1823)
sufficiently attested the triumph of the composer over his difficulties.
He was repeatedly called for and received with the loudest acclamations.
From Vienna, where he was conducting his Euryanthe, he was summoned to
Prague, to superintend the fiftieth representation of his "Freyschuetz."
His tour resembled a triumphal procession; for, on his return to
Dresden, he was greeted with a formal public reception in the theatre.
But while increasing in celebrity, and rising still higher, if that
were possible, in the estimation of the public, his health was rapidly
waning, amidst his anxious and multiplied duties. "Would to God," says
he in a letter written shortly afterwards--"Would to God that I were a
tailor, for then I should have a Sunday's holiday!" Meantime a cough,
the herald of consumption, tormented him, and "the slow minings of the
hectic fire" within began to manifest themselves more visibly in days
and nights of feverish excitement. It was in the midst of this that he
accepted the task of composing an opera for Covent Garden Theatre. His
fame, which had gradually made its way through the North of Germany
(where his Freyschuetz was played in 1823) to England, induced the
managers to offer him liberal terms for an opera on the subject of
Oberon, the well-known fairy tale on which Wieland has reared his
fantastic, but beautiful and touching comic Epos.
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