Triumph!

The Sisters of Abundant Mercy took charge of our first supper - thank the Lord. My cousin, Anna Maria Pertl, who studied the art of voice with Madame Weigl at Eisenstadt, agreed to sing for us the day before.
‘Neither the composer nor the performer is obliged to a strictness of time. What you are about to hear are extempore touches in place of any formal effects.’
I bowed solemnly to our audience of intimates and thought I heard a murmur of bees when I sat down to play, though it may have been an air of agreement at the simple lack of requirement.
After a FREE style Preludio, my cousin sang the aria,‘Porgi, amor,’ from Le Nozze di Figaro. She sang with such fluid and beseeching tones that the older women wept while their husbands closed their eyes and smiled at some memory.
At the end of our little concert, three marble cakes and several plates of Viennese pastries with glazed cherries were consumed at a lick. Conversation on the merits of vibrato was so lively between guests that Johannes pronounced the evening a success and Papa said to anyone who would listen, he wished Wolfie had been there. N.