On 20 January 1851, the night his musical comedy Die Opernprobe premiered in Frankfurt, Lortzing suffered a stroke at his home in Berlin and died without medical treatment on the morning of the following day, under huge stress and deeply in debt. A number of luminaries from the musical world were present at his funeral, including Giacomo Meyerbeer, Heinrich Dorn, Wilhelm Taubert and Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen. Lortzing's theatrical colleagues decorated his coffin with black, red and gold, a combination forbidden after 1848. A public benefit was then later held for his already impoverished family.
