1849

Claude Debussy, in a letter to G. Belloni, a Parisian well known in musical circles, gives the following satirical report about a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal under director Alfred Cortot: “Cortot, like Weingartner, leans affectionately over the first violins, murmuring intimate secrets; he swoops round to the trombones, adjuring them with an eloquent gesture, that might be translated: ‘Now my lads! Put some go into it! Try to be supertrombones!’ and the obedient trombones conscientiously do their best to swallow the brass tubes” (Kolodin, The Composer as Listener 106).