I went to the Opera for the first time on 25 May 1863. It was Meyerbeer’s _Prophête_; and I can still recall the scenery and dresses and acting, and make comparisons with later performances, though I cannot recall the singing at any performance vividly enough to compare it with the singing at another. I suppose my taste in operas has varied with the fashion, and also with my time of life. I was told some years ago, by one of our few living poets, that there was only one opera in the world, and that was Gluck’s _Orfeo_. I should say that others have also run, but otherwise I now agree with him. A letter from my brother to my father--Wreyland, 30 June 1853--comes strangely from a boy of six. “My Dear Papa, I am very much displeased at your not answering my letter. there is a great fault in you about those things. and I hope you will answer this. two letters would be the sum but I would not trouble you to write two for one long one would be enough.... I know that you are quite an oprea [Opera] man. but you must not expect me to go to that Theatre for I do not like always to see things showy but I want something full of frolic such as the Merry Wives Of Windsor. that is what I want to see.” He knew Shakespeare too well. My grandfather writes to my father, 12 September 1854:--“He is always reading Shakespeare, and gets hold of all improper words: he made use of some to-day.” The antics of some of the conductors used to amuse me as a boy. They waved their heads and arms, and swayed their bodies, as if they were intoxicated with the music. And then Maud Allan arose upon the stage, and did everything they would have done, were they not compelled to keep their seats. I was at one of her first performances in London; and there was no crowding or applause, such as was usual afterwards--in fact the audience did not quite know what to make of it. She was not the earliest of these dancers--Isidora Duncan was before her--but she had the advantage of being highly trained as a musician before she took to dancing; and certainly her dancing made me understand much music that I never understood before. I had some correspondence with Dr Raymond Duncan--the brother of Isidora--about the music of the ancient Greeks. He claimed to speak with knowledge; but his logic was too easy for me--the Greeks did everything that was beautiful: this is beautiful: therefore the Greeks did it. I could not see how this would solve such problems as the structure of the tetrachords. Some years before that time I wrote a little treatise _On the Interpretation of Greek Music_, and prepared to build an instrument of seventy strings. The ancients had seventy notes, having twenty-one notes to the octave, and a compass of three octaves and a third; but they never had so many strings. They tuned their strings to suit the mode or scale that they were going to use; but my object was to have the notes all there without this tuning.