Question: Which composer did Beethoven regard as the greatest of his contemporaries: Franz Schreker or Luigi Cherubini?

Context articles: Le calife de Bagdad
Lodoïska
Pauline Duchambge
Franz Schreker
Irrelohe
Anne Schwanewilms
Robert vom Scheidt
Overture in G major (Cherubini)
Joseph Sonnleithner
Luigi Cherubini

Le calife de Bagdad ("The Caliph of Baghdad") is an "opéra comique" in one act by the French composer François-Adrien Boieldieu with a libretto by Claude Godard d'Aucourt de Saint-Just.
 It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Paris on 16 September 1800 and soon became highly popular throughout Europe.
 It was Boieldieu's first major triumph.
 One member of the audience who was less impressed was the noted composer Luigi Cherubini who reproached Boieldieu, "Aren't you ashamed of such a great success, and doing so little to deserve it?"
 Boieldieu immediately applied to Cherubini for lessons in compositional techniques.
Lodoïska is an opera by Luigi Cherubini to a French libretto by Claude-François Fillette-Loraux after an episode from Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai’s novel, "Les amours du chevalier de Faublas".
 It takes the form of a "comédie héroïque" (a type of "opéra comique") in three acts, and was a founding work of rescue opera.
 It has also been called one of the first Romantic operas, though Cherubini's work was basically classical.
Pauline Duchambge née de Montet (1778 – 23 April 1858) was a French Creole pianist, singer, and composer.
 Duchambdge (Montet) was born in Martinique, West Indies and was the daughter of a noble family.
 She was taken to Paris, where she received a convent education and studied the piano from composer and author Jean Baptiste Desormery, son of the famous comic opera actor and composer Léopold-Bastien Desormery.
 Pauline composed and performed as a singer and a pianist.
 She studied harmony and composition with Daniel Auber and with Luigi Cherubini, who wrote several compositions for her.
 She also studied piano and composition with Jan Ladislav Dussek.
 Pauline left the convent in 1792 and married Baron Duchambge in 1796.
 In 1798 at the age of 20, she lost both her parents and with them the family fortune.
 Soon afterwards she was later divorced.
 It was after these events that Duchamge musical education began in earnest.
 She studied church music with Jan Dussek, Luigi Cherubini and D.F.E Auber.
 In 1815, Duchambge met the French poet and novelist, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore beginning a lifelong friendship and collaboration.
 Their friendship is documented by a lengthy correspondence and a number of songs by Duchambge on Debordes-Valmore’s texts including L’adieu tout bas, La fiancée del marin, Je pense à lui, La jeune Châtelaine, Rêve du mousse, La sincère and La valse et l’automne.
 Duchambge also composed music to texts and romances of other female authors such as Mme Amble Tastu and Mme Emile De Girardin.
 Pauline Duchambge wrote over three hundred romances, a very popular genre in the nineteenth century.
 Auber deposited three hundred of Duchambge’s songs in the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire in Paris.
 Eleven of Duchambge's individual songs and albums of songs were published between 1827 and 1841 by some of the leading Parisian publishers: Jean Antoine Meissonnier, Jacques-Joseph Frey, A. Petibon, and Ignace Pleyel.
 Her works reached a German audience through the Berlin publisher Maurice Schlesinger and the Schott firm in Mainz.
 In addition to songs, Duchambge wrote a few piano pieces.
 Duchambge had a difficult life, struggling with poverty, delicate health, and the disenchantments of love; her music expresses her emotions.
 She commented: "Love, it is life!
 but a life full of troubles, illusions, deceptions, repentance, discouragements…. "
Franz Schreker (originally "Schrecker"; 23 March 1878, Monaco – 21 March 1934, Berlin) was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator.
 Primarily a composer of operas, Schreker developed a style characterized by aesthetic plurality (a mixture of Romanticism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit), timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and conception of total music theatre into the narrative of 20th-century music.
Irrelohe is an opera in three acts by the Austrian composer Franz Schreker, libretto by the composer.
Anne Schwanewilms (born 1967, in Gelsenkirchen) is a German lyric soprano.
 She studied gardening before training in Cologne as a singer with the German bass Hans Sotin.
 She is particularly associated with performing the works of Richard Wagner, Franz Schreker, Alban Berg, and Richard Strauss.
 She sang the lead role of Carlotta in Franz Schreker's "Die Gezeichneten" at the Salzburg Festival in 2005, recorded and subsequently published on DVD by Opus Arte.
Robert vom Scheidt (16 April 1879, Bremen - 10 April 1964) was a German operatic baritone.
 He created roles in several world premieres, including Wolf in Franz Schreker's "Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin" (1913), Vitellozzo Tamare/Andrea in Schreker's "Die Gezeichneten" (1918), Baliv in Schreker's "Der Schatzgräber" (1920), and Rabbi Leone in Eugène d'Albert's "Der Golem" (1926).
The Overture in G major by Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) is an orchestral work written for concert use in early 1815.
 It is unusual among Cherubini's overtures in that his other, better known overtures (such as those to "Anacreon", "Médée", "Les deux journées" and "Ali Baba"), were intended to introduce stage works.
 Although born in Italy Cherubini had been living in France since 1784, and had earned world fame through a series of operas composed for the Paris stage.
 In the first decade of the nineteenth century the vogue for his dramatic works began to wane, and he turned increasingly to sacred music.
Joseph Ferdinand Sonnleithner (3 March 1766 – 25 December 1835) was an Austrian librettist, theater director archivist and lawyer.
 He was the son of Christoph Sonnleithner, brother of Ignaz von Sonnleithner and uncle of Franz Grillparzer and Leopold von Sonnleithner.
 He was a personal friend and attorney of Ludwig van Beethoven, and he wrote numerous librettos, among them, Beethoven's stage opera "Fidelio", "Faniska" by Luigi Cherubini and "Agnes Sorel" by Adalbert Gyrowetz.
Luigi Cherubini (] ; 8 or 14 September 1760 – 15 March 1842) was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France.
 His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music.
 Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries.