On the other hand, I tried to strengthen myself by again working energetically at Lohengrin.  While doing this, I proceeded in a manner that I have not since repeated.  I first of all completed the third act, and in view of the criticism already mentioned of the characters and conclusion of this act, I determined to try to make it the very pivot of the whole opera.  I wished to do this, if only for the sake of the musical motive appearing in the story of the Holy Grail; but in other respects the plan struck me as perfectly satisfactory.

Owing to previous suggestions on my part, Gluck’s Iphigenia in Aulis was to be produced this winter.  I felt it my duty to give more care and attention to this work, which interested me particularly on account of its subject, than I had given to the study of the Armida.  In the first place, I was upset by the translation in which the opera with the Berlin score was presented to us.  In order not to be led into false interpretations through the instrumental additions which I considered very badly applied in this score, I wrote for the original edition from Paris.  When I had made a thorough revision of the translation, with a view merely to the correctness of declamation, I was spurred on by my increasing interest to revise the score itself.  I tried to bring the poem as far as possible into agreement with Euripides’ play of the same name, by the elimination of everything which, in deference to French taste, made the relationship between Achilles and Iphigenia one of tender love.  The chief alteration of all was to cut out the inevitable marriage at the end.  For the sake of the vitality of the drama I tried to join the arias and choruses, which generally followed immediately upon each other without rhyme or reason, by connecting links, prologues and epilogues.  In this I did my best, by the use of Gluck’s themes, to make the interpolations of a strange composer as unnoticeable as possible.  In the third act alone was I obliged to give Iphigenia, as well as Artemis, whom I had myself introduced, recitatives of my own composition.  Throughout the rest of the work I revised the whole instrumentation more or less thoroughly, but only with the object of making the existing version produce the effect I desired.  It was not till the end of the year that I was able to finish this tremendous task, and I had to postpone the completion of the third act of Lohengrin, which I had already begun, until the New Year.

The first thing to claim my attention at the beginning of the year (1847) was the production of Iphigenia.  I had to act as stage manager in this case, and was even obliged to help the scene-painters and the mechanicians over the smallest details.  Owing to the fact that the scenes in this opera were generally strung together somewhat clumsily and without any apparent connection, it was necessary to recast them completely, in order so to animate the representation as to give to the dramatic action the life it lacked.  A