Miss Heinefetter has a voice such as one seldom hears; she sings always in tune; her coloratura is like so many pearls; in short, everything is faultless.  She looks particularly well when dressed as a man.  But she is cold:  I got my nose almost frozen in the stalls.  In “Othello” she delighted me more than in the “Barber of Seville,” where she represents a finished coquette instead of a lively, witty girl.  As Sextus in “Titus” she looks really quite splendid.  In a few days she is to appear in the “Thieving Magpie” ["La Gazza ladra"].  I am anxious to hear it.  Miss Woikow pleased me better as Rosina in the “Barber”; but, to be sure, she has not such a delicious voice as the Heinefetter.  I wish I had heard Pasta!

The opera at the Karnthnerthor Theatre with all its shortcomings was nevertheless the most important and most satisfactory musical institution of the city.  What else, indeed, had Vienna to offer to the earnest musician?  Lanner and Strauss were the heroes of the day, and the majority of other concerts than those given by them were exhibitions of virtuosos.  Imagine what a pass the musical world of Vienna must have come to when Stadler, Kiesewetter, Mosel, and Seyfried could be called, as Chopin did call them, its elite!  Abbe Stadler might well say to the stranger from Poland that Vienna was no longer what it used to be.  Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert had shuffled off their mortal coil, and compared with these suns their surviving contemporaries and successors—­Gyrowetz, Weigl, Stadler, Conradin Kreutzer, Lachner, &c.—­were but dim and uncertain lights.

With regard to choral and orchestral performances apart from the stage, Vienna had till more recent times very little to boast of.  In 1830-1831 the Spirituel-Concerte (Concerts Spirituels) were still in existence under the conductorship of Lannoy; but since 1824 their number had dwindled down from eighteen to four yearly concerts.  The programmes were made up of a symphony and some sacred choruses.  Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn predominated among the symphonists; in the choral department preference was given to the Austrian school of church music; but Cherubim also was a great favourite, and choruses from Handel’s oratorios, with Mosel’s additional accompaniments, were often performed.  The name of Beethoven was hardly ever absent from any of the programmes.  That the orchestra consisted chiefly of amateurs, and that the performances took place without rehearsals (only difficult new works got a rehearsal, and one only), are facts which speak for themselves.  Franz Lachner told Hanslick that the performances of new and in any way difficult compositions were so bad that Schubert once left the hall in the middle of one of his works, and he himself (Lachner) had felt several times inclined to do the same.  These are the concerts of which Beethoven spoke as Winkelmusik, and the tickets of which he denominated Abtrittskarten, a word which, as the expression of