Dear and
most excellent Sonnleithner!
I
hope that you will not refuse me if I particularly request you
to give me a short written statement permitting me to have the
libetto with its present alterations printed again under your
name. -- When I made the alterations, you were very busy with
your Faniska; and so I set to work on the text myself. You would
not have had the patience to undertake these alterations; the
production of your opera would have been delayed even longer --
Hence I fancied that by saying nothing about it I might still
hope for your consent. Three acts have been reduced to only two.
In order to achieve this and to make the opera move more swiftly
I have shortened everything as much as possible, the prisoners'
chorus, and chiefly numbers of that time -- All this necessitated
merely a rewriting of the first act; and that is what the revision
of the libretto amounts to --
I
am having the libretto printed at by expense, and again I beg
you to grant my request.
With
kind regards, your
Beethoven
NB. 1. There
is too little time or, in order to convince you, I would have
sent you the libretto with this letter.
NB. 2. Do
send me, most excellent S[onnleithner], the statement by my servant
at once, for I must show it to the censorship. -