In the inaugural issue of Musikalisches Wochenblatt in early Oct 1791, Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814) published the first installment in a series devoted to “corrections and additions” (“Berichtigungen und Zusätze”) to Ernst Ludwig Gerber’s Lexicon der Tonkünstler (1790–92). Reichardt continued the series sporadically in subsequent issues of the Wochenblatt, and then in Musikalische Monathsschrift, the Wochenblatt’s successor.

The passage above is Reichardt’s proposed addition to Gerber’s article on Johann Christian Frischmuth (1741–1790), music director of the Nationaltheater in Berlin from 1785 until his death in 1790 (Reichardt gives Frischmuth’s date of death as 1789). Reichardt’s proposed addition concerns Bernhard Wessely (1768–1826), who from 1788 was second music director of the Nationaltheater under Frischmuth, and who took over as sole director following Frischmuth’s death (for more on Wessely, see the entry for 23 Jun 1792). Reichardt notes that Wessely had been working hard to improve the theater’s orchestra, and that this improvement was especially noticeable in performances of Mozart’s “excellent” Le nozze di Figaro (performed in German in Berlin as Die Hochzeit des Figaro). Among other improvements, Wessely increased the size of the orchestra, from 18 players to around 40 (see Bauman 1985, 227, note 4). Gerber, in his article on Frischmuth in volume 2 of the new edition of the Lexikon (1812) mentions that Wessely succeeded Frischmuth, but he omits Reichardt’s comment about the improvement of the orchestra.