I am glad you are hearing Chaliapin, whom you like so much, but he does not have a suitable ensemble in the Summer Opera Company. When Die Meistersinger was produced in Vienna, as I wrote you, there was no Chaliapin, but they had an ensemble that made me both happy and envious. If only once I could hear one of my operatic works done by such an ensemble! That the orchestra was good was not surprising, but it was amazing that everything that took place on the stage was so well planned and integrated that it seemed like the easiest job in the world. Actually it is extremely difficult and complicated and requires constant attention. / Once more I repeat that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a great work, not because of its length and continuity, but because of its significance. The scene during which Beckmesser sings his stupid serenade while Hans Sachs knocks and disturbs him, and the people who have been awakened come out and then the fight that follows and nobody understands anybody else, and the night watchman arrives, and after his invocation in F major, blazes out in G flat –it’s absolutely incomparable!/ And to realize that it was composed at the beginning of the sixties – almost forty-five years ago! In addition to this scene there is so much superb material in the work! The faults in Die Meistersinger are its excessive length and too much repetition of practically identical music. << less