[A Second Book of Operas by Henry Edward Krehbiel]@TWC D-Link bookA Second Book of Operas CHAPTER I 4/18
Before Keiser's setting was ready for production Handel had gone to Italy. Hearing of Keiser's act, he secured a copy of the new setting from a member of the orchestra and sent back to Hamburg a composition based on Keiser's melodies "to show how such themes ought to be treated." Dr. Chrysander, also, when he gave me a copy of Bertati's "Don Giovanni" libretto, for which Gazzaniga composed the music, told me that Mozart had been only a little less free than the poet in appropriating ideas from the older work. One of the best pieces in the final scene of "Fidelio" was taken from a cantata on the death of the emperor of Austria, composed by Beethoven before he left Bonn.
The melody originally conceived for the last movement of the Symphony in D minor was developed into the finale of one of the last string quartets.
In fact the instances in which composers have put their pieces to widely divergent purposes are innumerable and sometimes amusing, in view of the fantastic belief that they are guided by plenary inspiration.
The overture which Rossini wrote for his "Barber of Seville" was lost soon after the first production of the opera.
The composer did not take the trouble to write another, but appropriated one which had served its purpose in an earlier work.
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