I had serious reasons for thus withdrawing from the artistic and social life of Paris.  My own painful experiences and my disgust at all the mockery of that kind of life, once so attractive to me and yet so alien to my education, had quickly driven me away from everything connected with it.  It is true that the production of the Huguenots, for instance, which I then heard for the first time, dazzled me very much indeed.  Its beautiful orchestral execution, and the extremely careful and effective mise en scene, gave me a grand idea of the great possibilities of such perfect and definite artistic means.  But, strange to say, I never felt inclined to hear the same opera again.  I soon became tired of the extravagant execution of the vocalists, and I often amused my friends exceedingly by imitating the latest Parisian methods and the vulgar exaggerations with which the performances teemed.  Those composers, moreover, who aimed at achieving success by adopting the style which was then in vogue, could not help, either, incurring my sarcastic criticism.  The last shred of esteem which I still tried to retain for the ’first lyrical theatre in the world’ was at last rudely destroyed when I saw how such an empty, altogether un-French work as Donizetti’s Favorita could secure so long and important a run at this theatre.

During the whole time of my stay in Paris I do not think I went to the opera more than four times.  The cold productions at the Opera Comique, and the degenerate quality of the music produced there, had repelled me from the start; and the same lack of enthusiasm displayed by the singers also drove me from Italian opera.  The names, often very famous ones, of these artists who sang the same four operas for years could not compensate me for the complete absence of sentiment which characterised their performance, so unlike that of Schroder-Devrient, which I so thoroughly enjoyed.  I clearly saw that everything was on the down grade, and yet I cherished no hope or desire to see this state of decline superseded by a period of newer and fresher life.  I preferred the small theatres, where French talent was shown in its true light; and yet, as the result of my own longings, I was too intent upon finding points of relationship in them which would excite my sympathy, for it to be possible for me to realise those peculiar excellences in them which did not happen to interest me at all.  Besides, from the very beginning my own troubles had proved so trying, and the consciousness of the failure of my Paris schemes had become so cruelly apparent, that, either out of indifference or annoyance, I declined all invitations to the theatres.  Again and again, much to Minna’s regret, I returned tickets for performances in which Rachel was to appear at the Theatre Francais, and, in fact, saw that famous theatre only once, when, some time later, I had to go there on business for my Dresden patron, who wanted some more articles.