Exactly the same thing had been done a few years earlier with Mozart’s Magic Flute. It had been botched into a ghastly pot-pourri by Lachnith—whom I hereby pillory with Castilblaze—and given as the Mysteries of Isis.
Thus mocked, travestied, deprived of a limb here, an eye there—twisted and maimed—these two men of genius were introduced to the French public.
How is it that they put up with these atrocities?
Mozart assassinated by Lachnith.
Weber by Castilblaze—who did the same for Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, and Beethoven.
Beethoven’s symphonies “corrected” by Fétis, by Kreutzer, and by Habeneck (of this I have more to say).
Molière and Corneille chopped up by Théâtre Français demons.
Shakespeare “arranged” for performance in England by Colley Cibber! The list is endless.
No, a thousand times no! No man living has a right to try and destroy the individuality of another, to force him to adopt a style not his own, and to give up his natural point of view. If a man be commonplace, let him remain so; if he be great—a choice spirit set above his fellows—then, in the name of all the gods, bow humbly before him, and let him stand erect and alone in his glory.
I know that Garrick improved Romeo and Juliet by putting his exquisite, pathetic ending in the place of Shakespeare’s; but who are the miscreants who doctored King Lear, Hamlet, The Tempest, Richard the Third?