Music for the Royal Fireworks made clear to Handel that King George had a preference for only martial instruments and drums, and hoped there would be "no fiddles". Handel omitted the string instruments against his will. Also against Handel's will, there was a full rehearsal of the music in Vauxhall Gardens and not in Green Park. On 21 April 1749 an audience, claimed to be over twelve thousand people, each paying two shillings and six pence (half a crown) rushed to get there, causing a three-hour traffic jam of carriages on London Bridge, the only vehicular route to the area south of the river. Six
Opera in German music, "Singspiele" were no match for contemporary opera serias in artistic sophistication. A milestone of German opera was Anton Schweitzer's "Alceste", with a libretto by Wieland, premiered in 1773 in Weimar. At the end of the 18th century a composer who would change all this would emerge: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As music moved into the Classical era in the late 18th century, most German-born composers still avoided writing opera in their own language. The great figure of the early Classical period was Christoph Willibald von Gluck but his pioneering reforms were directed at Italian and French opera, not the German