The Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovitch Glinka (1804–57) had received a note from Berlioz three weeks earlier asking for details of his musical background. He evidently responded in some detail.

We French are rather inclined, in Paris especially, to base our reception of foreign composers of an unfamiliar type on a kind of prejudice, the injustice of which is always recognised too late to have any impact. Our opinion of them is settled in advance, an opinion that's either friendly or hostile, according to our surroundings, habits, and ideas, and we go along with it initially without any reasons to justify it, though with the possibility of changing it if we absolutely have to. So that if we mention a new Italian composer to the vast majority of Parisian artists, they’ll think, even if they don't say so, that he must be some mediocre cavatina merchant, unable to string three chords together properly, the servile copyist of copyists who imitated the imitators of Rossini, unaware of what's happening in the great musical world, as though it were some tune sung around Juggernaut's pagoda and that experiencing it was best avoided by anyone not wanting to be dubbed a stick-inthe- mud. As a result, the greatest Italian composers could suffer this kind of unwarranted stigma if they arrive here out of the blue. On the other hand, in the world of elegance, that of soirées with singing where the word ‘concert’ means the more or less grotesque performance of half a dozen Italian arias, duets, trios or whatever, with piano accompaniment, the new arrival would, on the contrary, be presumed a delightful composer, full of tuneful melodies, and deserving of the encouragement and support of everyone who loves and honours music.