returned to Venice in October for Vidiman, where Nancy Storace was appearing in an opera of Vicente Martín y Soler. When his contract was completed, through Countess Rosenberg he (and Storace) received an invitation to join an Italian company then being assembled to occupy a permanent residency at the court of Emperor Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor at Vienna. Austria, 1783–1787 At Vienna Kelly presented himself to the Court composer Antonio Salieri, whose La scuola de' gelosi was to be staged first. He had a successful debut. The theatre was in the palace, and the Emperor attended performances and many rehearsals. Kelly was friendly with Salieri and with the actors Friedrich Ludwig Schröder and . He went to Eisenstadt to visit Haydn for three days. In Vienna he met the composers Vanhal and Dittersdorf, but a special friendship began at a dinner where he found himself seated between Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart. He often dined with Mozart and invariably lost at billiards to him: he became close friends with Mozart's young English pupil Thomas Attwood. Kelly sang opposite Nancy Storace in this company. In 1785, they were performing Stephen Storace's opera Gli sposi malcontenti. After she lost her voice for a time he sang in three operas with Mmes Cortellini, Antonia Bernasconi and Laschi, and won applause humorously modelling a character on the mannerisms of da Ponte in performances witnessed by that writer. He and one Calvasi played the two Antipholus roles in Storace's Gli equivoci, based on The Comedy of Errors. Paisiello's The Barber of Seville was presented with Nancy Storace: Kelly and Mandini alternated in the role of the Count. When Paisiello came to the court Kelly witnessed his meeting with Mozart. The poet Giovanni Battista Casti also arrived, and in 1784 with Paisiello produced a new opera Il re Teodoro in Venezia. The cast included Mandini, Francesco Benucci, , Laschi, Storace and Viganoni, and Kelly took the buffo role of Gaforio, which became his nickname thereafter. In each year the Italian company attended the Emperor to Luxembourg for three months. In Vienna, Joseph had two operas staged for the benefit of visiting potentates, Iphigénie en Tauride and L'Alceste. Kelly played in both, being Pylades to Bernasconi's Iphigénie and the Oreste of the tenor Valentin Adamberger, in all of which they were coached by Gluck in person. In 1786, three operas were being rehearsed, one by Righini, one