The best of good-mornings!
Just skim a little of this book. It is badly written, and one is compelled to skip all where the author thinks anywise needful to trot out an opinion of his own; yet the facts, particularly from Gluck's Paris period, are highly interesting; moreover, this passionate, yet entirely self-centred Gluck, with his calm vanity, large savings, and embroidered court-dress, has something quite amusing and refreshing about him in his old age. —
Only, make a big skip at the beginning.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 11