In this way the stage manager might lend his aid to the ensemble of the opera.  But, singularly enough, the fiction that the opera is a branch of absolute music is everywhere kept up; every vocalist is aware of the musical director’s ignorance of the business of an opera; yet—­if it should happen that the right instincts of gifted singers, musicians and executants generally are aroused by a fine work, and bring about a successful performance—­are we not accustomed to see the Herr Capellmeister called to the front, and otherwise rewarded, as the representative of the total artistic achievement?  Ought he not himself to be surprised at this?  Is he not, in his turn, in a position to pray, “Forgive them, they know not what they do?”

But as I wished to speak of Conducting proper, and do not want to lose my way in the operatic wilderness, I have only to confess that I have come to the end of this chapter.  I cannot dispute about the conducting of our capellmeisters at the theatres.  Singers may do so, when they have to complain that this conductor is not accommodating enough, or that the other one does not give them their cues properly:  in short, from the stand-point of vulgar journeyman-work, a discussion may be possible.  But from the point of view of truly artistic work this sort of conducting cannot be taken into account at all.  Among Germans, now living, I am, perhaps, the only person who can venture openly to pronounce so general a condemnation, and I maintain that I am not exceeding the limits of my province when I do so.

If I try to sum up my experiences, regarding performances of my own operas, I am at a loss to distinguish with which of the qualities of our conductors I am concerned.  Is it the spirit in which they treat German music in the concert rooms, or the spirit in which they deal with the opera at the theatres?  I believe it to be my particular and personal misfortune that the two spirits meet in my operas, and mutually encourage one another in a rather dubious kind of way.  Whenever the former spirit, which practices upon our classical concert music, gets a chance—­as in the instrumental introductions to my operas—­I have invariably discovered the disastrous consequences of the bad habits already described at such length.  I need only speak of the tempo, which is either absurdly hurried (as, for instance, under Mendelssohn, who, once upon a time, at a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert, produced the overture to Tannhauser as an example and a warning), or muddled (like the introduction to Lohengrin at Berlin, and almost everywhere else), or both dragged and muddled (like the introduction to “Die Meistersinger,” lately, at Dresden and at other places), yet never with those well-considered modifications of the tempo, upon which I must count as much as upon the correct intonation of the notes themselves, if an intelligible rendering is to be obtained.