Towards three o'clock I went to the first stage-orchestra rehearsal of our operas. We began with Rigoletto, which ran into trouble from the very first bars. Naturally, it was Tsybin's first experience on the podium for an opera, but he was less to blame than the orchestra, which had no idea what it was doing. And the reason for this was that Tcherepnin had been blithely spending all his time on the Lyadov Jubilee Concert and had not left enough time to prepare the orchestra. All they had had was one brief run-through of the opera scores, and were now comprehesively covered in obloquy. Stopping every minute and getting completely out of step with the singers, Tsybin struggled on for more than two hours.