BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, January 4, 1822

As popular as Der Freischütz continues to be in the music advertisements in the Wiener Zeitung arts and literature section, Rossini is still number one with the Viennese public. Thadé Weigl today advertises many piano reductions of Rossini operas, including Moses, La gazza ladra, La Cenerentola, Barber of Seville, the Turk in Italy, Elisabeth Queen of England, Othello, Tancredi and The Italian Girl in Algiers.

Beethoven’s disdain for Rossini’s music is well documented, but the Italian composer has been such a fixture in the newspapers for so long that Beethoven has no doubt learned to live with it, even if he despairs at the Viennese musical tastes.

Mario Mariani here plays the Overture from La gazza ladra on piano: