In the concert room these gentlemen go to work with the most serious mien; at the opera they deem it becoming to put on a nonchalant, sceptical, cleverly-frivolous air.  They concede with a smile that they are not quite at home in the opera, and do not profess to understand much about things which they do not particularly esteem.  Accordingly, they are very accommodating and complaisant towards vocalists, female and male, for whom they are glad to make matters comfortable; they arrange the tempo, introduce fermatas, ritardandos, accelerandos, transpositions, and, above all, “cuts,” whenever and wherever a vocalist chooses to call for such.  Whence indeed are they to derive the authority to resist this or that absurd demand?  If, perchance, a pedantically disposed conductor should incline to insist upon this or that detail, he will, as a rule, be found in the wrong.  For vocalists are at least at home and, in their own frivolous way, at ease in the opera; they know well enough what they can do, and how to do it; so that, if anything worthy of admiration is produced in the operatic world it is generally due to the right instincts of the vocalists, just as in the orchestra the merit lies almost entirely in the good sense of the musicians.  One has only to examine an orchestra part of “Norma,” for instance, to see what a curious musical changeling (Wechselbalg) such innocent looking sheets of music paper can be turned into; the mere succession of the transpositions—­the Adagio of an Aria in F sharp major, the Allegro in F, and between the two (for the sake of the military band) a transition in E flat—­offers a truly horrifying picture of the music to which such an esteemed conductor cheerfully beats time.

It was only at a suburban theatre at Turin (i.e., in Italy) that I witnessed a correct and complete performance of the “Barber of Seville;” for our conductors grudge the trouble it takes to do justice even to a simple score such as “Il Barbiere.”  They have no notion that a perfectly correct performance, be it of the most insignificant opera can produce an excellent impression upon an educated mind, simply by reason of its correctness.  Even the shallowest theatrical concoctions, at the smallest Parisian theatres, can produce a pleasant aesthetical effect, since, as a rule, they are carefully rehearsed, and correctly rendered.  The power of the artistic principle is, in fact, so great that an aesthetic result is at once attained, if only some part of that principle be properly applied, and its conditions fulfilled:  and such is true art, although it may be on a very low level.  But we do not get such aesthetic results in Germany, unless it be at performances of ballets, in Vienna, or Berlin.  Here the whole matter is in the hands of one man—­the ballet-master—­and that man knows his business.  Fortunately, he is in a position to dictate the rate of movement to the orchestra, for the expression as well as for the tempo, and he does so, not according to his individual whim, like an operatic singer, but with a view to the ensemble, the consensus of all the artistic factors; and now, of a sudden, it comes to pass that the orchestra plays correctly!  A rare sense of satisfaction will be felt by everyone who, after the tortures of an opera, witnesses a performance of one of those Ballets.