In addition to this work I practised the violin for some time, as
my harmony master very rightly considered that some knowledge of
the practical working of this instrument was indispensable for
any one who had the intention of composing for the orchestra. My
mother, indeed, paid the violinist Sipp (who was still playing in
the Leipzig orchestra in 1865) eight thalers for a violin (I do
not know what became of it), with which for quite three months I
must have inflicted unutterable torture upon my mother and sister
by practising in my tiny little room. I got so far as to play
certain Variations in F sharp by Mayseder, but only reached the
second or third. After that I have no further recollections of
this practising, in which my family fortunately had very good
reasons of their own for not encouraging me.

But the time now arrived when my interest in the theatre again
took a passionate hold upon me. A new company had been formed in
my birthplace under very good auspices. The Board of Management
of the Court Theatre at Dresden had taken over the management of
the Leipzig theatre for three years. My sister Rosalie was a
member of the company, and through her I could always gain
admittance to the performances; and that which in my childhood
had been merely the interest aroused by a strange spirit of
curiosity now became a more deep-seated and conscious passion.

Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, the plays of Schiller, and to
crown all, Goethe's Faust, excited and stirred me deeply. The
Opera was giving the first performances of Marschner's Vampir and
Templer und Judin. The Italian company arrived from Dresden, and
fascinated the Leipzig audience by their consummate mastery of
their art. Even I was almost carried away by the enthusiasm with