unnecessary extravagance on my part.  I visited the theatres, heard Strauss, made excursions, and altogether had a very good time.  I am afraid I contracted a few debts as well, which I paid off later on when I was conductor of the Dresden orchestra.  I had received very pleasant impressions of musical and theatrical life, and for a long time Vienna lived in my memory as the acme of that extraordinarily productive spirit peculiar to its people.  I enjoyed most of all the performances at the Theater an der Wien, at which they were acting a grotesque fairy play called Die Abenteuer Fortunat’s zu Wasser und zu Land, in which a cab was called on the shores of the Black Sea and which made a tremendous impression on me.  About the music I was more doubtful.  A young friend of mine took me with immense pride to a performance of Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris, which was made doubly attractive by a first-rate cast including Wild, Staudigl and Binder:  I must confess that on the whole I was bored by this work, but I did not dare say so.  My ideas of Gluck had attained gigantic proportions from my reading of Hoffmann’s well-known Phantasies; my anticipation of this work therefore, which I had not studied yet, had led me to expect a treatment full of overpowering dramatic force.  It is possible that Schroder-Devrient’s acting in Fidelio had taught me to judge everything by her exalted standard.

With the greatest trouble I worked myself up to some kind of enthusiasm for the great scene between Orestes and the Furies.  I hoped against hope that I should be able to admire the remainder of the opera.  I began to understand the Viennese taste, however, when I saw how great a favourite the opera Zampa became with the public, both at the Karnthner Thor and at the Josephstadt.  Both theatres competed vigorously in the production of this popular work, and although the public had seemed mad about Iphigenia, nothing equalled their enthusiasm for Zampa.  No sooner had they left the Josephstadt Theatre in the greatest ecstasies about Zampa than they proceeded to the public-house called the Strausslein.  Here they were immediately greeted by the strains of selections from Zampa which drove the audience to feverish excitement.  I shall never forget the extraordinary playing of Johann Strauss, who put equal enthusiasm into everything he played, and very often made the audience almost frantic with delight.

At the beginning of a new waltz this demon of the Viennese musical spirit shook like a Pythian priestess on the tripod, and veritable groans of ecstasy (which, without doubt, were more due to his music than to the drinks in which the audience had indulged) raised their worship for the magic violinist to almost bewildering heights of frenzy.

The hot summer air of Vienna was absolutely impregnated with Zampa and Strauss.  A very poor students’ rehearsal at the Conservatoire, at which they performed a Mass by Cherubini, seemed to me like an alms paid begrudgingly to the study of classical music.  At the same rehearsal one of the professors, to whom I was introduced, tried to make the students play my Overture in D minor (the one already performed in Leipzig).  I do not know what his opinion was, nor that of the students, with regard to this attempt; I only know they soon gave it up.