It was in December, 1805--the opera house An-der-Wien and both the Court theatres of Vienna having been at that time under the intendance of Baron Braun, the Court Banker--when Mr. Meyer, brother-in-law to Mozart and Regisseur of the opera An-der-Wien, came to fetch me to an evening meeting in the palace of Prince Charles Lichnowsky, the great patron of Beethoven. “Fidelio” was already a month previously performed An-der-Wien--unhappily just after the entrance of the French, when the city was shut against the suburbs. The whole theatre was taken up by the French, and only a few friends of Beethoven ventured to hear the opera. These friends were now at that soirée, to bring Beethoven about, to consent to the changes they wanted to introduce in the opera in order to remove the heaviness of the first act. The necessity of these improvements was already acknowledged and settled among themselves. Meyer had prepared me for the coming storm, when Beethoven should hear of leaving out three whole numbers of the first act. At the soirée were present Prince Lichnowsky and the Princess, his lady, Beethoven and his brother Kaspar, [Stephan] von Breuning, [Heinrich] von Collin, the poet, the tragedian Lange (another brother-in-law to Mozart), Treitschke, Clement, leader of the orchestra, Meyer and myself; whether Kapellmeister von Seyfried was there I am not certain any more, though I should think so. I had arrived in Vienna only a short time before, and met Beethoven there for the first time.