2-798-758 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Grand Musical Festival, at Gotha, 1845. Concert in honour of Queen Victoria's visit to Germany, featuring 'The musical forces of no less than twenty-one towns and villages surrounding Gotha...The concert took place in the air, before the Palace of Friedenstein - two pavilions, facing one another, were erected. .The smaller one was destined for the Royal party, the other for the singers. At about four o'clock the concert commenced. It opened with a sort of congratulatory ode to the Queen of England, sufficiently commonplace in its diction, but spirited enough in the music. The composer is Jacobs, of Berlin. It was sung with very great delicacy of expression but, although there were no less than nine hundred voices engaged, the effect was comparatively lost in the open air'. From "Illustrated London News", 1845, Vol VII.