WEBER (Carl Maria von). Autograph letter signed "Charles Mar - Lot 198

WEBER (Carl Maria von). Autograph letter signed "Charles Maria de Weber", in French, to Castil-Blaze. Dresden, January 4, 1826. One p. in-4, address on back, tear on address f.. Export certificate enclosed. Rare letter in French about his operas Der Freischütz (1820) and Euryanthe (1823). "It seemed superfluous for you to honor me with a reply to my letter of October 15th; and here I am, in spite of myself, for a second time in the necessity of writing to you. I have been informed that a work containing parts of "Euryanthe" is to be staged at the Odéon theater. It is my intention to stage this work myself in Paris. I haven't sold my score, and nobody has it in France. You may have taken the pieces you want to use from an engraved piano score. You have no right to cripple my music by introducing pieces with accompaniments of your own. It was quite enough to have included in the "Freyschütz" a duet by Euryanthe whose accompaniment is not mine. You are forcing me, Sir, to address the public voice, and to have it published in French newspapers that I am being robbed, not only of my music, which belongs to me alone, but of my reputation, by having crippled pieces played under my name. In order to avoid all public quarrels - which are never advantageous for either art or artists - I urge you, Sir, to immediately remove from the work you have arranged all the pieces that belong to me. I like to forget the wrong done to me. I will say no more about Freyschütz; but please finish there, Sir, and leave me the hope that we may meet once again with sentiments worthy of your talent and your spirit..." A virulent protest, emblematic of the historical evolution in authors' attitudes to their rights. On December 7, 1824, Castil-Blaze successfully staged his version of the opera Der Freischütz at the Théâtre de l'Odéon under the title Robin des Bois ou les Trois balles. However, Carl Maria von Weber complained about the alterations made to his work, and wrote two letters of protest to Castil-Blaze (one on December 15, 1825 and the present one on January 4, 1826), to which Castil-Blaze did not reply. To avoid any future performances, he then asked music publisher Maurice Schlesinger to have his two protest letters published in the French press, which was done, but only in LeCorsaire and L'Étoile. However, he was unable to prevent Castil-Blaze from staging a medley entitled La Forêt de Sénart, ou la Partie de chasse de HenriIV at the Odéon on January 14, 1826, combining arrangements of works by several authors, including Euryanthe. The composer, librettist, translator and musicographer Castil-Blaze (1784-1857), whose real name was François-Henri-Joseph Blaze, had several of his own arrangements of works by Beethoven, Gluck, Grétry, Mozart and Weber performed. In his Memoirs, Hector Berlioz denounced Blaze's work as a veritable work of mutilation: "there is scarcely a score by these masters that he has not reworked in his own way; I think he's mad."