In 1805, he participated in the premiere of
Ludwig van Beethoven's opera
Fidelio, taking the part of Pizarro. The role apparently was challenging, as the following quotation from
Thayer's biography of Beethoven (p. 326) indicates:
the voice moves over a series of scales, played by all the strings, so that the singer at each note which he has to utter, hears an appoggiatura of a
minor second from the orchestra. The Pizarro of 1805 was unable with all his gesticulation and writhing to avoid the difficulty, the more since the mischievous players in the orchestra below maliciously emphasized the minor second by accentuation. Don Pizarro, snorting with rage, was thus at the mercy of the bows of the fiddlers. This aroused laughter. The singer, whose conceit was thus wounded, thereupon flew into a rage and hurled at the composer among other remarks the words: 'My brother-in-law would never have written such damned nonsense.
Mayer was apparently at least partly responsible for the preparation of the production, as he was the recipient of a letter from Beethoven filled with complaints and asking for more rehearsal and preparation.[4]
Mayer is described in
Thayer's biography of Beethoven (p. 326) as "moderately gifted bass singer, but a very good actor, and of the noblest and most refined taste in vocal music, opera as well as oratorio".[5]
Notes
^Lorenz, Michael: "Neue Forschungsergebnisse zum Theater auf der Wieden und Emanuel Schikaneder", Wiener Geschichtsblätter 4/2008, (Vienna: Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, 2008), pp. 15-36.