Your Excellency!
I hear that Scholz, the actor, wants soon to produce for his benefit at the Theater auf der Wieden the melodrama ‘Les ruines de Babylone’ which I wanted to set to music as an opera and about which I had already informed you. I am not in a position to fathom this network of intrigues! I presume that you know nothing about this? However that may be, let me convince you that for this melodrama, produced auf der Wieden, the theatre will be filled five or six times at most. The music is bad, wretched stuff. But as an opera it will be a work of permanent value and certainly it will produce for your theatre incomparably more favourable results in a commercial way. It is very difficult to find a good libretto for an opera. Since last year I have turned down no less than 12 or more of them. I even paid for them out of my pocket and yet was not able to find one I could use. And now for the sake of a benefit for an actor is there to be a bad time for me –– and I make bold to declare –– for your theatre also? I trust that your better judgment will persuade you to forbid Scholz, the actor, to produce this melodrama, seeing that I informed you much earlier of my intention to set it to music as an opera. I was so delighted at finding this subject that I even told the Archduke about it and also other people with intellectual interests; and everyone thought it an excellent plan. I even wrote to for newspapers asking them to insert a notice about this so that it should not be adapted as an opera somewhere else. And am I now to retract my statement? And that too for such trivial reasons?
I am now awaiting, and I begged you to send me, an early and satisfactory reply, so that I may know how I stand. For, if we do not act quickly, far too much time will be lost.
Your Excellency’s most devoted servant
Ludwig van Beethoven