She is very clever, and learns with facility. Her right hand is
very good, but the left is unhappily quite ruined. I must say
that I do really feel very sorry for her, when I see her laboring
away till she is actually panting for breath; and this not from
natural awkwardness on her part, but because, being so accustomed
to this method, she cannot play in any other way, never having
been shown the right one. I said, both to her mother and herself,
that if I were her regular master I would lock up all her music,
cover the keys of the piano with a handkerchief, and make her
exercise her right and left hand, at first quite slowly in
nothing but passages and shakes, &c., until her hands were
thoroughly trained; and after that I should feel confident of
making her a genuine pianiste. They both acknowledged that I was
right. It is a sad pity; for she has so much genius, reads very
tolerably, has great natural aptitude, and plays with great
feeling.

Now about the opera briefly. Holzbauer's music [for the first
great German operetta, "Gunther von Schwarzburg"] is very
beautiful, but the poetry is not worthy of such music. What
surprises me most is, that so old a man as Holzbauer should still
have so much spirit, for the opera is incredibly full of fire.
The prima donna was Madame Elisabeth Wendling, not the wife of
the flute-player, but of the violinist. She is in very delicate
health; and, besides, this opera was not written for her, but for
a certain Madame Danzi, who is now in England; so it does not
suit her voice, and is too high for her. Herr Raaff, in four
arias of somewhere about 450 bars, sang in a manner which gave
rise to the remark that his want of voice was the principal cause
of his singing so badly. When he begins an air, unless at the