Vestas Feuer

Detail of an 1804–05 portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Willibrord Mähler
Emanuel Schikaneder playing the role of Papageno in Mozart's The Magic Flute. Engraving by Ignaz Alberti.
The Theater an der Wien as it appeared in 1815

Vestas Feuer ("The Vestal Flame"[1]) is a fragment of an opera composed in 1803 by Ludwig van Beethoven and Magic Flute librettist Emanuel Schikaneder. The plot involves a romantic intrigue in which the heroine temporarily becomes a Vestal Virgin (a keeper of the Vestal Flame in Ancient Rome). Beethoven set to music only the first scene of Schikaneder's libretto, then abandoned the project. The fragment (about ten minutes of music) is rarely performed.

  1. ^ Translation from Lockwood (2008:82); a more literal translation would be "Vesta's Fire".