56. "Do not wonder at me; it was not a caprice. I noticed that
most of the musicians were old men. There would have been no end
of dragging if I had not first driven them into the fire and made
them angry. Out of pure rage they did their best."

(Reported by Rochlitz. Mozart was rehearsing the Allegro of one
of his symphonies in Leipsic. He worked up such a fit of anger
that he stamped his foot and broke one of his shoe-laces. His
anger fled and he broke into a merry laugh.)

57. "Right! That's the way to shriek."

(At a rehearsal of "Don Giovanni" the representative of Zerlina
did not act realistically enough to suit Mozart. Thereupon he
went unnoticed on the stage and at the repetition of the scene
grabbed the singer so rudely and unexpectedly that she
involuntarily uttered the shriek which the scene called for. [The
singer was Teresa Bondini, the place Prague, and the time before
the first performance of the opera which took place on October
29, 1787. H.E.K.])



TOUCHING MUSICAL PERFORMANCES



58. "Herr Stein sees and hears that I am more of a player than
Beecke,--that without making grimaces of any kind I play so
expressively that, according to his own confession, no one shows