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