and ending in June 1892. He also conducted Neumann's traveling opera company, appearing at Berlin and in 1888–1889 conducting Wagner's Ring cycle in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He left Prague to become principal conductor in October 1892 of the Berlin Court Opera (Kgl. Oper — today the Berlin State Opera, where he was appointed Chief Musical Director (Kgl. preussischer Generalmusikdirector) on August 26, 1908. He remained in Berlin until 1912, conducting 1,071 performances of 103 operas. He also conducted the Royal Orchestra in concerts there. He took other assignments during his tenure in Berlin. He was guest conductor at the Silesian music festivals in Goerlitz between 1894 and 1911. In May and June 1899 at London's Royal Opera House Covent Garden, he conducted Beethoven's Fidelio and several of Wagner's operas (Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, Die Meistersinger, Der fliegende Höllander and Tristan und Isolde). He devoted many summers to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth where he became principal conductor in 1903, after serving as a musical assistant since 1892. He succeeded Hermann Levi as the conductor of Parsifal there. As war approached in the summer of 1914, Muck insisted on performing Parsifal on August 1, 1914 to close the Festival, which was not revived until 1924. Muck conducted Parsifal at all of the fourteen Bayreuth festivals held between 1901 and 1930, and also conducted Lohengrin there in 1909 and Die Meistersinger in 1925, becoming a close friend of the Wagner family. The American music critic Herbert Peyser (1886-1953) thought Muck's interpretation of Parsifal the greatest he had ever heard: "the only and ultimate Parsifal; the Parsifal in which every phrase was charged with infinities; the Parsifal which was neither of this age nor that age but of all time." He led the Vienna Philharmonic from 1903 to 1906 and the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1906 to 1918, and took visiting assignments in other cities, including Paris, Madrid, Copenhagen, Brussels. Muck was offered the Metropolitan Opera House podium in New York at a reputed $27,000 a year, but declined. From 1903 to 1906 he alternated with Felix Mottl as conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. At the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition held in San Francisco May 14–26, 1915, Muck conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 13 concerts of music of all nations. Conducting Solo performers praised his work with them. Artur Schnabel called Muck: "a very great master, whose reliability, maturity and selfless dedication are