Beethoven returns the libretto from "Mathilde ou les Croisades" by Karoline Pichler to his friend Dorothea von Ertmann, a pianist. In principle he thinks the libretto is good, but not so the subject. He "wishes at this time for material which covers all of Germany" but would prefer to explain this to the writer herself. Throughout his life Beethoven was on the lookout for good opera libretti. Karoline Pichler had a respected literary salon in Vienna. Beethoven might have seen her libretto (after a successful contemporary novel) at Archduke Rudolph's, for whom Pichler had had it copied.
