not only the public, but myself, and showed signs of the upheaval which was gradually taking place in my musical development.  I was entrusted with the composition of a tune for a National Hymn written by Brakel in honour of the Tsar Nicholas’s birthday.  I tried to give it as far as possible the right colouring for a despotic patriarchal monarch, and once again I achieved some fame, for it was sung for several successive years on that particular day.  Holtei tried to persuade me to write a bright, gay comic opera, or rather a musical play, to be performed by our company just as it stood.  I looked up the libretto of my Glucktiche Barenfamilie, and found Holtei very well disposed towards it (as I have stated elsewhere); but when I unearthed the little music which I had already composed for it, I was overcome with disgust at this way of writing; whereupon I made a present of the book to my clumsy, good-natured friend, Lobmann, my right-hand man in the orchestra, and never gave it another thought from that day to this.  I managed, however, to get to work on the libretto of Rienzi, which I had sketched out at Blasewitz.  I developed it from every point of view, on so extravagant a scale, that with this work I deliberately cut off all possibility of being tempted by circumstances to produce it anywhere but on one of the largest stages in Europe.

But while this helped to strengthen my endeavour to escape from all the petty degradations of stage life, new complications arose which affected me more and more seriously, and offered further opposition to my aims.  The prima donna engaged by Holtei had failed us, and we were therefore without a singer for grand opera.  Under the circumstances, Holtei joyfully agreed to my proposal to ask Amalie, Minna’s sister (who was glad to accept an engagement that brought her near me), to come to Riga at once.  In her answer to me from Dresden, where she was then living, she informed me of Minna’s return to her parents, and of her present miserable condition owing to a severe illness.  I naturally took this piece of news very coolly, for what I had heard about Minna since she left me for the last time had forced me to authorise my old friend at Konigsberg to take steps to procure a divorce.  It was certain that Minna had stayed for some time at a hotel in Hamburg with that ill-omened man, Herr Dietrich, and that she had spread abroad the story of our separation so unreservedly that the theatrical world in particular had discussed it in a manner that was positively insulting to me.  I simply informed Amalie of this, and requested her to spare me any further news of her sister.