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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Meyerbeer, the first of them, made an extraordinary impression.
The frankly delirious description of his Robert the Devil in
Balzac's short story entitled Gambra, and Goethe's astonishingly
mistaken notion that he could have composed music for Faust, show
how completely the enchantments of the new dramatic music upset
the judgment of artists of eminent discernment. Meyerbeer was,
people said (old gentlemen still say so in Paris), the successor
of Beethoven: he was, if a less perfect musician than Mozart, a
profounder genius. Above all, he was original and daring. Wagner
himself raved about the duet in the fourth act of Les Huguenots
as wildly as anyone.
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