On his return to Weimar, Liszt learned of Rubinsteins visit and promptly

dispatched to him some of his own scores that Breitkopf and Hrtel had re-
cently published (the symphonic poems Tasso, Prometheus, Les Prludes, Orphe,
Mazeppa, and Festklnge). Despite Rubinsteins intense dislike of Liszts music,
he responded affably, congratulating Liszt on the success of his Messe Gran
written for the inauguration of the basilica at Esztergom. It was not without a
note of envy, however, that he added: You are a lucky man, having the oppor-
tunity to hear and have so much of what you compose performed.85 Rubinstein
must have seen that there were distinct advantages in securing an appointment
to one of the city orchestras. On 21 August Peter Lindpainter, the Kapellmeister
of the court orchestra in Stuttgart had died. Mendelssohn had once declared
him to be the best conductor in Germany, and Rubinstein briey considered
applying for his job, for this would have given him an excellent opportunity to
have his own works performed regularly. In the end this idea came to nothing.
Having completed his oratorio, Rubinstein was already thinking about a new
opera libretto. Carolyne von Wittgenstein came up with the idea of an opera
based on the Hussite revolt, but Rubinstein rejected it, claiming that Meyerbeer
had already exhausted all the possibilities for expressing religious strife in music
with Les Huguenots. He had high hopes that the writer Max Ring would nd
him a suitable operatic subject, but so far nothing had materialized. During his
stay in Berlin Rubinstein often met Joachim at the home of Bettina von Arnim.
He also went to see Meyerbeer, who recorded in his diary on 30 October: Ru-
binstein played me the second part of his oratorio Das verlorene Paradies.86
When Rubinstein called on Glinka, however, the latter was still mortied by the
article on Russian composers published in Bltter fr Musik, Theater und Kunst
and received him coldly. Rubinstein is here, he wrote to Dmitry Stasov on
11/23 August 1856, he is spending the winter here with the intention of pre-
senting his Le paradis perdu after Milton.87 In his Autobiography Rubinstein
described his meeting with Glinka:

The attitude of Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka toward me was very strange. In past
years, here in St. Petersburg, he was affable, as all people are affable to one another.
In the 1850s, when I had already become a composer, he did not treat me in an
affable manner. In Berlin in 1855, after the appearance of the above-mentioned
article, I visited him. He received me very badly and began to read me a lecture to
the effect: I do not understand . . . Had he been referring to others! But he ought
not to have been speaking of himself in such a fashion! I had, after all, compared
him to Beethoven. We parted politely enough. But by then he was ill and irritable.88

Glinka died in Berlin on 3 February 1857. Many years later, on 20 May/2 June
1885, a monument to him, sculpted by Aleksandr Bok, was unveiled at his
birthplaceSmolensk. The funds for this monument had been collected on the
initiative of Glinkas sister, Lyudmila Shestakova, and Balakirev conducted con-
certs of the composers works for the unveiling. The event was attended by all
the most prominent Russian musicians of the day, including Rubinstein, who
would later recall with irony:

68 Anton Rubinstein