Pour Madame de Frank.
I think it my duty, best of women, to ask you not to permit your husband again in the second announcement of our concert to forget that those who contribute their talents to the same also be made known to the public. This is the custom, and I do not see if it is not done what is to increase the attendance at the concert, which is its chief aim. Punto is not a little wrought up about the matter, and he is right, and it was my intention even before I saw him to remind you of what must have been the result of great haste or great forgetfulness. Look after this, best of women, since if it is not done dissatisfaction will surely result.
Having been convinced, not only by myself but by others as well, that I am not a useless factor in this concert, I know that not only I but Punto, Simoni, Galvani will ask that the public be informed also of our zeal for the philanthropic purposes of this concert; otherwise we must all conclude that we are useless.
Wholly yours
L. v. Bthvn.
Whether this sharp remonstrance produced the desired effect cannot now be ascertained, but the original advertisement was repeated in the newspaper on the 24th and 28th verbatim.
In the state of affairs then existing it was no time to give public concerts for private emolument; moreover, a quarrel with the orchestra a year before might have prevented Beethoven from obtaining the Burgtheater again, and the new Theater-an-der-Wien was not yet ready for occupation; but there is still another adequate reason for his giving no Akademie (concert) this spring. He had been engaged to compose an important work for the court stage.
Vigano and the Prometheus Ballet
Salvatore Vigano, dancer and composer of ballets, both action and music, the son of a Milanese of the same profession, was born at Naples, March 29, 1769. He began his career at Rome, taking female parts because women were not allowed there to appear upon the stage. He then had engagements successively at Madrid—where he married Maria Medina, a celebrated Spanish danseuse—Bordeaux, London and Venice, in which last city, in 1791, he composed his “Raoul, Sire de Croqui.” Thence he came to Vienna, where he and his wife first appeared in May, 1793. His “Raoul” was produced on June 25th at the Kärnthnerthor-Theater. After two years of service here he accepted engagements in five continental cities and returned to Vienna again in 1799. The second wife of Emperor Franz, Maria Theresia, was a woman of much and true musical taste and culture, and Vigano determined to compliment her in a ballet composed expressly for that purpose. Haydn’s gloriously successful “Creation” may, perhaps, have had an influence in the choice of a subject, “The Men of Prometheus,” and the dedication of Beethoven’s Septet to the Empress may have had its effect in the choice of a composer. At all events, the work was entrusted to Beethoven.
If the manner in which this work has been neglected by Beethoven’s biographers and critics may be taken as a criterion, an opinion prevails that it was not worthy of him in subject, execution or success. It seems to be forgotten that as an orchestral composer he was then known only by two or three pianoforte concertos and his first Symphony—a work which by no means rivals the greater production of Mozart and Haydn—and that for the stage he was not known to have written anything. There is a misconception, too, as to the position which the ballet just then held in the Court Theatre. As a matter of fact it stood higher than ever before and, perhaps, than it has ever stood since. Vigano was a man of real genius and had wrought a reform which is clearly, vigorously and compendiously described in a memoir of Heinrich von Collin, from which we quote:
In the reign of Leopold II the ballet, which had become a well-attended entertainment in Vienna through the efforts of Noverre, was restored to the stage. Popular interest turned at once to them again, and this was intensified in a great degree when, beside the ballet-master Muzarelli, a second ballet-master, Mr. Salvatore Vigano, whose wife disclosed to the eyes of the spectators a thitherto unsuspected art, also gave entertainments. The most important affairs of state are scarcely able to create a greater war of feeling than was brought about at the time by the rivalry of the two ballet-masters. Theatre-lovers without exception divided themselves into two parties who looked upon each other with hatred and contempt because of a difference of conviction.... The new ballet-master owed his extraordinary triumph over his older rival to his restoration of his art back from the exaggerated, inexpressive artificialities of the old Italian ballet to the simple forms of nature. Of course, there was something startling in seeing a form of drama with which thitherto there had been associated only leaps, contortions, constrained positions, and complicated dances which left behind them no feeling of unity, suddenly succeeded by dramatic action, depth of feeling, and plastic beauty of representation as they were so magnificently developed in the earlier ballets of Mr. Salvatore Vigano, opening, as they did, a new realm of beauty. And though it may be true that it was especially the natural, joyous, unconstrained dancing of Madame Vigano and her play of features, as expressive as it was fascinating, which provoked the applause of the many, it is nevertheless true that the very subject-matter of the ballets, which differentiate themselves very favorably from his later conceits, and his then wholly classical, skilful and manly dancing, were well calculated to inspire admiration and respect for the master and his creations.