The importance of the Revolutionary-era opéras-comiques for the origin and conception of Beethoven’s Fidelio is well established. The Viennese productions that earned the composer’s admiration did not, however, present the French versions transmitted in published scores and libretti. In addition to translating the texts from French into German, the Viennese versions typically entailed changes, sometimes quite radical, to accommodate such factors as Austrian censorship, singers’ strengths and limitations, and audience sensibilities. The present study seeks to illuminate the French repertoire that Beethoven and Viennese audiences had the opportunity to witness between 1802 and 1805, the peak of the vogue for French opera in Vienna as well as the formative years of Beethoven’s first opera. In so doing it casts new light on the 1805 version of Fidelio . At issue are the ways in which Beethoven’s opera participated in the Viennese practices of adaptation. The study adds to the extant scholarship on Joseph Sonnleithner’s libretto by pointing out similar phenomena in Viennese versions of other French works and interpreting such adaptations in light of the growing body of research on censorship in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Knowledge of the adaptations also clarifies the horizon of musical expectations for opera in Beethoven’s Vienna and brings to light a possible model for one of the most famous moments in the operatic repertory: the off-stage trumpet call in the dungeon scene in Fidelio .

The evolving relationship between the solo and the tutti over the course of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭♭ major, op. 19, contributes to its individuality as a piece of music and provides clues for understanding its significance for Beethoven's early career. A structural analysis of solo-tutti interaction reveals a double trajectory spanning the concerto, one leading from relative opposition between the protagonists to proximity or agreement, and the other from the leadership of the tutti to that of the soloist. The extant sources of the protracted genesis of the concerto provide evidence for how Beethoven may have contemplated alternative enactments of the solo-tutti relationship in the first movement and suggest reasons behind his decision to replace the early (if not in fact original) conclusion to the concerto, the Rondo in B♭♭ major WoO 6, with the definitive finale of op. 19. The essay concludes with some thoughts on the implications of the solo-tutti relationship in op. 19 for the ways that the young Beethoven positioned himself within Viennese society and its musical heritage.