–750 RPM (rounds per minute), which is a bit higher than the full sized rifles. An optional magazine adapter inserted inside the magazine well allows the use of standard 20- and 30-round M16 magazines. The lever safety and fire selector (located on both sides of the receiver) has four settings: "S"—weapon is safe, "A"—automatic fire, "B"—3-round burst, "R"—semi-automatic mode. The barrel has a multifunction muzzle device. The MAR is equipped with a folding tubular aluminum stock and a flip aperture sight with two settings: 0–300 m and beyond 300 m. The MAR can also be equipped with a night vision device (attached through an adapter mounted to the left side of the receiver), a daytime optical sight (mounted via a receiver cover adapter), low-light sights with tritium illuminated dots, a vertical forward grip with integrated laser pointer, silencer and a nylon sling. Upon request, the weapon can be supplied with a bolt catch, plastic magazines weighing 0.164 kg or an enlarged trigger guard for use with gloves.


title: IMI Galil

text: The MAR has undergone several changes over time, and it is worth noting that it may also be found with a polymer-coated aluminum stock or an all-polymer stock. The Model 699 is available with a 267 mm barrel and optional left-side charging handle which is welded onto the left side of the bolt carrier and protrudes through a slot cut in the receiver cover that is covered by a spring-loaded cover while the bolt carrier is forward.


title: IMI Galil

text: The 7.62mm Galil Sniper (aka: "Galil Tzalafim" or ""Galatz"") is a derivative of the ARM that is used in conjunction with high-quality 7.62×51mm NATO ammunition for consistent accuracy.


title: IMI Galil

text: The precision rifle is a semi-automatic-only rifle with a similar operating system to other Galil variants, but optimised for accuracy. The rifle is fed from a proprietary 25-round box magazine. It uses a heavy-profile match barrel that is heavier than that used on other variants. It is fitted with a multi-functional muzzle device, which acts as both a flash suppressor and a muzzle brake. It can be replaced with a sound suppressor, which requires the use of subsonic ammunition for maximum effectiveness.


title: IMI Galil

text: The weapon was modified with a two-stage trigger mechanism with an adjustable pull force, a wooden buttstock that folds to the right side of the weapon and a heavy-duty bipod, mounted to the forward base of the receiver housing that folds beneath the handguard when not in use. The buttstock is fully adjustable in length and height and features a variable-height cheek riser. The rifle comes with mechanical iron sights and an adapter used to mount a telescopic day sight (Nimrod 6×40) or a night sight. The mount is quick-detachable and capable of retaining zero after remounting. The precision rifle is stored in a rugged transport case that comes with an optical sight, mount, filters, two slings (for carrying and firing) and a cleaning kit. Recent production models feature synthetic plastic furniture and a skeletonized metal stock.


title: IMI Galil

text: The Galatz was first introduced in 1983. The SR-99 is a modernized version of the Galatz featuring an adjustable skeleton stock instead of a wooden stock, synthetic handguard, and a synthetic pistol grip. It is somewhat less rugged, but more ergonomic.


title: IMI Galil

text: The Italian firearms manufacturing firm Vincenzo Bernardelli manufactured under license quantities of the Galil assault rifle in two different models for governmental use in the 1980s. The Bernardelli Mod.377 VB-STD assault rifle was an outright clone of the Galil AR/ARM variant.


title: IMI Galil

text: The Bernardelli Mod.378 VB-SR assault carbine was a modified clone of the Galil SAR with a different magazine well that accepted STANAG magazines, much similar in concept and look to the above-mentioned optional magazine adapter currently available for the Israeli-made models, except that the Bernardelli VB-SR could be manufactured with permanent STANAG magazine well modification on demand. The rifles competed to the trial for the adoption of a new 5.56×45mm NATO caliber rifle, but lost to the Beretta 70/90 assault weapons system.


title: IMI Galil

text: Both rifles have the A-R-S trigger group (S-E-F; Safe, Semi-Auto, Full-Auto). The STD can be adopted to mount the M203.


title: IMI Galil

text: The MA series, which means Myanmar Army, are Myanmar variants of the Galil assault rifle with some localised modifications produced with assistance from Israel. The series are sometimes referred to as the EMERK-3. The rifles are manufactured by Myanmar Fritz Werner Industries.


title: IMI Galil

text: The MA series was introduced with wooden handguards, whereas initial models were made with brown polymer furniture and rounded, smooth pistol grips. Later versions were produced with black furniture and clear cut Galil grips, designated as the Mk II. The bipod was not made standard, with the MA-1's cleaning kit stored in a hollow space in the buttstock.


title: IMI Galil

text: Serial production started in 2002 after signing an agreement with IMI. The assault rifles were mostly made at Ka Pa Sa No 1 or DI-1, a factory located near Inya Lake. The MA rifles are made with ventilated handguards and horizontal charging handles, unlike the Galil which has a vertical charging handle. MA rifles are compatible with Galil magazines.


title: IMI Galil

text: By 2009, it was reported that the army was almost fully equipped with the MA series. MA rifles have also been seen usage by the Karen National Liberation Army and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, captured from Myanmar army forces or from defecting soldiers.


title: IMI Galil

text: The Vektor R4 is a South African variant of the Galil ARM assault rifle with several modifications; notably, both the stock and magazine are made of a high-strength polymer and the stock was lengthened, adapting the weapon for the average South African soldier.


title: IMI Galil

text: The South African Navy, South African Air Force and South African Police Service adopted a short carbine version of the 5.56mm Galil SAR, which was license-manufactured as the R5. The R5, when compared to the larger R4, has a barrel that is shorter, together with a shorter gas system and handguard. It also lacks a bipod, and the flash hider does not support rifle grenades.


title: IMI Galil

text: In the 1990s, an even more compact personal defence weapon variant of the R5 was developed for armored vehicle crews, designated the R6, which has a further reduced barrel and a shortened gas cylinder and piston assembly.


title: IMI Galil

text: "Lyttleton Ingenieurs Werke" (LIW)/Denel Land Systems (DLS) also introduced a line of semi-automatic variants of the R4, R5 and R6 called the LM4, LM5 and LM6 respectively, built for civilian and law enforcement users.


title: IMI Galil

text: The R4's parts can be interchanged with the Galil ARM with Valmet rifle magazine made for 5.56 NATO caliber being usable for the R4.


title: IMI Galil

text: The FFV 890 C is a Swedish assault rifle based on the Galil SAR, which was manufactured by . The rifle was FFV's entry to the Swedish Armed Forces trials for the new 5.56 mm assault rifle in 1979–1980; in the initial tests, IMI manufactured Galil ARM and SAR renamed as FFV 890 had participated in its stead. Despite the FFV 890 C being superior to the other final contestant in the field trials, FN FNC, the FNC was chosen due to lower manufacturing costs. Due to the loss in the trials, it was never widely adopted anywhere, and saw only limited use within the Swedish police.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Antonio Salieri (18 August 17507 May 1825) was an Italian classical composer, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 until 1792, Salieri dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna. During his career, he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Eberl, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart were among the most famous of his pupils. Salieri's music slowly disappeared from the repertoire between 1800 and 1868 and was rarely heard after that period until the revival of his fame in the late 20th century. This revival was due to the fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus" (1979) and its 1984 film version. The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 at the age of 35 was followed by rumors that he and Salieri had been bitter rivals, and that Salieri had poisoned the younger composer, yet it has been suggested this is false, and it is likely that they were, at least, mutually respectful peers.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Antonio Salieri was born on August 18, 1750, to Antonio Salieri and his wife, Anna Maria. Salieri started his musical studies in his native town of Legnago; he was first taught at home by his older brother Francesco Salieri (a former student of the violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini), and he received further lessons from the organist of the Legnago Cathedral, Giuseppe Simoni, a pupil of Padre Giovanni Battista Martini. Salieri remembered little from his childhood in later years except for passions for sugar, reading, and music. He twice ran away from home without permission to hear his elder brother play violin concertos in neighboring churches on festival days (resulting in the loss of his beloved sugar), and he recounted being chastised by his father after failing to greet a local priest with proper respect. Salieri responded to the reprimand by saying the priest's organ playing displeased him because it was in an inappropriately theatrical style. Sometime between 1763 and 1764, both of Salieri's parents died, and he was briefly taken in by an anonymous brother, a monk in Padua, and then for unknown reasons in 1765 or 1766, he became the ward of a Venetian nobleman named Giovanni Mocenigo (which Giovanni is at this time unknown), a member of the powerful and well connected Mocenigo family. It is possible that Salieri's father and Mocenigo were friends or business associates, but this is obscure. While living in Venice, Salieri continued his musical studies with the organist and opera composer Giovanni Battista Pescetti, then following Pescetti's sudden death he studied with the opera singer Ferdinando Pacini (or Pasini). It was through Pacini that Salieri gained the attention of the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, who, impressed with his protege's talents and concerned for the boy's future, took the young orphan to Vienna, where he personally directed and paid for the remainder of Salieri's musical education.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on 15 June 1766. Gassmann's first act was to take Salieri to the Italian Church to consecrate his teaching and service to God, an event that left a deep impression on Salieri for the rest of his life. Salieri's education included instruction in Latin and Italian poetry by Fr. Don Pietro Tommasi, instruction in the German language, and European literature. His music studies revolved around vocal composition and thoroughbass. His musical theory training in harmony and counterpoint was rooted in Johann Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum", which Salieri translated during each Latin lesson. As a result, Salieri continued to live with Gassmann even after Gassmann's marriage, an arrangement that lasted until the year of Gassmann's death and Salieri's own marriage in 1774. Few of Salieri's compositions have survived from this early period. In his old age Salieri hinted that these works were either purposely destroyed or had been lost, with the exception of a few works for the church. Among these sacred works there survives a Mass in C major written without a "Gloria" and in the antique a cappella style (presumably for one of the church's penitential seasons) and dated 2 August 1767. A complete opera composed in 1769 (presumably as a culminating study) "La vestal" ("The Vestal Virgin") has also been lost.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Beginning in 1766 Gassmann introduced Salieri to the daily chamber music performances held during Emperor Joseph II's evening meal. Salieri quickly impressed the Emperor, and Gassmann was instructed to bring his pupil as often as he wished. This was the beginning of a relationship between monarch and musician that lasted until Joseph's death in 1790. Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known as Metastasio, and Christoph Willibald Gluck during this period at the Sunday morning salons held at the home of the Martinez family. Metastasio had an apartment there and participated in the weekly gatherings. Over the next several years Metastasio gave Salieri informal instruction in prosody and the declamation of Italian poetry, and Gluck became an informal advisor, friend, and confidante. It was toward the end of this extended period of study that Gassmann was called away on a new opera commission and a gap in the theater's program allowed for Salieri to make his debut as a composer of a completely original "opera buffa". Salieri's first full opera was composed during the winter and carnival season of 1770; "Le Donne letterate" and was based on Molière's "Les Femmes Savantes" ("The Learned Ladies") with a libretto by , a dancer in the court ballet and a brother of the composer Luigi Boccherini. The modest success of this opera launched Salieri's 34-year operatic career as a composer of over 35 original dramas.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Following the modest success of ", Le Donne literate" Salieri received new commissions for writing two additional operas in 1770, both with libretti by Giovanni Boccherini. The first, a pastoral opera, "L'amore innocente" ("Innocent Love"), was a light-hearted comedy set in the Austrian mountains. The second was based on an episode from Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" – "Don Chisciotte alle Nozze di Gamace" (Don Quixote at the marriage of Camacho). In these first works, drawn mostly from the traditions of mid-century "opera buffa", Salieri showed a penchant for experimentation and for mixing the established characteristics of specific operatic genres. "Don Chisciotte" was a mix of ballet and opera buffa, and the lead female roles in "L'amore innocence" were designed to contrast and highlight the different traditions of operatic writing for soprano, even borrowing stylistic flourishes from "opera seria" in the use of coloratura in what was a short pastoral comedy more in keeping with a Roman Intermezzo. The mixing and pushing against the boundaries of established operatic genres was a continuing hallmark of Salieri's own personal style, and in his choice of material for the plot (as in his first opera), he manifested a lifelong interest in subjects drawn from classic drama and literature.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri's first great success was in the realm of serious opera. Commissioned for an unknown occasion, Salieri's "Armida" was based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem "La Gerusalemme liberata" ("Jerusalem Delivered"); it premiered on 2 June 1771. "Armida" is a tale of love and duty in conflict and is saturated in magic. The opera is set during the First Crusade and features a dramatic mix of ballet, aria, ensemble, and choral writing, combining theatricality, scenic splendor, and high emotionalism. The work clearly followed in Gluck's footsteps and embraced his reform of serious opera beginning with "Orfeo ed Euridice" and "Alceste". The libretto to "Armida" was by Marco Coltellini, the house poet for the imperial theaters. While Salieri followed the precepts set forth by Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi in the preface to "Alceste", Salieri also drew on some musical ideas from the more traditional opera seria and even opera buffa, creating a new synthesis in the process. "Armida" was translated into German and widely performed, especially in the northern German states, where it helped to establish Salieri's reputation as an important and innovative modern composer. It was also the first opera to receive a serious preparation in a piano and vocal reduction by in 1783.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: "Armida" was soon followed by Salieri's first truly popular success, a "commedia per musica" in the style of Carlo Goldoni "La Fiera di Venezia" ("The Fair of Venice"). "La Fiera" was written for Carnival in 1772 and premiered on 29 January. Here Salieri returned to his collaboration with the young Giovanni Boccherini, who crafted an original plot. "La Fiera" featured characters singing in three languages, a bustling portrayal of the Ascension-tide Fair and Carnival in Venice, and large and lengthy ensembles and choruses. It also included an innovative scene that combined a series of on-stage dances with singing from both solo protagonists and the chorus. This was a pattern imitated by later composers, most famously and successfully by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in "Don Giovanni". Salieri also wrote several bravura arias for a soprano playing the part of a middle-class character that combined "coloratura" and "concertante" woodwind solos, another innovation for comic opera that was widely imitated.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri's next two operas were not particular or lasting successes. "La Vecchia rapita" ("The Stolen Bucket") is a parody of the high flown and emotive arias found in Metastasian "opera seria". It also contains innovative orchestrations, including the first known use of three tympani. Again a classic of Renaissance literature was the basis of the libretto by Boccherini, in this case, a comic mock-epic by Tassoni, in which a war between Modena and Bologna follows the theft of a bucket. This uneven work was followed by a popular comedic success "" ("The Mistress of the Inn"), an adaptation of the classic and popular spoken stage comedy "La locandiera" by Carlo Goldoni, with the libretto prepared by Domenico Poggi.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: The majority of Salieri's modest number of instrumental works also date from this time. Salieri's instrumental works have been judged by various critics and scholars to lack the inspiration and innovation found in his writing for the stage. These orchestral works are mainly in the Galant style, and although they show some development toward the late classical, they reflect a general weakness in comparison to his operatic works of the same and later periods. These works were written for mostly unknown occasions and artists. They include two concertos for pianoforte, one in C major and one in B flat major (both 1773); a concerto for organ in C Major in two movements (the middle movement is missing from the autograph score, or perhaps, it was an improvised organ solo) (also 1773); and two concertante works: a concerto for oboe, violin and cello in D major (1770), and a flute and oboe concerto in C major (1774). These works are among the most frequently recorded of Salieri's compositions.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Upon Gassmann's death on 21 January, most likely due to complications from an accident with a carriage some years earlier, Salieri succeeded him as assistant director of the Italian opera in early 1774. On 10 October 1775 Salieri married Therese Helferstorfer, the daughter of a recently deceased financier and official of the court treasury. Sacred music was not a high priority for the composer during this stage of his career, but he did compose an Alleluia for chorus and orchestra in 1774.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: During the next three years, Salieri was primarily concerned with rehearsing and conducting the Italian opera company in Vienna and with teaching. His three complete operas written during this time show the development of his compositional skills, but included no great success, either commercially or artistically. His most important compositions during this period were a symphony in D major, performed in the summer of 1776, and the oratorio "La Passione di Gesù Cristo" with a text by Metastasio, performed during Advent of 1776.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: After the financial collapse of the Italian opera company in 1777 due to financial mismanagement, Joseph II decided to end the performance of Italian opera, French-spoken drama, and ballet. Instead, the two court-owned theaters would be reopened under new management, and partly subsidized by the Imperial Court, as a new National Theater. The re-launched theaters would promote German-language plays and musical productions that reflected Austrian (or as Joseph II would have said) German values, traditions, and outlook. The Italian opera buffa company was therefore replaced by a German-language Singspiel troupe. Joseph and his supporters of Imperial reform wanted to encourage pan-national pride that would unite his multi-lingual and ethnic subjects under one common language and hoped to save a considerable amount of money in the process. Beginning in 1778 the Emperor wished to have new works, in German, composed by his own subjects and brought on the stage with clear Imperial support. This in effect left Salieri's role as assistant court composer in a much-reduced position. Salieri also had never truly mastered the German language, and he now felt no longer competent to continue as an assistant opera director. A further blow to his career was when the spoken drama and musical Singspiel were placed on an equal footing. For the young composer, there would be few, if any, new compositional commissions to receive from the court. Salieri was left with few financial options and he began casting about for new opportunities.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: In 1778 Gluck turned down an offer to compose the inaugural opera for La Scala in Milan. Upon the suggestion of Joseph II and with the approval of Gluck, Salieri was offered the commission, which he gratefully accepted. Joseph II granted Salieri permission to take a year-long leave of absence (later extended), enabling him to write for La Scala and to undertake a tour of Italy. Salieri's Italian tour of 1778–80 began with the production of "Europa riconosciuta" ("Europa Recognized") for La Scala (revived in 2004 for the same opera house's re-opening following extensive renovations). From Milan, Salieri included stops in Venice and Rome before returning to Milan. During this tour, he wrote three new comic operas and he collaborated with Giacomo Rust on one opera, "" ("The Talisman"). Of his Italian works one, "La Scuola de' gelosi" ("The School for Jealousy"), a witty study of amorous intrigue and emotion, proved a popular and lasting international success.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Upon his return at imperial behest to Vienna in 1780, Salieri wrote one German Singspiel, "Der Rauchfangkehrer" ("The Chimney Sweep"), which premiered in 1781. Salieri's "Chimney Sweep" and Mozart's work for the same company in 1782, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), were the only two major successes to emerge from the German Singspiel experiment, and only Mozart's opera survived on the stage beyond the close of the 18th century. In 1783 the Italian opera company was revived with singers partly chosen and vetted by Salieri during his Italian tour; the new season opened with a slightly re-worked version of Salieri's recent success "La Scuola de' Pelosi". Salieri then returned to his rounds of rehearsing, composition, and teaching. However, his time at home in Vienna quickly ended when an opportunity to write an opera for Paris arose, again through the patronage of Gluck. Salieri traveled abroad to fulfill an important commission.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: The opera "Les Danaïdes" ("The Danaids") is a five-act tragédie lyrique. The plot was based on an ancient Greek legend that had been the basis for the first play in a trilogy by Aeschylus, entitled "The Suppliants". The original commission that reached Salieri in 1783–84 was to assist Gluck in finishing a work for Paris that had been all but completed; in reality, Gluck had failed to notate any of the scores for the new opera and gave the entire project over to his young friend. Gluck feared that the Parisian critics would denounce the opera by a young composer known mostly for comic pieces and so the opera was originally billed in the press as being a new work by Gluck with some assistance from Salieri, then shortly before the premiere of the opera the Parisian press reported that the work was to be partly by Gluck and partly by Salieri, and finally, after popular and critical success on stage, the opera was acknowledged in a letter to the public by Gluck as being wholly by the young Salieri. "Les Danaïdes" was received with great acclaim and its popularity with audiences and critics alike produced several further requests for new works for Paris audiences by Salieri. "Les Danaïdes" followed in the tradition of reform that Gluck had begun in the 1760s and that Salieri had emulated in his earlier opera "Armida". Salieri's first French opera contained scenes of great solemnity and festivity, but overshadowing it all was darkness and revenge. The opera depicted politically motivated murder, filial duty and love in conflict, tyrannicide, and finally eternal damnation. The opera, with its dark overture, lavish choral writing, many ballet scenes, and electrifying finale depicting a glimpse of hellish torture, kept the opera on the stage in Paris for over forty years. A young Hector Berlioz recorded the deep impression this work made on him in his "Mémoires".


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Upon returning to Vienna following his success in Paris, Salieri met and befriended Lorenzo Da Ponte and had his first professional encounters with Mozart. Da Ponte wrote his first opera libretto for Salieri, "Il ricco d'un giorno" (A rich man for a day) in 1784, which was not a success. Salieri next turned to Giambattista Casti as a librettist; a more successful set of collaborations flowed from this pairing. In the meantime, Da Ponte began working with Mozart on "Le Nozze di Figaro" ("The Marriage of Figaro"). In 1785 Salieri produced one of his greatest works with the text by Casti, "La Grotta di Trofonio" (The cave of Trophonius), the first opera buffa published in full score by Artaria. Shortly after this success, Joseph II had Mozart and Salieri each contribute a one-act opera and/or Singspiel for production at a banquet in 1786. Salieri collaborated with Casti to produce a parody of the relationship between poet and composer in "Prima la musica e poi le parole" (First the music and then the words). This short work also highlighted the typical backstage antics of two high-flown sopranos. Salieri then returned to Paris for the premiere of his tragédie Lyrique "Les Horaces" (The Horatii), which proved a failure, which was more than made up for with his next Parisian opera "Tarare", with a libretto by Beaumarchais. This was intended to be the "" of reform opera, a completely new synthesis of poetry and music that was an 18th-century anticipation of the ideals of Richard Wagner. Salieri also created a sacred cantata "Le Judgment dernier" (The Last Judgement). The success of his opera "Tarare" was such that it was soon translated into Italian at Joseph II's behest by Lorenzo Da Ponte as "Axur, re d'Ormus" (Axur, king of Hormuz) and staged at the royal wedding of Franz II in 1788.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: In 1788 Salieri returned to Vienna, where he remained for the rest of his life. In that year he became Kapellmeister of the Imperial Chapel upon the death of Giuseppe Bonno; as Kapellmeister he conducted the music and musical school connected with the chapel until shortly before his death, being officially retired from the post in 1824.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: His Italian adaptation of "Tarare", "Axur" proved to be his greatest international success. "Axur" was widely produced throughout Europe and it even reached South America with the exiled royal house of Portugal in 1824. "Axur" and his other new compositions completed by 1792 marked the height of Salieri's popularity and his influence. Just as his apogee of fame was being reached abroad, his influence in Vienna began to diminish with the death of Joseph II in 1790. Joseph's death deprived Salieri of his greatest patron and protector. During this period of imperial change in Vienna and revolutionary ferment in France, Salieri composed two additional extremely innovative musical dramas to libretti by Giovanni Casti. Due, however, to their satiric and overtly liberal political inclinations, both operas were seen as unsuitable for public performance in the politically reactive cultures of Leopold II and later Francis II. This resulted in two of his most original operas being consigned to his desk drawer, namely "Cublai, gran kan de' Tartari" ("Kublai Grand Kahn of Tartary") a satire on the autocracy and court intrigues at the court of the Russian Tsarina, Catherine the Great, and "Catilina" a semi-comic/semi-tragic account of the Catiline conspiracy that attempted to overthrow the Roman republic during the consulship of Cicero. These operas were composed in 1787 and 1792 respectively. Two other operas of little success and long-term importance were composed in 1789, and one great popular success "La cifra" ("The Cipher").


title: Antonio Salieri

text: As Salieri's political position became insecure he retired as director of the Italian opera in 1792. He continued to write new operas per imperial contract until 1804 when he voluntarily withdrew from the stage. Of his late works for the stage only two works gained wide popular esteem during his life, "Palmira, Regina di Persia" (Palmira, queen of Persia) 1795 and ' (Caesar on Pharmacusa), both drawing on the heroic and exotic success established with "Axur". His late opera based on William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "Falstaff ossia Le tre burle" (Falstaff, or the three tricks) (1799) has found a wider audience in modern times than its original reception promised. His last opera was a German-language Singspiel ' (The negroes), a melodrama set in colonial Virginia with a text by Georg Friedrich Treitschke (the author of the libretto for Beethoven's "Fidelio"); it was performed in 1804 and was a complete failure.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: When Salieri retired from the stage, he recognized that artistic styles had changed and he felt that he no longer had the creative capacity to adapt or the emotional desire to continue. Also as Salieri aged, he moved slowly away from his more liberal political stances as he saw the enlightened reform of Joseph II's reign, and the hoped-for reforms of the French revolution, replaced with more radical revolutionary ideas. As the political situation threatened and eventually overwhelmed Austria, which was repeatedly crushed by French political forces, Salieri's first and most important biographer Ignaz von Mosel described the emotional effect that this political, social, and cultural upheaval had on the composer. Mosel noted that these radical changes, especially the invasion and defeat of Austria, and the occupation of Vienna intertwined with the personal losses that struck Salieri in the same period and led to his withdrawal from operatic work. Related to this Mosel quotes the aged composer concerning the radical changes in musical taste that were underway in the age of Beethoven, "From that period [circa 1800] I realized that musical taste was gradually changing in a manner completely contrary to that of my own times. Eccentricity and confusion of genres replaced reasoned and masterful simplicity."


title: Antonio Salieri

text: As his teaching and work with the imperial chapel continued, his duties required the composition of a large number of sacred works, and in his last years, it was almost exclusively in religious works and teaching that Salieri occupied himself. Among his compositions written for the chapel were two complete sets of vespers, many graduals, offertories, and four orchestral masses. During this period he lost his only son in 1805 and his wife in 1807.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri continued to conduct publicly, including the performance on 18 March 1808 of Haydn's "The Creation" during which Haydn collapsed, and several premieres by Beethoven including the 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos and "Wellington's Victory". He also continued to help administer several charities and organize their musical events.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: His remaining secular works in this late period fall into three categories: first, large-scale cantatas and one oratorio "Habsburg" written on patriotic themes or in response to the international political situation, pedagogical works written to aid his students in voice, and finally simple songs, rounds or canons written for home entertainment; many with original poetry by the composer. He also composed one large-scale instrumental work in 1815 intended as a study in late classical orchestration: Twenty-Six Variations for the Orchestra on a Theme called La Folia di Spagna. The theme is likely folk-derived and is known as "La Folía". This simple melodic and harmonic progression had served as an inspiration for many baroque composers and would be used by later romantic and post-romantic composers. Salieri's setting is a brooding work in the minor key, which rarely moves far from the original melodic material, its main interest lies in the deft and varied handling of orchestral colors. "La Folia" was the most monumental set of orchestral variations before Brahms' "Variations on a Theme by Haydn".


title: Antonio Salieri

text: His teaching of budding young musicians continued, and among his pupils in composition (usually vocal) were Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert. He also instructed many prominent singers throughout his career, including Caterina Canzi. All but the wealthiest of his pupils received their lessons for free, a tribute to the kindness Gassmann had shown Salieri as a penniless orphan.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: In November 1823 Salieri attempted suicide. He was committed to medical care and suffered dementia for the last year and a half of his life. He died in Vienna on 7 May 1825, aged 74 and was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof on 10 May. At his memorial service on 22 June 1825, his own Requiem in C minor – composed in 1804 – was performed for the first time. His remains were later transferred to the Zentralfriedhof. His monument is adorned by a poem written by Joseph Weigl, one of his pupils:


title: Antonio Salieri

text: During his time in Vienna, Salieri acquired great prestige as a composer and conductor, particularly of opera, but also of chamber and sacred music. Among the most successful of his 37 operas staged during his lifetime were "Armida" (1771), "La fiera di Venezia" (1772), "La scuola de' gelosi" (1778), "Der Rauchfangkehrer" (1781), "Les Danaïdes" (1784), which was first presented as a work of Gluck's, "La grotta di Trofonio" (1785), "Tarare" (1787) ("Tarare" was reworked and revised several times as was "Les Danaïdes" ), "Axur, re d'Ormus" (1788), "La cifra" (1789), "Palmira, regina di Persia" (1795), "Il mondo alla rovescia" (1795), "Falstaff" (1799), and "Cesare in Farmacusa" (1800).


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri's earliest surviving work is a Mass in C major. He would write four major orchestral masses, a requiem, and many offertories, graduals, vesper settings, and sacred cantatas and oratorios. Much of his sacred music dates from after his appointment as Hofkapellmeister in 1788.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: His small instrumental output includes two piano concerti, a concerto for organ written in 1773, a concerto for flute, oboe and orchestra (1774), a triple concerto for oboe, violin and cello, and a set of twenty-six variations on "La folia di Spagna" (1815).


title: Antonio Salieri

text: In the 1780s, while Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father Leopold wrote in their letters that several "cabals" of Italians led by Salieri were actively putting obstacles in the way of Mozart's obtaining certain posts or staging his operas. For example, Mozart wrote in December 1781 to his father that "the only one who counts in [the Emperor's] eyes is Salieri". Their letters suggest that both Mozart and his father, being Austrians who resented the special place that Italian composers had in the courts of the Austrian nobility, blamed the Italians in general and Salieri in particular for all of Mozart's difficulties in establishing himself in Vienna. Mozart wrote to his father in May 1783 about Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the court poet: "You know those Italian gentlemen; they are very nice to your face! Enough, we all know about them. And if [Da Ponte] is in league with Salieri, I'll never get a text from him, and I would love to show him what I can really do with an Italian opera." In July 1783, he again wrote to his father of "a trick of Salieri's", one of several letters in which Mozart accused Salieri of trickery.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Decades after Mozart's death, a rumor began to circulate that Mozart had been poisoned by Salieri. This rumor has been attributed by some to a rivalry between the German and the Italian schools of music. Carl Maria von Weber, a relative of Mozart by marriage whom Wagner has characterized as the most German of German composers, is said to have refused to join the Ludlamshöhle (Ludlam's cave), a social club of which Salieri was a member, and avoided having anything to do with him. These rumors then made their way into popular culture. Albert Lortzing's Singspiel "Szenen aus Mozarts Leben" LoWV28 (1832) and the popular 1984 film "Amadeus" uses the cliché of the jealous Salieri trying to hinder Mozart's career.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Ironically, Salieri's music was much more in the tradition of Gluck and Gassmann than of the Italians like Paisiello or Cimarosa. In 1772, Empress Maria Theresa commented on her preference for Italian composers over Germans like Gassmann, Salieri, or Gluck. While Italian by birth, Salieri had lived in imperial Vienna for almost 60 years and was regarded by such people as the music critic Friedrich Rochlitz as a German composer.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: The biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer believes that Mozart's rivalry with Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781, when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of Princess Elisabeth of Württemberg, and Salieri was selected instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher. The following year Mozart once again failed to be selected as the princess's piano teacher. "Salieri and his tribe will move heaven and earth to put it down", Leopold Mozart wrote to his daughter Nannerl. But at the time of the premiere of "Figaro", Salieri was busy with his new French opera "Les Horaces". In addition, when Lorenzo Da Ponte was in Prague preparing the production of Mozart's setting of his "Don Giovanni", the poet was ordered back to Vienna for a royal wedding for which Salieri's "Axur, re d'Or must" would be performed. Obviously, Mozart was not pleased by this.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: The rivalry between Salieri and Mozart became publicly visible as well as audible during the opera composition competition held by Emperor Joseph II in 1786 in the Orangery at Schönbrunn. Mozart was considered the loser of this competition. Mozart's 1791 opera "The Magic Flute" echoes that competition because the Papageno–Papagena duet is similar to the Cucuzza cavatina in Salieri's "Prima la musica e poi le parole". "The Magic Flute" also echoes Salieri's music in that Papageno's whistle is based on a motif borrowed from Salieri's Concerto for Clavicembalo in B-flat major.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: However, there is also evidence attesting to Mozart and Salieri sometimes appearing to support each other's work. For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788, he chose to revive "Figaro" instead of introducing a new opera of his own, and when he attended the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790, Salieri had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even jointly composed a cantata for voice and piano, "Per la recuperate salute di Ofelia", which celebrated the return to the stage of the singer Nancy Storace. This work, although it had been printed by Artaria in 1785, was considered lost until 10 January 2016, when the "Schwäbische Zeitung" reported on the discovery by musicologist and composer Timo Jouko Herrmann of a copy of its text and music while doing research on Antonio Salieri in the collections of the Czech Museum of Music. 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 told his wife that he had picked up Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri in his carriage and driven 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 [...]."


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri, along with Mozart's protégé J. N. Hummel, educated Mozart's younger son Franz Xaver Mozart, who was born about four months before his father's death.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri and his music were largely forgotten from the 19th century until the late 20th century. This revival was due to the dramatic and highly fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus" (1979), which was given its greatest exposure in its 1984 film version, directed by Miloš Forman. His music today has regained some modest popularity via recordings. It is also the subject of increasing academic study, and a small number of his operas have returned to the stage. In addition, there is now a Salieri Opera Festival sponsored by the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and dedicated to rediscovering his work and those of his contemporaries. It is developing as an annual autumn event in his native town of Legnago, where a theatre has been renamed in his honor.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: In 2003, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli released "The Salieri Album", a CD with 13 arias from Salieri's operas, most of which had never been recorded before. Patrice Michaels sang a number of his arias on the CD "Divas of Mozart's Day". In 2008, another female opera star, Diana Damrau, released a CD with seven Salieri coloratura arias. Since 2000, there have also been complete recordings issued or re-issued of the operas "Axur Re d'Or must", "Falstaff", "Les Danaïdes", "La Locandiera", "La Grotta di Trofonio", "Prima la musica e poi le parole" and "". Salieri has yet to fully re-enter the general repertory, but performances of his works are progressively becoming more regular.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: His operas "Falstaff" (1995 production from the Schwetzingen Festival) and "Tarare" (1987 production, also from the Schwetzingen Festival) has been released on DVD. In 2004, the opera "Europa riconosciuta" was staged in Milan for the reopening of La Scala in Milan, with soprano Diana Damrau in the title role. This production was also broadcast on television.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: In November 2009, "Il mondo alla rovescia" was given its first staging in modern times at the Teatro Salieri in Legnago in a co-production between the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and the Fondazione Arena di Verona for the Salieri Opera Festival.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: From 2009 to 2011 Antonio Giarola directed the Festival. From 2009 to 2012 Antonio Giarola also directed the "Varietas Delectat", a contemporary dance show inspired by the music of Antonio Salieri.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: On 14 November 2011 in Graz, Austria, the hometown of the librettist Leopold Auenbrugger, Salieri's "Der Rauchfangkehrer" was given its first modern production. In July 2014 there was another modern production of this Salieri opera. This time it was the Pinchgut Opera of Sydney, Australia, performing it as "The Chimneysweep". "The Sydney Morning Herald" referred to it as the discovery of "a long-forgotten treasure".


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri has even begun to attract some attention from Hollywood. In 2001, his triple concerto was used in the soundtrack of "The Last Castle", featuring Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. It is a story that builds on the rivalry between a meticulous but untested officer (Gandolfini) serving as the warden of a military prison and an imprisoned but much admired and highly decorated general (Redford). The Salieri piece is used as the warden's theme music, seemingly to invoke the image of jealousy of the inferior for his superior. In 2006, the movie "Copying Beethoven" referred to Salieri in a more positive light. In this movie, a young female music student hired by Beethoven to copy out his Ninth Symphony is staying at a monastery. The abbess tries to discourage her from working with the irreverent Beethoven. She notes that she too once had dreams, having come to Vienna to study opera singing with Salieri. The 2008 film "Iron Man" used the Larghetto movement from Salieri's Piano Concerto in C major. The scene where Obadiah Stane, the archrival of Tony Stark, the wealthy industrialist turned Iron Man, tells Tony that he is being ousted from his company by the board, Obadiah plays the opening few bars of the Salieri concerto on a piano in Stark's suite.


title: Antonio Salieri

text: Salieri's life, and especially his relationship with Mozart, has been the subject of many stories, in a variety of media.


title: National Rally

text: The National Rally (, ; RN), until 2018 known as the National Front (, ; FN), is a far-right political party in France. It is the largest parliamentary opposition group in the National Assembly and the party has seen its candidate reach the second round in the 2002, 2017 and 2022 presidential elections. It is an anti-immigration party, advocating significant cuts to legal immigration and protection of French identity, as well as stricter control of illegal immigration. It also advocates for a 'more balanced' and 'independent' French foreign policy by opposing French military intervention in Africa and by distancing France from the American sphere of influence by leaving NATO's integrated command. It has opposed the European Union (EU) and its related organisations. It also supports French economic interventionism and protectionism, and its economic and social policies are often classified as left leaning; it has a zero tolerance approach towards law and order. The party has been accused of promoting xenophobia and antisemitism.


title: National Rally

text: The party was founded in 1972 to unify the French nationalist movement. Its political views are nationalist, nativist and anti-globalist. Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the party and was its leader until his resignation in 2011. While the party struggled as a marginal force for its first ten years, since 1984 it has been a major force of French nationalism. It has put forward a candidate at every presidential election but one since 1974. In 2002, Jean-Marie came second in the first round, but finished a distant second in the runoff to Jacques Chirac. His daughter Marine Le Pen was elected to succeed him as party leader in 2012. She temporarily stepped down in 2017 in order to concentrate on her presidential candidacy, but resumed her presidency after the election. She headed the party until 2021, when she temporarily resigned again. A year later, Jordan Bardella was elected as her successor.


title: National Rally

text: The party has seen a spectacular increase in its popularity and acceptance in French society in recent years. While her father was nicknamed the "Devil of the Republic" by mainstream media and sparked outrage for hate speech, including Holocaust denial and Islamophobia, Marine Le Pen pursued a policy of "de-demonisation" of the party by softening its image and trying to frame the party as being neither right nor left. She endeavoured to extract it from its far-right cultural roots and normalise it by giving it a culture of government, as well as censuring controversial members like her father, who was suspended and then expelled from the party in 2015. Following her election as the leader of the party in 2011, the popularity of the FN grew. By 2015, the FN had established itself as a major political party in France.


title: National Rally

text: At the FN congress of 2018, Marine Le Pen proposed renaming the party "Rassemblement national" (National Rally), and this was confirmed by a ballot of party members. Formerly strongly Eurosceptic, the National Rally changed policies in 2019, deciding to campaign for a reform of the EU rather than leaving it and to keep the euro as the main currency of France (together with the CFP franc for some collectivities). In 2021, Le Pen announced that she wanted to remain in the Schengen Area, citing "an attachment to the European spirit", but to reserve free movement to nationals of a European Economic Area country, excluding residents and visitors of another Schengen country.


title: National Rally

text: The party's ideological roots can be traced to both Poujadism, a populist, small business tax protest movement founded in 1953 by Pierre Poujade and right-wing dismay over the decision by French President Charles de Gaulle to abandon his promise of holding on to the colony of French Algeria, (many , including Le Pen, were part of an inner circle of returned servicemen known as ). During the 1965 presidential election, Le Pen unsuccessfully attempted to consolidate the right-wing vote around the right-wing presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the French far-right consisted mainly of small extreme movements such as , (GUD), and the (ON).


title: National Rally

text: Espousing France's Catholic and monarchist traditions, one of the primary progenitors of the party was the , founded at the end of the 19th century, and its descendants in the Restauration Nationale, a pro-monarchy group that supports the claim of the Count of Paris to the French throne.


title: National Rally

text: While the ON had competed in some local elections since 1970, at its second congress in June 1972 it decided to establish a new political party to contest the 1973 legislative elections. The party was launched on 5 October 1972 under the name National Front for French Unity ("Front national pour l'unité française"), or Front National. In order to create a broad movement, the ON sought to model the new party (as it earlier had sought to model itself) on the more established Italian Social Movement (MSI), which at the time appeared to establish a broad coalition for the Italian right. The FN adopted a French version of the MSI tricolour flame as its logo. It wanted to unite the various French far-right currents, and brought together "nationals" of Le Pen's group and Roger Holeindre's Party of French Unity; "nationalists" from Pierre Bousquet's "Militant" movement or François Brigneau's and Alain Robert's Ordre Nouveau; the anti-Gaullist Georges Bidault's Justice and Liberty movement; as well as former Poujadists, Algerian War veterans, and some monarchists, among others. Le Pen was chosen to be the first president of the party, as he was untainted with the militant public image of the ON and was a relatively moderate figure on the far-right.


title: National Rally

text: The National Front fared poorly in the 1973 legislative elections, receiving 0.5% of the national vote (although Le Pen won 5% in his Paris constituency). In 1973 the party created a youth movement, the "Front national de la jeunesse" (National Front of the Youth, FNJ). The rhetoric used in the campaign stressed old far-right themes and was largely uninspiring to the electorate at the time. Otherwise, its official program at this point was relatively moderate, differing little from the mainstream right. Le Pen sought the "total fusion" of the currents in the party, and warned against crude activism. The FNJ were banned from the party later that year. The move towards the mainstream cost it many leading members and much of its militant base.


title: National Rally

text: In the 1974 presidential election, Le Pen failed to find a mobilising theme for his campaign. Many of its major issues, such as anti-communism, were shared by most of the mainstream right. Other FN issues included calls for increased French birth rates, immigration reduction (although this was downplayed), establishment of a professional army, abrogation of the Évian Accords, and generally the creation of a "French and European renaissance." Despite being the only nationalist candidate, he failed to gain the support of a united far-right, as the various groups either rallied behind other candidates or called for voter abstention. The campaign further lost ground when the Revolutionary Communist League published a denunciation of Le Pen's alleged involvement in torture during his time in Algeria. In his first presidential election, Le Pen gained only 0.8% of the national vote.


title: National Rally

text: Following the 1974 election, the FN was obscured by the appearance of the Party of New Forces (PFN), founded by FN dissidents (largely from the ON). Their competition weakened both parties throughout the 1970s. Along with the growing influence of François Duprat and his "revolutionary nationalists", the FN gained several new groups of supporters in the late 1970s and early 1980s: Jean-Pierre Stirbois (1977) and his "solidarists", Bruno Gollnisch (1983), Bernard Antony (1984) and his Catholic fundamentalists, as well as Jean-Yves Le Gallou (1985) and the Nouvelle Droite. Following the death of Duprat in a bomb attack in 1978, the revolutionary nationalists left the party, while Stirbois became Le Pen's deputy as his solidarists effectively ousted the neo-fascist tendency in the party leadership. A radical group split off in 1980 and founded the French Nationalist Party, dismissing the FN as becoming too Zionist and Le Pen as the "puppet" of the Jews. The far right was marginalised altogether in the 1978 legislative elections, although the PFN was better off. For the first election for the European Parliament in 1979, the PFN had become part of an attempt to build a "Euro-Right" alliance of European far-right parties, and was in the end the only one of the two that contested the election. It fielded Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour as its primary candidate, while Le Pen called for voter abstention.


title: National Rally

text: For the 1981 presidential election, both Le Pen and Pascal Gauchon of the PFN declared their intentions to run. However, an increased requirement regarding obtaining signatures of support from elected officials had been introduced for the election, which left both Le Pen and Gauchon unable to stand for the election. In France, parties have to secure support from a specific number of elected officials, from a specific number of departments, in order to be eligible to run for election. In 1976, the number of required elected officials was increased fivefold from the 1974 presidential cycle, and the number of departments threefold. The election was won by François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party (PS), which gave the political left national power for the first time in the Fifth Republic; he then dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap legislative election. The PS attained its best ever result with an absolute majority in the 1981 legislative election. This "socialist takeover" led to a radicalisation in centre-right, anti-communist, and anti-socialist voters. With only three weeks to prepare its campaign, the FN fielded only a limited number of candidates and won only 0.2% of the national vote. The PFN was even worse off, and the election marked the effective end of competition from the party.


title: National Rally

text: While the French party system had been dominated by polarisation and competition between the clear-cut ideological alternatives of two political blocs in the 1970s, the two blocs had largely moved towards the centre by the mid-1980s. This led many voters to perceive the blocs as more or less indistinguishable, particularly after the Socialists' "austerity turn" ("tournant de la rigueur") of 1983, in turn inducing them to seek out to new political alternatives. By October 1982, Le Pen supported the prospect of deals with the mainstream right, provided that the FN did not have to soften its position on key issues. In the 1983 municipal elections, the centre-right Rally for the Republic (RPR) and centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) formed alliances with the FN in a number of towns. The most notable result came in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, where Le Pen was elected to the local council with 11% of the vote. Later by-elections kept media attention on the party, and it was for the first time allowed to pose as a viable component of the broader right. In a by-election in Dreux in October, the FN won 17% of the vote. With the choice of defeat to the political left or dealing with the FN, the local RPR and UDF agreed to form an alliance with the FN, creating national sensation, and together won the second round with 55% of the vote. The events in Dreux were a monumental factor for the rise of the FN.


title: National Rally

text: Le Pen protested the media boycott against his party by sending letters to President Mitterrand in mid-1982. After some exchanges of letters, Mitterrand instructed the heads of the main television channels to give equitable coverage to the FN. In January 1984, the party made its first appearance in a monthly poll of political popularity, in which 9% of respondents held a "positive opinion" of the FN and some support for Le Pen. The next month, Le Pen was for the first time invited onto a prime-time television interview programme, which he himself later deemed "the hour that changed everything". The 1984 European elections in June came as a shock, as the FN won 11% of the vote and ten seats. Notably, the election used proportional representation and was considered to have a low level of importance by the public, which played to the party's advantage. The FN made inroads in both right-wing and left-wing constituencies, and finished second in a number of towns. While many Socialists had arguably exploited the party in order to divide the right, Mitterrand later conceded that he had underestimated Le Pen. By July, 17% of opinion poll respondents held a positive opinion of the FN.


title: National Rally

text: By the early 1980s, the FN featured a mosaic of ideological tendencies and attracted figures who were previously resistant to the party. The party managed to draw supporters from the mainstream right, including some high-profile defectors from the RPR, UDF, and the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP). In the 1984 European elections, eleven of the 81 FN candidates came from these parties, and the party's list also included an Arab and a Jew (although in unwinnable positions). Former collaborators were also accepted in the party, as Le Pen urged the need for "reconciliation", arguing that forty years after the war the only important question was whether or not "they wish to serve their country". The FN won 8.7% overall support in the 1985 cantonal elections, and over 30% in some areas.


title: National Rally

text: For the 1986 legislative elections the FN took advantage of a new proportional representation system that had been imposed by Mitterrand in order to moderate a foreseeable defeat for his PS. In the election, the FN won 9.8% of the vote and 35 seats in the National Assembly. Many of its seats could be filled by a new wave of respectable political operatives, "notables", who had joined the party after its 1984 success. The RPR won a majority with smaller centre-right parties, and thus avoided the need to deal with the FN. Although it was unable to exercise any real political influence, the party could project an image of political legitimacy. Several of its legislative proposals were extremely controversial and had a socially reactionary and xenophobic character, among them attempts to restore the death penalty, expel foreigners who "proportionally committed more crimes than the French", restrict naturalisation, introduce a "national preference" for employment, impose taxes on the hiring of foreigners by French companies, and privatise Agence France-Presse. The party's time in the National Assembly effectively came to an end when Jacques Chirac reinstated the two-round system of majority voting for the next election. In the regional elections held on the same day, it won 137 seats, and gained representation in 21 of the 22 French regional councils. The RPR depended on FN support to win presidencies in some regional councils, and the FN won vice-presidential posts in four regions.


title: National Rally

text: Le Pen's campaign for the upcoming presidential election unofficially began in the months following the 1986 election. To promote his statesmanship credentials, he made trips to South East Asia, the United States, and Africa. The management of the formal campaign, launched in April 1987, was entrusted to Bruno Mégret, one of the new "notables". With his entourage, Le Pen traversed France for the entire period and, helped by Mégret, employed an American-style campaign. Le Pen's presidential campaign was highly successful; no candidates came close to rival his ability to excite audiences at rallies and boost ratings at television appearances. Using a populist tone, Le Pen presented himself as the representative of the people against the "gang of four" (RPR, UDF, PS, Communist Party), while the central theme of his campaign was "national preference". In the 1988 presidential election, Le Pen won an unprecedented 14.4% of the vote, and double the votes from 1984.


title: National Rally

text: The FN was hurt in the snap 1988 legislative elections by the return two-ballot majority voting, by the limited campaign period, and by the departure of many "notables". In the election the party retained its 9.8% support from the previous legislative election, but was reduced to a single seat in the National Assembly. Following some anti-Semitic comments made by Le Pen and the FN newspaper "National Hebdo" in the late 1980s, some valuable FN politicians left the party. Other quarrels soon also left the party without its remaining member of the National Assembly. In November 1988, general secretary Jean-Pierre Stirbois, who, together with his wife Marie-France, had been instrumental in the FN's early electoral successes, died in a car accident, leaving Bruno Mégret as the unrivalled "de facto" FN deputy leader. The FN only got 5% in the 1988 cantonal elections, while the RPR announced it would reject any alliance with the FN, now including at local level. In the 1989 European elections, the FN held on to its ten seats as it won 11.7% of the vote.


title: National Rally

text: In the wake of FN electoral success, the immigration debate, growing concerns over Islamic fundamentalism, and the "fatwa" against Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini, the 1989 "affaire du foulard" was the first major test of the relations between the values of the French Republic and Islam. Following the event, surveys found that French public opinion was largely negative towards Islam. In a 1989 legislative by-election in Dreux, FN candidate Marie-France Stirbois, campaigning on an anti-Islamism platform, returned a symbolic FN presence to the National Assembly. By the early 1990s, some mainstream politicians began employing anti-immigration rhetoric. In the first round of the 1993 legislative elections the FN soared to 12.7% of the overall vote, but did not win a single seat due to the nature of the electoral system (if the election had used proportional representation, it would have won 64 seats). In the 1995 presidential election, Le Pen rose slightly to 15% of the vote.


title: National Rally

text: The FN won an absolute majority (and thus the mayorship) in three cities in the 1995 municipal elections: Toulon, Marignane, and Orange. (It had won a mayorship only once before, in the small town of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in 1989.) Le Pen then declared that his party would implement its "national preference" policy, with the risk of provoking the central government and being at odds with the laws of the Republic. The FN pursued interventionist policies with regards to the new cultural complexion of their towns by directly influencing artistic events, cinema schedules, and library holdings, as well as cutting or halting subsidies for multicultural associations. The party won Vitrolles, its fourth town, in a 1997 by-election, where similar policies were pursued. Vitrolles' new mayor (who ran in place of her husband Bruno) went further in one significant measure, introducing a special 5,000-franc allowance for babies born to at least one parent of French (or EU) nationality. The measure was ruled illegal by a court, also giving her a suspended prison sentence, a fine, and a two-year ban from public office.


title: National Rally

text: In the 1997 legislative elections the FN polled its best-ever result with 15.3% support in metropolitan France, confirming its position as the third most important political force in France. It also showed that the party had become established enough to compete without its leader, who decided not to run to focus on the 2002 presidential election. Although it won only one seat in the National Assembly (Toulon), thanks to a good communication director, it advanced to the second round in 132 constituencies. The FN was arguably more influential now than it had been in 1986 with its 35 seats. While Bruno Mégret and Bruno Gollnisch, in an unusual display of dissent, favoured tactical cooperation with a weakened centre-right following the left's victory, Le Pen rejected any such compromise. In the tenth FN national congress in 1997, Mégret stepped up his position in the party as its rising star and a potential leader following Le Pen. Le Pen however refused to designate Mégret as his successor-elect, and instead made his wife Jany the leader of the FN list for the upcoming European election.


title: National Rally

text: Mégret and his faction left the FN in January 1999 and founded the National Republican Movement (MNR), effectively splitting the FN in half at most levels. Many of those who joined the new MNR had joined the FN in the mid-1980s, in part from the Nouvelle Droite, with a vision of building bridges to the parliamentary right. Many had also been particularly influential in intellectualising the FN's policies on immigration, identity and "national preference", and, following the split, Le Pen denounced them as "extremist" and "racist". Support for the parties was almost equal in the 1999 European election, as the FN polled its lowest national score since 1984 with just 5.7%, and the MNR won 3.3%. The effects of the split, and competition from more moderate nationalists, had left their combined support lower than the FN result in 1984.


title: National Rally

text: For the 2002 presidential election, opinion polls had predicted a run-off between incumbent President Chirac and PS candidate Lionel Jospin. The shock was thus great when Le Pen unexpectedly outperformed Jospin (by 0.7%) in the first round, placing second and advancing to the runoff. This resulted in the first presidential run-off since 1969 without a leftist candidate and the first ever with a candidate of the far-right. To Le Pen's advantage, the election campaign had increasingly focused on law and order issues, helped by media attention on a number of violent incidents. Jospin had also been weakened due to the competition between an exceptional number of leftist parties. Nevertheless, Chirac did not even have to campaign in the second round, as widespread anti-Le Pen protests from the media and public opinion culminated on May Day, with an estimated 1.5 million demonstrators across France. Chirac also refused to debate with Le Pen, and the traditional televised debate was cancelled. In the end, Chirac won the presidential run-off with an unprecedented 82.2% of the vote and with 71% of his votes—according to polls—cast simply "to block Le Pen". Following the presidential election, the main centre-right parties merged to form the broad-based Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The FN failed to hold on to Le Pen's support for the 2002 legislative elections, in which it got 11.3% of the vote. It nevertheless outpolled Mégret's MNR, which won a mere 1.1% support, even though it had fielded the same number of candidates.


title: National Rally

text: A new electoral system of two-round voting had been introduced for the 2004 regional elections, in part in an attempt to reduce the FN's influence in regional councils. The FN won 15.1% of the vote in metropolitan France, almost the same as in 1998, but its number of councillors was almost halved due to the new electoral system. For the 2004 European elections, too, a new system less favourable to the FN had been introduced. The party regained some of its strength from 1999, earning 9.8% of the vote and seven seats.


title: National Rally

text: For the 2007 presidential election, Le Pen and Mégret agreed to join forces. Le Pen came fourth in the election with 11% of the vote, and the party won no seats in the legislative election of the same year. The party's 4.3% support was the lowest score since the 1981 election and only one candidate, Marine Le Pen in Pas de Calais, reached the runoff (where she was defeated by the Socialist incumbent). These electoral defeats partly accounted for the party's financial problems. Le Pen announced the sale of the FN headquarters in Saint-Cloud, "Le Paquebot", and of his personal armoured car. Twenty permanent employees of the FN were also dismissed in 2008. In the 2010 regional elections the FN appeared to have re-emerged on the political scene after surprisingly winning almost 12% of the overall vote and 118 seats.


title: National Rally

text: Jean-Marie Le Pen announced in September 2008 that he would retire as FN president in 2010. Le Pen's daughter Marine Le Pen and FN executive vice-president Bruno Gollnisch campaigned for the presidency to succeed Le Pen, with Marine's candidacy backed by her father. On 15 January 2011, it was announced that Marine Le Pen had received the two-thirds vote needed to become the new leader of the FN. She sought to transform the FN into a mainstream party by softening its xenophobic image. Opinion polls showed the party's popularity increase under Marine Le Pen, and in the 2011 cantonal elections the party won 15% of the overall vote (up from 4.5% in 2008). However, due to the French electoral system, the party only won 2 of the 2,026 seats up for election.


title: National Rally

text: At the end of 2011, the National Front withdrew from the far-right Alliance of European National Movements and joined the more moderate European Alliance of Freedom. In October 2013, Bruno Gollnisch and Jean-Marie Le Pen resigned from their position in the AENM.


title: National Rally

text: For the 2012 presidential election, opinion polls showed Marine Le Pen as a serious challenger, with a few polls even suggesting that she could win the first round of the election. In the event, Le Pen came third in the first round, scoring 17.9% – the best showing ever in a presidential election for the FN at that time.


title: National Rally

text: In the 2012 legislative election, the National Front won two seats: Gilbert Collard and Marion Maréchal.


title: National Rally

text: In two polls about presidential favourites in April and May 2013, Marine le Pen polled ahead of president François Hollande but behind Nicolas Sarkozy.


title: National Rally

text: In the municipal elections held on 23 and 30 March 2014, lists officially supported by National Front won mayoralties in 12 cities: Beaucaire, Cogolin, Fréjus, Hayange, Hénin-Beaumont, Le Luc, Le Pontet, Mantes-la-Ville, the 7th arrondissement of Marseille, Villers-Cotterêts, Béziers and Camaret-sur-Aigues. While some of these cities were in southern France (like Fréjus) which traditionally votes more for right-wing parties than the rest of the country, others were located in northern France, where Socialist Party was strong until 2010s. Following the municipal elections, the National Front had, in cities of over 1,000 inhabitants, 1,546 and 459 councilors at two different levels of local government. The international media described the results as "historic", and "impressive", although the "International Business Times" suggested that "hopes for real political power remain a fantasy" for the National Front.


title: National Rally

text: The National Front received 4,712,461 votes in the 2014 European Parliament election, finishing first with 24.86% of the vote and 24 of France's 74 seats. This was said to be "the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history." The party's success came as a shock in France and the EU.


title: National Rally

text: On 24 April 2017, a day after the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen announced that she would temporarily step down as the party's leader in an attempt to unite voters. In the second round of voting, Le Pen was defeated 66.1% to 33.9% by her rival Emmanuel Macron of En Marche!


title: National Rally

text: During the following parliamentary elections, the FN received 13.02% of the vote, which represented a disappointment compared to the 13.07% of the 2012 elections. The party appeared to have suffered from the demobilisation of its voters from the previous vote. However, 8 deputies were elected (6 FN and 2 affiliated), the best number for the FN in a parliamentary election using a majoritarian electoral system since its creation (proportional representation was used in the 1986 elections). Marine Le Pen was elected to the National Assembly for the first time, and Gilbert Collard was re-elected. Ludovic Pajot became the youngest member of the French parliament at 23.


title: National Rally

text: In late 2017, Florian Philippot split from FN and formed The Patriots, due to the FN weakening its position on leaving the EU and Euro.


title: National Rally

text: At the conclusion of the party congress in Lille on 11 March 2018, Marine Le Pen proposed renaming the party to "Rassemblement national" (National Rally) while keeping the flame as its logo. The new name was put to a vote of party members. "Rassemblement national" had already been used as the name of a French party, the Rassemblement National Français, led by the radical right lawyer Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. His presidential campaign in 1965 was managed by Jean-Marie Le Pen. The name had also been used by the FN previously, for . However, the name change faced opposition from an already-existing party named "Rassemblement national", whose president, Igor Kurek, described it as "Gaullist and republican right": the party had previously registered its name with the National Institute of Industrial Property in 2013. On 1 June, Le Pen announced that the name change was approved by party adherents with 80.81% in favour.


title: National Rally

text: During that party congress, Steve Bannon, former advisor to Donald Trump before and after his election, gave what has been described as a "populist pep talk". Bannon advised the party members to "Let them call you racist, let them call you xenophobes, let them call you nativists. Wear it like a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker. ... History is on our side and will bring us victory." Bannon's remarks brought the members to their feet.


title: National Rally

text: In January 2019, ex-Sarkozy minister Thierry Mariani and former conservative lawmaker Jean-Paul Garraud, left Les Republicains (LR), joining the National Rally.


title: National Rally

text: During a 2021 debate Marine Le Pen was called "soft" on Islam by the Minister of the Interior in Macron's government, Gérald Darmanin. Marine Le Pen has also called for a "national unity government" that would include people such as Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, former LR officials, and souverainistes on the left, such as former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg.


title: National Rally

text: In the months before the 2021 French regional elections political commentators noted an increased moderation in the party in order to attract conservative voters, as well as a new image of the party as a force of "la Droite populaire" or the Social Right. The party fared badly in these elections.


title: National Rally

text: In the 2022 French legislative election, the party won its most seats ever by far with 89 seats in the National Assembly increasing its number of seats dramatically from 8, thus increasing its presence in parliament by a factor of more than 11. The results were unexpected as polling had only shown the party would win 15 to 45 seats at most. With 89 seats the national rally will be able to form a parliamentary group (15 deputies required) for the first time since 1986, when the national assembly had been elected by a proportional voting system. Thus the fact that the national rally was able to win such a big parliamentary group in 2022 in a two-round voting system election was a massive upset in French political life, allowing the national rally to become the biggest parliamentary opposition group.


title: National Rally

text: Bardella was elected president of RN on 5 November 2022, ending Marine Le Pen's period as president of the party. Le Pen remained president of RN's parliamentary group


title: National Rally

text: The party's ideology has been broadly described by scholars, including James Shields, Nonna Mayer, Jean-Yves Camus, Nicolas Lebourg and Michel Winock as nationalist, far-right (or Nouvelle droite) and populist. Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, following Pierre-André Taguieff's analysis, include the party in an old French tradition of "national populism" that can be traced back to Boulangism. National populists combine the social values of the left and the political values of the right, and advocate a referendary republic that would bypass traditional political divisions and institutions. Aiming at a unity of the political (the "demos"), ethnic (the "ethnos") and social (the "working class") interpretations of the "people", they claim to defend the "average Frenchman" and "common sense", against the "betrayal of inevitably corrupt elites". The party has been also described as national conservative.


title: National Rally

text: The FN has changed considerably since its foundation, as it has pursued the principles of modernisation and pragmatism, adapting to the changing political climate. At the same time, its message has increasingly influenced mainstream political parties, although the FN too has moved somewhat closer towards the centre-right, while some have even described it as right-wing.


title: National Rally

text: In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen campaigned on a law-and-order platform of zero tolerance, harsher sentencing, increased prison capacity, and a referendum on re-introducing the death penalty. In its 2001 programme, the party linked the breakdown of law and order to immigration, deeming immigration a "mortal threat to civil peace in France." Marine Le Pen rescinded the party's traditional support for the death penalty with her 2017 campaign launch, instead announcing support for imprisonment "in perpetuity" for the "worst crimes" in February 2017.


title: National Rally

text: In 2022, Marine Le Pen again repeated her support for a referendum on whether to reinstate capital punishment in France if she was elected.


title: National Rally

text: The party opposed the 2016 criminalisation of the use of prostitution in France, on the grounds that it would negatively affect the safety of sex workers.


title: National Rally

text: Since its early years, the party has called for immigration to be reduced. The theme of exclusion of non-European immigrants was brought into the party in 1978 and became increasingly important in the 1980s.


title: National Rally

text: Since the 1999 split, the FN has cultivated a more moderate image on immigration and Islam, no longer calling for the systematic repatriation of legal immigrants but still supporting the deportation of illegal, criminal or unemployed immigrants.


title: National Rally

text: In recent years, the party still opposes immigration, particularly Muslim immigration from Africa and the Middle East. Following the Arab Spring (2011) rebellions in several countries, Marine Le Pen has been campaigning on halting the migration of Tunisian and Libyan immigrants to Europe.


title: National Rally

text: In November 2015, "Front National" stated as its goal to have a net legal immigration rate (immigrants minus emigrants) of 10,000 in France per year. Since 2017, that yearly net immigration rate was around 182,000 if one takes into account only people born abroad from non-French parents, but was around 44,000 if one includes also the departures and returns of French expatriates.


title: National Rally

text: Representatives of "Front" "National" have repeatedly connected immigration to Islamic terrorism. In 2011, Marine Le Pen warned that wearing full face veils are "the tip of the iceberg" of Islamisation of French culture. The party has found some success with French Muslim voters, especially in the French overseas territory of Mayotte (99% Muslim population) where the party has performed extremely well in recent national elections.


title: National Rally

text: At the end of the 1970s, Le Pen refurbished his party's appeal by breaking away from the anti-capitalist heritage of Poujadism. He instead made an unambiguous commitment to popular capitalism, and started espousing an extremely market liberal and anti-statist programme. Issues included lower taxes, reducing state intervention, reducing the size of the public sector, privatisation, and scaling back government bureaucracy. Some scholars have even considered that the FN's 1978 program may be regarded as "Reaganite before Reagan".


title: National Rally

text: The party's economic policy shifted from the 1980s to the 1990s from neoliberalism to protectionism. This occurred within the framework of a changed international environment, from a battle between the Free World and Communism, to one between nationalism and globalisation. During the 1980s, Jean-Marie Le Pen complained about the rising number of "social parasites", and called for deregulation, tax cuts, and the phasing-out of the welfare state. As the party gained growing support from the economically vulnerable, it converted towards politics of social welfare and economic protectionism. This was part of its shift away from its former claim of being the "social, popular and national right" to its claim of being "neither right nor left – French!" Increasingly, the party's program became an amalgam of free market and welfarist policies, which some political commentators have claimed are left-wing economic policies, even putting her to the left of President François Hollande. RN is supportive of economic nationalism.


title: National Rally

text: Under her leadership, Marine Le Pen has been more clear in her support for protectionism and she has criticised globalism and capitalism for certain industries. She has been characterised as a proponent of letting the government take care of health, education, transportation, banking and energy.


title: National Rally

text: In the 2002 legislative elections, the first under the new gender parity provision in the French Constitution, Le Pen's National Front was among the few parties to come close to meeting the law, with 49% female candidates; Jospin's Socialists had 36%, and Chirac's UMP had 19.6%. Women voters in France were traditionally more attracted to mainstream conservative parties than the radical right until the 2000s. The proportion of women in the party has risen to 39% by 2017.