Weisse smiled when Müller repeated the lines to him, and declared himself, as became the founder of German opera, in its favour. He was too modest, however, to maintain that operettas were dramatic works of art, or to hope thereby to raise the taste of his countrymen; he could only disclaim all intention of degrading it or of doing more than encouraging {GERMAN OPERETTA.} (221) German people to come together, and providing pleasant and popular entertainments for them when they did so.[24] Gotter preserved a discreet neutrality on the subject, since he had had a direct interest in more than one operatic libretto; he would not declare for either side, and was of opinion that variety was the root of all pleasure. Wieland was more explicit, and declared that the national stage could only be rendered of importance by German music; comic and serious German vaudevilles were wanted, but good poets would soon come forward to supply the need. He was not only able to point to his own "Alceste," and the success it had obtained; he had developed his views on the cultivation of German vaudeville with a lively acknowledgment of the achievements of Schweitzer, and he possessed genuine feeling and interest for music. Even a musician like Reichardt declared himself against the operetta, but thought as it was there it ought at least to be improved, and made as useful as possible.[25] The interest which was taken by great poets in the elevation of the vaudeville is exemplified by Goethe; after "Erwin und Elmire" and "Claudina von Villabella" were written, his intercourse with his early friend Christoph Kayser[26] (b. 1736) caused him to attempt the construction of vaudeville after the received type of the Italian operetta. His first experiment was "Scherz, List und Rache," which he began in 1784, and sent at once to Kayser for composition;[27] the two first acts were ready the following year, and were well thought of in Weimar;[28] in Rome, whither Goethe was followed by Kayser at the end of 1787, they finished the operetta together.[29] But Goethe thought that the operetta {DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL.} (222) was extravagantly mounted,[30] and complains himself that a defective conception of the intermezzo had led him to spin out the trivial subject into innumerable musical pieces, which had been treated by Kayser quite after the old-fashioned models. "Unhappily," says Goethe, "adherence to the old principles caused it to suffer from poverty of parts; it never went beyond a terzet, and one felt inclined to wish that the doctor's medical books might be endowed with life to form a chorus. All the pains we took, therefore, to confine ourselves within narrow and simple limits went for nothing when Mozart appeared. The 'Entführung aus dem Serail' threw all else into the shade, and our carefully worked-out piece was never heard of again at any theatre."[31]