Your satisfaction with the chorus delights me infinitely. I was of the opinion that you ought to apply all the works to your profit and therefore mine also, but if you do not want to do this I should like to have you sell it outright for the benefit of the poor.
Your copyists —— [illegible] and Wranitzky were here yesterday about the matter, I told them, most worthy man, that you were entire master in the affair. For this reason I await now your frank opinion—your copyist is—an ass!—but he is completely lacking in the well-known splendid Eselshaut[124]—therefore my copyist has undertaken the work of copying, and by Tuesday little will remain to be done, and my copyist will bring everything to the rehearsal. As for the rest the whole matter of the opera is the most wearisome thing in the world, and I am dissatisfied with most of it—and—there is hardly a piece in it to which in my present state of dissatisfaction I ought not to have patched on some satisfaction. That is the great difference between being able to surrender to free reflection or enthusiasm.
Wholly your Beethoven.
“The final rehearsal,” says Treitschke, “was on May 22d, but the promised new overture was still in the pen of the creator.” It was then, on the 20th or 21st, that Beethoven dined with his friend Bertolini in the Römischer Kaiser. After dinner he took a bill of fare, drew lines on the blank side and began to write. “Come, let us go,” said Bertolini; “No, wait a little; I have the idea for my overture,” replied Beethoven, who remained and finished his sketches then and there. Treitschke continues:
The orchestra was called to rehearsal on the morning of the performance. B. did not come. After waiting a long time we drove to his lodgings to bring him, but—he lay in bed, sleeping soundly, beside him stood a goblet with wine and a biscuit in it, the sheets of the overture were scattered on the bed and floor. A burnt-out candle showed that he had worked far into the night. The impossibility of completing the overture was plain; for this occasion his overture to “Prometheus” [?] was taken and the announcement that because of obstacles which had presented themselves the new overture would have to be dispensed with to-day, enabled the numerous audience to guess the sufficient reason.
Schindler says an overture to “Leonore,” Seyfried the overture to “The Ruins of Athens,” was played on this occasion. The “Sammler” in its contemporary notice confirms Seyfried: “The overture played at the first performance does not belong to the opera and was originally written for the opening of the theatre at Pesth.” In 1823, Beethoven in conversation happened to speak of this substitution and remarked: “The people applauded, but I stood ashamed; it did not belong to the rest.” In the manuscript book of the text prepared for use in the theatre on this occasion, one is surprised to see the title begun thus:
“Leonore, Fidelio
An Opera in Two Acts, etc.”
The word “Leonore” is crossed out and “Fidelio” written at the side in red pencil afterwards inked over. There was then on the part of some one—whom?—an intention subsequently abandoned, of thus changing the title. Again, in the list of “properties,” stands
| A wallet 2 chains | } | Mme. Hönig. |
and the same name occurs in the list of the