V. “Fidelio”; Pianoforte arrangement by I. Moscheles. Published by Artaria and Co., in August.
Chapter XV
The Year 1815—New Opera Projects—Beethoven Before Crowned Heads—End of the Kinsky Trouble—Death of Karl van Beethoven—The Nephew—Dealings with England.
Beethoven might well have adopted Kotzebue’s title: “The most Remarkable Year of my Life” and written his own history for 1814, in glowing and triumphant language; but now the theme modulates into a soberer key. “Then there is the matter of a new opera,” says a letter to the Archduke early in December. The “Sammler” of the 17th explains the allusion: “It is with great pleasure that we inform the music-loving public that Herr van Beethoven has contracted to compose an opera. The poem is by Herrn Treitschke and bears the title: ‘Romulus and Remus.’” The notice was based upon this note to Treitschke:
I will compose Romulus and shall begin in a few days, I will come to you in person, first once then several times so that we may discuss the whole matter with each other.
Now here was a promising operatic project; but before six weeks had passed came the “Allg. Mus. Zeitung” bringing Johann Fuss’s musical “Review of the month of December,” wherein among the items of Vienna news was a notice that “Hr. Fuss had composed an opera in three acts entitled ‘Romulus and Remus’ for the Theater-an-der-Wien”! And this was so; portions of it were afterwards sung by a musical society of which Dr. L. Sonnleithner was a member, and in Pressburg it was put upon the stage at a later date;—but it never came to performance in the theatres of Vienna, perhaps in consequence of measures adopted after the following letter to Treitschke:
I thought I could expedite the matter by sending Hrn. v. Schreyvogel a copy of this letter—but no.
You see this Fuss can attack me in all the newspapers, unless I can produce some written evidence against him, or you—or the director of the theatre undertake to make a settlement with him. On the other hand the business of my contract for the opera is not concluded.
I beg of you to write me an answer especially as regards Fuss’s letter; the matter would be easily decided in the court of art, but this is not the case, which, much as we should like to, we must consider.