BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Wednesday, November 5, 1823 (probably)

Likely today, Beethoven’s close friend violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh brings a visitor by Beethoven’s apartment. This is Carl Wilhelm Henning from Berlin, who says he is one of Beethoven’s many admirers, and since he has taken over the music direction of the newly-built Theater in Berlin, he thinks that its opening would be properly celebrated with The Consecration of the House, op.124, which was used to open the Theater in the Josephstadt in Vienna last October. He only would like the music, and the house poet will write new words for the occasion.

Schuppanazigh notes that also in Vienna is Herr Heinrich Bethmann, director of the new theater. He would like to speak to Beethoven about this proposition as well. Beethoven asks how long they plan to be in Vienna, and Henning responds, 14 days. [They actually stay a little over a month.] Henning says that they hope to perform Beethoven’s music as well as is worthy of his Muse.

Beethoven asks after soprano Wilhelmine Schröder, who had sung Leonore in Vienna last year October, in Dresden under Weber’s baton in April of this year, and in Berlin in July of 1823. Henning says that the music director of the Berlin Royal Opera, composer Gaspare Spontini (1774-1851) “has somewhat removed the apathy from her.” Schuppanzigh inserts the remark that, “She is terribly lazy.”

Henning is hard put to disagree. “In Fidelio, in spite of all discussion, she also omitted half of your beautiful aria. She began at the re-entry of the theme. She cannot be convinced that she is hurting herself the most in the eyes of the musical connoisseur.” [Schröder thus apparently required a cut of about four pages from the score, omitting the first horn fanfare and the text following, resuming at the second fanfare and the text, “Ich folg’ dem innern Triebe.”]

While the new Königstadt Theater will have romantic operas and comic operas, grand opera would be reserved for the Royal Theater in Berlin. [As editor Theodore Albrecht observes, the Königstadt Theater would be the functional equivalent of the Theater in the Josephstadat.]

Schuppanzigh, who was obese, complains that it is very warm in Beethoven’s room. “I think it is heated too much.” As they depart, Henning assures Beethoven that “Bethmann is a very charming man who cannot possibly deny himself the joy of making your personal acquaintance.”

Beethoven also makes a note that Karl needs a new wash basin.

Conversation Book 45, 5v-7v. There are no conversation book entries dating from the next few days, suggesting Karl did not visit his uncle over the next week or so. Accordingly, our next update will be for November 7th.

Today’s Wiener Zeitung includes at 1032 an advertisement from the T. Mollo art, literature, and music shop offering a portrait of the newly-elected Holy Father Pope Leo XII.