BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, July 23, 1822

The Rossini Festival at last comes to a close with one final performance of Corradino in German. The Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung vol. 24 Nr. 36 of September 24, 1822, cols. 585-586 says about this last performance of the underappreciated opera subtitled “Cuor di ferro”: “It was really quite mad enough, as if the entire assembly had been bitten by the tarantula. The whole performance resembled a deification: the noise, cheering, shouting viva and fora, they went on roaring without an end. [Giovanni] David alone, if I am not mistaken, had to appear ten or eleven times, repeating his exhausting scene, as well as the great septet from the second act. Tutta la compagnia was several times applauded tempestuously, both in corpore and separately. And if the police hadn’t put a stop it it, they would undoubtedly have continued to rain down sonnets of homage.”