Bericht über Webers Verhalten beim Applaus, London April 1826

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WEBER.–When this celebrated composer presided the other evening at Covent-Garden, he gave an instance of delicacy and consideration, which speaks volumes in behalf of the natural greatness of his talent. Whenever the audience applauded him, he bowed not only to them but to the performers in the orchestra, thus handsomely dividing with the latter the praises directed to his music. We will undertake to say, that M. Von Weber is an enthusiastic panegyrist of Mozart and his other illustrious brethren. Musicians, like painters and poets, have been accused of excessiv jealousy; but this is a misfortune which does not happen to the greatest of them; or when it does, the case is an exception. Haydn told the father of Mozart, that his son would beat them all; and when the grateful father received the compliment as too excessive and good-natured, the old man, hand on his heart, siad, "Upon my honour, I think so." Cimarosa, pestered with the eulogies of a foolish admirer, a painter, who kept preferring him to Mozart, asked him at length, with equal delicacy and mortification, "what he should think, if any body thought to compliment him by saying he was superior to Raphael." (Perhaps, however, the painter, not being very wise, might have thought such a panegyrist in the right.) A friend of our’s, after the performance of Winter’s divine opera of Il Ratto di Proserpina (by the way, why do they not reproduce it?) saw the composer go up in a transport of gratitude to Mrs. Billington, and reverently kiss her hand.

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