By BERNARD HOLLAND [NY Times, 30 July 2006]

IN November 1779, two heating ovens designed for decoration but lighted by mistake exploded, burning Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy’s private opera house to the ground. Joseph Haydn, the prince’s director of music, lost a prized harpsichord, not to mention the scores to his marionette operas and the orchestra parts to symphonies written since 1761. This was at Esterhaza, his employer’s home rising in the swamplands that separated Hungary and Austria.