In the middle of the sixties Carlsruhe, under the encouragement of its reigning Grand-Duke Frederick, occupied an exceptionally brilliant position amongst the smaller European centres of dramatic and musical art, to which it had been raised by the talents and devotion of Edward Devrient, the eminent stage-director of its court theatre, whose name may be familiar to some English readers as that of one of Mendelssohn's intimate friends. A man of wide general culture, the author of the standard work on its subject--'The History of German Dramatic Art'--playwright, singer, actor, possessed of an intimate knowledge of the best traditions of the German stage in the wide sense that includes opera, which had been derived from thirty years of professional association with the court theatres of Berlin and Dresden, Devrient was an ideal man for his post. His own sympathies remained faithful to the classical school of opera upon which his taste had been formed, but he did not allow his devotion to Gluck and Mozart and his interest in the revival of works of an early period to narrow the sphere of his activity. Taking a broad view of the duties of his position, he recognised the claim to hearing of the New-German school, and several of Wagner's musical dramas had been performed in the Carlsruhe court theatre by his permission, if not on his initiative, before his resignation of his post soon after the celebration of his artistic jubilee in April, 1869. Not the least of his services to music was his choice of a successor to the post of court capellmeister at Carlsruhe, which fell vacant on the resignation of Joseph Strauss (not of the celebrated Vienna family) early in 1864. By recommending Hermann Levi (1839-1900) for the appointment, famous after the middle of the seventies amongst the famous Wagner conductors, and director of the first performances of 'Parsifal' (July-August, 1882), and by the generosity with which he permitted the youthful musician to profit by the fruits of his own ripe experience, he contributed in no small degree towards perfecting the technical education of an artist whose name will be remembered in musical history as amongst those of the great in his chosen branch of activity. A gifted pupil of the Leipzig Conservatoire, Levi resolved, at an early age, to aim at achieving distinction as a conductor, and, on entering the service of the Grand-Duke of Baden in his twenty-sixth year, he had already laid the foundation of his future celebrity in successive posts at Saarbrück, Mannheim, and Rotterdam. He had a large and enthusiastic nature which caused him to reject the formal and stereotyped in art and to sympathize with what seemed to him genuinely progressive, and, becoming early in his career a great admirer of Schumann's music, he passed easily to a recognition of the genius of Brahms, with whom he had a slight acquaintance before settling at Carlsruhe.