The score arrived:  to a weak plot by Karl Golmick the composer of the Templer had written such superficial music, that the principal effect lay in a drinking song for a quartette, in which the German Rhine and German wine played the usual stereotyped part peculiar to such male quartettes.  I lost all courage; but we had to go on with it now, and all I could do was to try, by maintaining a grave bearing, to make the singers take an interest in their task; this, however, was not easy.  To Tichatschek and Mitterwurzer were assigned the two principal male parts; being both eminently musical, they sang everything at first sight, and after each number looked up at me as if to say, ’What do you think of it all?’ I maintained that it was good German music; they must not allow themselves to get confused.  But all they did was to stare at each other in amazement, not knowing what to make of me.  Nevertheless, in the end they could not stand it any longer, and when they saw that I still retained my gravity, they burst into loud laughter, in which I could not help joining.

I now had to take them into my confidence, and make them promise to follow my lead and pretend to be serious, for it was impossible to give up the opera at this stage.  A Viennese ‘colorature’ singer of the latest style—­Madame Spatser Gentiluomo—­who came to us from Hanover, and on whose services Marschner greatly relied, was rather taken with her part chiefly because it gave her the chance of showing ‘brilliancy.’  And, indeed, there was a finale in which my ‘German master’ had actually tried to steal a march on Donizetti.  The Princess had been poisoned by a golden rose, a present from the wicked Bishop of Mainz, and had become delirious.  Adolph von Nassau, with the knights of the German empire, swears vengeance, and, accompanied by the chorus, pours out his feelings in a stretta of such incredible vulgarity and amateurishness that Donizetti would have thrown it at the head of any of his pupils who had dared to compose such a thing.  Marschner now arrived for the dress rehearsal; he was very pleased, and, without compelling me to falsehood, he gave me sufficient opportunities for exercising my powers in the art of concealing my real thoughts.  At all events I must have succeeded fairly well, for he had every reason to think himself considerately and kindly treated by me.

During the performance the public behaved very much as the singers had done at the rehearsals.  We had brought a still-born child into the world.  But Marschner was comforted by the fact that his drinking quartette was encored.  This was reminiscent of one of Becker’s songs:  Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, den freien deutschen Rhein (’They shall not have it, our free German Rhine’).  After the performance the composer was my guest at a supper party at which, I am sorry to say, the singers, who had had enough of it, would not attend.  Herr Ferdinand Hiller had the presence of mind to insist, in his toast to Marschner, that ’whatever one might say, all stress must be laid on the German master and German art.’  Strangely enough, Marschner himself contradicted him by saying that there was something wrong with German operatic compositions, and that one ought to consider the singers and how to write more brilliantly for their voices than he had succeeded in doing up to the present.