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.

To convey some notion of faulty performances of the latter sort
it will suffice to point to the way in which the overture to "Die
Meistersinger" is usually given. The main tempo of this piece is
indicated as "sehr massig bewegt" (with very moderate movement);