ABSTRACT
On 10 August 1825, two Englishmen, the actor-manager Charles Kemble, and the musical director of Covent Garden, Sir George Smart, arrived at the spa town of Ems in Germany after a three-and-a-half-hour walk from Koblenz. Their mission was to visit the ailing Carl Maria von Weber, who was there to take the waters, and confer with him about his proposed journey to England and the payment for his promised new opera, Oberon.
