Then nothing would do but they must have a ballet, and as I could not stop it I tried to arrange a sort of scene from Weber’s Invitation to the Waltz; but that was not enough, so the dancers themselves took it into their heads that some bits out of my symphonies would come in nicely.
Pillet agreed. I did not; and, to stop discussion, I said:
“Now look here! I entirely object to introducing into Der Freyschütz music that is not Weber’s. To prove that I am not unreasonable, go and ask Dessauer, who is over there; I will abide by his decision.”
At Pillet’s first words Dessauer turned sharply to me:
“Oh, Berlioz! don’t do that!”
That ended the matter for the time and the opera was a success. But when I went to Russia they cut and chopped and gnawed it until it was simply a deformity.
And how they play what is left now! What a conductor! What a chorus! What utterly sleepy, disgraceful ineptitude and misinterpretation of everything by everybody!
When will a new Christ come to purge our temple and drive out the money changers with a scourge!
I returned to my treadmill—journalism—once more, and oh! the horror of it!
The misery of writing to order an article on nothing in particular—or on things that, as far as I was concerned, simply did not exist since they excited in me no feeling of any description whatsoever. Long ago I remember spending three days over a critique without being able to write one word. I cannot remember the subject but I well remember my torments.