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On Conducting (Üeber Das Dirigiren) : a Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music, by Richard Wagner
page 73 of 95 (76%)
I have been prolix in showing the weakness of our conductors, in
the very field, where, by rights, they ought to feel at home. I
can be brief now with regard to the opera. Here it simply comes
to this: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
To characterize their disgraceful doings, I should have to show
how much that is good and significant MIGHT be done at the
theatres, and this would lead me too far. Let it be reserved for
another occasion. For the present I shall only say a little about
their ways as operatic conductors.

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.
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