The damned Academy, which I was compelled to give partly by my bad circumstances, has set me back so far as the opera is concerned.
The cantata which I wanted to give robbed me of 5 or 6 days.
Now, of course, everything must be done at once and I could write something new more quickly than add new things to old—I am accustomed in writing, even in my instrumental music—to keep the whole in view, but here my whole, has—in a manner—been distributed everywhere and I have got to think myself back into my work ever and anon—it is not likely that it will be possible to give the opera in a fortnight, I think that it will be 4 weeks.
Meanwhile the first act will be finished in a few days—but there remains much to do in the 2nd Act, and also a new overture, which will be the easiest because I can compose it entirely new. Before my Academy a few things only were sketched here and there, in the first as well as the second act, it was not until a few days ago that I could begin to write the matters out. The score of the opera is as frightfully written as any that ever I saw, I had to look through note after note (it is probably a pilfered one) in short I assure you, dear T. the opera will secure for me the crown of martyrdom, if you had not given yourself so much pains with it and revised everything so successfully, for which I shall be eternally grateful to you, I could scarcely be able to force myself (to do the work). You have thereby saved some good remainders of a stranded ship.
If you think that the delay with the opera will be too long, postpone it till some future time, I shall go ahead now until everything is ended, and just like you have changed and improved it, which I see more and more clearly every moment, but it cannot go so fast as if I were composing something new—and in 14 days that is impossible—do as you think best, but as a friend of mine, there is no want of zeal on my part.
Your Beethoven.
Rehearsals for the Revised “Fidelio”
The repetitions of the “Gute Nachricht” came to a conclusion with the performance in the Kärnthnerthor-Theater on May 3, and the beneficiaries became more and more impatient. Hence, Treitschke wrote again to Beethoven, asked him what use was to be made of the chorus “Germania,” and urged him to make haste with the work on “Fidelio.” Notwithstanding so much was wanting, the rehearsals had begun in the middle of April, and the performance was now fixed for the 23rd of May. Beethoven’s memorandum of his revisal of the opera reads: “The opera Fidelio [?] March to 15th of May, newly written and improved.” May 15th was Sunday, the “Tuesday” of his answer to Treitschke was therefore the 17th, and the date, doubtless, about the 14th: