Max called for me in a taxi in the evening and we went to the Artistic Opera Company's production of Meistersinger. Playing through the piano reduction earlier in the day I had been overwhelmed by it and even thought it Wagner's best opera. But now, seeing it on the stage for the first time, I experienced a slight feeling of disappointment. First of all, it is so unbelievably long that fatigue and boredom inevitably set in, particularly in the first act where the material is less absorbing than it is in the succeeding acts. Secondly, there is the almost total lack of dramatic action and the long-winded clumsiness of the libretto. Thirdly, the vocal writing for about half the opera is routine (as is the music), so why do these passages need to be there? Fourthly, the humour is apt to be coarse and heavy, and the role of Beckmesser could have been written, if I may so put it, with less artificiality and more refinement. As for the basic musical material of which the opera is composed, it is on such a level of genius that after Meistersinger there seems hardly any need for another note of music to be composed. I have always said as much, and this is what is so seductive in the vocal score.