I paid another visit, the last for a long time to come, to the Grand Opera to hear this Reine de Chypre.  There was, indeed, much for me to smile at.  My eyes were no longer shut to the extreme weakness of this class of work, and the caricature of it that was often produced by the method of rendering it.  I was sincerely rejoiced to see the better side of Halevy again.  I had taken a great fancy to him from the time of his La Juive, and had a very high opinion of his masterly talent.

At the request of Schlesinger I also willingly consented to write for his paper a long article on Halevy’s latest work.  In it I laid particular stress on my hope that the French school might not again allow the benefits obtained by studying the German style to be lost by relapsing into the shallowest Italian methods.  On that occasion I ventured, by way of encouraging the French school, to point to the peculiar significance of Auber, and particularly to his Stumme von Portici, drawing attention, on the other hand, to the overloaded melodies of Rossini, which often resembled sol-fa exercises.  In reading over the proof of my article I saw that this passage about Rossini had been left out, and M. Edouard Monnaie admitted to me that, in his capacity as editor of a musical paper, he had felt himself bound to suppress it.  He considered that if I had any adverse criticism to pass on the composer, I could easily get it published in any other kind of paper, but not in one devoted to the interests of music, simply because such a passage could not be printed there without seeming absurd.  It also annoyed him that I had spoken in such high terms of Auber, but he let it stand.  I had to listen to much from that quarter which enlightened me for ever with regard to the decay of operatic music in particular, and artistic taste in general, among Frenchmen of the present day.

I also wrote a longer article on the same opera for my precious friend Winkler at Dresden, who was still hesitating about accepting my Rienzi.  In doing so I intentionally made merry over a mishap that had befallen Lachner the conductor.  Kustner, who was theatrical director at Munich at the time, with a view to giving his friend another chance, ordered a libretto to be written for him by St. Georges in Paris, so that, through his paternal care, the highest bliss which a German composer could dream of might be assured to his protege.  Well, it turned out that when Halevy’s Reine de Chypre appeared, it treated the same subject as Lachner’s presumably original work, which had been composed in the meantime.  It mattered very little that the libretto was a really good one, the value of the bargain lay in the fact that it was to be glorified by Lachner’s music.  It appeared, however, that St. Georges had, as a matter of fact, to some extent altered the book sent to Munich, but only by the omission of several interesting features.  The fury of the Munich manager was great, whereupon St. Georges declared his astonishment that the latter