Conducting is an art with a technic of its own, and good musicianship alone is not sufficient. During a performance the conductor must know how to make his singers and players convey his interpretation, and to do this, a glance of the eye and many different movements of hands and head have to speak a language of their own which his executants must quickly understand and follow. The conductor must also know when and how to follow a soloist with sympathy. This technic cannot be acquired overnight, and I owe to Lilli Lehmann a valuable hint in this connection. As Anton Seidl was the accredited and celebrated Wagner conductor, these operas and any other novelties of importance naturally fell to him, and it remained for me to conduct only such operas as he did not care to assume—Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète,” Verdi’s “Trovatore,” etc., etc. This caused me great sorrow and anguish of heart, as a great part of my training had been in the modern operas. I almost knew the Wagner music-dramas by heart and had received a very thorough training in the symphonies of the classic composers, but for the operas of Meyerbeer and Verdi, I had a youthful intolerance, and of their traditions of tempi and nuance I knew but little, with the exception, perhaps, of Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète,” which had been marvellously performed under my father the preceding year and in which Marianne Brandt had sung the part of the mother with incredible pathos and nobility. One day, while I was rehearsing “La Juive,” of Halévy, Lilli Lehmann turned on me during the intermission and said: “Walter, in those old operas you do not watch the singers enough, you are occupied with the orchestra as if you were conducting a symphony. You give them the cue for their entrances and you look at them instead of at your singers. We need you and you need us. The orchestra have their printed parts before them; we sing by heart and have to rely on the conductor for difficult entrances. Watch my lips when I sing, and you will know when I breathe and you will breathe with me; you will immediately also sense the _tempo rubato_ which is such an important part in the proper phrasing of these older operas.” This advice was a revelation to me, and I found to my delight that by heeding it, not only was I able to follow the singers with the orchestra, but even to influence the singers in regard to tempi. At the performance of “La Juive” I must have stared at Lilli like a Cheshire cat whenever she was singing. The music went with remarkable unanimity and elasticity, and at the close of the performance Lilli, who was never very profuse in praise, turned to me and said: “You see, Walter, how well it goes. What did I tell you?” In this way, slowly and often painfully, I strengthened my grasp of the technic of my craft, and with increased assurance on my part came an increased compliance on the part of the singers to follow my artistic desires as regards the interpretation of their rôles.