On today’s date in 1825, the Italian composer Antonio Salieri breathed his last in Vienna.

Gossip circulated that in his final dementia, Salieri babbled something about poisoning Mozart. Whether he meant it figuratively or literally, or even said anything of the sort, didn’t seem to matter. This Viennese gossip became a Romantic legend that culminated in a 19th century poem and opera, and a very popular 20th century play and movie.

More recently, some food detectives have suggested that if Mozart was poisoned, it was more likely an undercooked pork chop that was to blame. In one of his last letters to his wife, Mozart mentions his anticipation of feasting on a fat chop his cook had secured for his dinner.

Twenty-five years after Salieri’s death, on today’s date in 1850, the Austro-Hungarian conductor Anton Seidl was born in Budapest. Seidl became a famous conductor of both the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic. It was Seidl, for example, who conducted the premiere of Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1893.

In 1898, at the age of just 47, Seidl died suddenly, apparently from ptomaine poisoning. Perhaps it was the shad roe he ate at home, or that sausage he ate at Fleischmann’s restaurant? An autopsy revealed serious gallstone and liver ailments, so maybe Seidl’s last meal, whatever it might have been, was as innocent of blame as poor old Salieri.