Again, he writes to his sister: “My only entertainment is the theater. I wish you could see a tragedy played here. I know no theater in which all kinds of plays are very well produced, unless it be here.” Shroeder no doubt contributed largely to produce this effect. Then Shakespeare’s plays had begun to attract attention in Germany, and German dramatic literature to blossom forth in Lessing and Goethe. No wonder that “Figaro” and “Don Giovanni,” now began to engage his attention. We have already spoken of a national German theater. It is not to be supposed that the Emperor Joseph II. sympathized with the Germans in music. His early impressions caused him to favor the Italian school, and, cultivated as was his talent for music, it was not great enough to enable him to overcome them. But he was compelled to assist the nation in its endeavors in this sphere, since Frederick the Great had anticipated him in almost every other. Thus Vienna, together with Mannheim and Weimar, constituted the glorious triad, the creators of German music and of a German stage; and the full significance of German endeavors, in this direction, may be inferred from the path of light beginning with Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” followed by Beethoven’s Symphonies, and ending with the “Ring of the Niebelungen” in Bayreuth in 1876. Verily a cycle of art, of which Germany may well be proud! Mozart came just in time for the German operatic stage. Gluck had stopped composing; his victory was a decided one; he had almost reached his zenith; he was approaching his seventieth year. True, his pupil, Salieri, was the “idol of the emperor;” but he was an Italian, and the remaining Viennese composers of the time were of little or no importance. Haydn, properly speaking, did not busy himself in this sphere of the drama, and besides, he lived the greatest part of the time in Eisenstadt with prince Esterhazy. Northern Germany had no longer anything to show of those things which mark an epoch in history; and, what is more its preponderantly “learned” or formal music would not have pleased the taste of the Viennese. What then could be more natural than that they should open their arms to the young _maestro_ who, in a new field, had just given evidence of his transcendent power? And, indeed, shortly after Mozart’s arrival in Vienna, the Emperor himself had given expression to a wish that he might write a German opera of this kind; and we are informed that after Count Rosenberg, the manager of the theatre, had heard the _Idomeneo_ at a private rehearsal, he ordered the writing of a libretto for Mozart. This was “Belmonte and Constance,” or the “Elopement from the Seraglio.” Mozart tells how he was so cheered by this, that he hastened to his writing table with the greatest eagerness and sat at it with the greatest pleasure. He finished, at this first sitting, one of the arias of the Belmonte, and that the most beautiful of them all--the _O wie aengstlich, o wie feurig!_