2-720-431 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Here is a gentleman who knows all about the new opera', (1907). When the young Mendelssohn was about 12 years old, he met the composer and conductor Julius Benedict, then a teenager: 'He therefore seized Benedict by the arm, exclaiming, 'You will come to my father's house with me, will you not?' On entering he retained Benedict's hand tightly in his grasp, conducted him at once upstairs, and, bursting into the drawing-room, where his mother was seated at her knitting, he exclaimed, 'Mamma, mamma! Here is a gentleman, a pupil of Carl Weber's, who knows all about the new opera, "Der Freischütz!"' An episode from the life of German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). From "Story-Lives of Great Musicians", by F.J. Rowbotham. [Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd, London, 1907]