His musicians, like Voltaire, love-hated him: loved him because he was such a great patron of the arts and enthusiastic participant, hated him because, yes, he really did stand over your shoulder during the entire performance making commentary, and woe unto you if you did anything he didn't like, and that was very easy to do.

Heeeeeee. To be fair, if I had absolute power and had been raised by a totally BSC family (holy cow, Wilhelmine, I have finished Part I and into Part II and if only a tenth of what she says about her parents is true... it's pretty bad) I would totally do that too. Since I don't have absolute power, I just write long critiques of every opera I see and post it to DW instead of making the musicians Do It My Way. :P :)