Musical Criticisms Part 5

[Sidenote: ="Faust in Solitude."=

_February 15, 1900._]

Musical biography teaches that a hard struggle, not only for recognition but for existence, is the normal experience of a great composer. A few great players and singers make fortunes, but great composers never, and most of them have had to endure stress of poverty to the end of their lives. Yet it may be doubted whether any other great composer ever sounded the depths of human misery, as Wagner did during that first visit to Paris, undertaken in the hope of making his fortune at the Grand Opera. It is generally supposed that genius is conscious of its own powers and works on with serene confidence in the future. But, unfortunately, there is also such a thing as conceit--that is, the illusory consciousness of powers that do not exist; and a man of genius who, without private means, had thrown up his employment and taken himself and his wife on a long journey to a foreign country in order to win recognition in "la ville Lumiere" must, in the course of three fruitless years, have felt something worse than misgiving. That Wagner did so feel is a matter not of speculation but of history. He has described how, when meditating the subject of the "Flying Dutchman," he sent for a pianoforte to see whether, after the mean drudgery and abject misery of those years, "he was still a musician." Wagner was not an ordinary man. Everything about him was on a grander scale--his folly and rashness no less than his talent. Though more sensitive than others to the most trifling discomfort, he showed, under an acc.u.mulation of miseries that would simply have crushed almost anyone else, a stupendous energy and reaction. He had failed to get his "Rienzi" performed in Paris. For three years he had continued his fruitless endeavours to obtain a hearing at the opera; and a crisis of frightful despondency ensued, when, to ruin and beggary and the sense of having made a fool of himself, was added an attack of a painful skin disease which tormented him at intervals all his life. Now it was precisely at that crisis that he wrote the "Faust" Overture--his masterpiece in the strict sense of the term; that is, the first work of his mastership or mature power.

Thus, instead of being crushed, Wagner is suddenly found drawing upon the reserve force of his genius to produce a work that stands very nearly on a level with Beethoven's third "Leonora" Overture. For the Faust Overture is a tone-picture of the utmost energy, n.o.bility, and beauty, utterly defying comparison with any other except Beethoven, and attaining to a kind of demonic eloquence that Wagner himself never found again, till quite late in life, during the "Ring of the Nibelung"

period.

[Sidenote: =The "Nibelung" Dramas.=

_May 11, 1903._]

Whatever may have happened in former years, it was scarcely possible to leave the theatre after the "Gotterdammerung" performance on Sat.u.r.day with any disposition to satirise the management for the failure of the stage effects in the final scene. In the course of the week Wagner's greatest work had been presented with considerably brighter intelligence and more adequate resource than ever before in this country, and it was piteous that there should be a slight humiliation at the end. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the "Ring" in its entirety has ever been better done, for the amazing excellence of the orchestral performance was to some considerable extent matched by the singers, and the dramatic realisation of the composer's intentions was good everywhere except in certain parts of the prologue, and showed positive genius at certain points in each of the main dramas forming the trilogy. The general impression was thus one of a great task n.o.bly carried out, and the concluding fizzle, however tiresome and distressing to the stage managers, could but seem a trifling matter to any appreciative spectator. It is a terrible business, that _finale_ of "Gotterdammerung." Conceived in a mood of frenzied protest, it bears a peculiar stamp of extravagance and violence. It shows Wagner as an Anarchist of the Bakounine type, undertaking, as it were, to "grasp this sorry scheme of things entire" and "shatter it to bits" on the off-chance that Nature might afterwards "remould it nearer to the heart's desire." A lifetime of n.o.ble endeavour and great achievement, with scarcely any response from the world but the crackling of thorns under a pot, had produced in Wagner such bitterness of spirit as little men are saved from by their natural limitations, and it is that bitterness of spirit which finds expression in the smashing and burning and drowning of the "Gotterdammerung" _finale_. Heroes and demiG.o.ds, renouncing a hopeless conflict with the ugliness and meanness of the world, involve heaven and earth in one red ruin. Such is the significance of a tableau not worth a t.i.the of the time, trouble, and expense devoted to it.

By engaging Dr. Richter for the 1903 production the Covent Garden authorities made it clear that this time the nonsense of star performers who make cuts for their own convenience and sacrifice the composer's intentions to a performer's conceit would not be tolerated; and at the same time they gave the public the only possible guarantee for adequate rehearsal. For that privilege London has had to wait twenty-seven years since the original production in Bayreuth, though "Die Walkure" and "Siegfried" were long ago taken up into the ordinary Covent Garden repertory. There can be little doubt that "Rhinegold" is in all important respects the most difficult part of the "Ring" to make effective. Epic rather than dramatic in character, it presents to the actor an unfamiliar kind of task. He finds himself representing some creature that is scarcely individualised at all, and taking part in the interplay of elemental forces rather than of human pa.s.sions. This goes far towards accounting for the fact that last week the "Rhinegold"

performance fell very far below the level of all the rest. The representative of Alberic in the first scene seemed to take very little interest in the love-making with the Rhine maidens. He had apparently adopted the guide-book view of the dwarf as a creature merely of greed and hate, and had overlooked the "fruitful impulse"--to borrow Mr.

Bernard Shaw's expression--which drives Alberic towards the Rhine maidens; for his acting was quite feeble and pointless, nor was it possible for him to carry out the stage directions that require Alberic to climb over the rock-work and rush after the Rhine maidens with the "nimbleness of a Cobold," the rock-work being much too insecure and the Rhine maidens too restricted in their movements. In that first scene the rise of the curtain reveals something like the glazed side of a huge aquarium tank, and it was apparently to the general effect of the picture as first displayed that all the attention of the scenic artists had been given. Nibelheim, with the clanking sounds of the Nibelungs at their smiths' work, was fairly well rendered, but here again Alberic's part was ineffectively done, and there was far too much fairy-tale prettiness and variety in the aspect of his crowd of slaves. At Bayreuth these victims of sweating and improper labour conditions are represented with horrifying truth as a huddled crowd of little earth-men, driven hither and thither by the cursing and lashing of their master, and, instead of being to some slight extent adorned and differentiated, uniformly grimy and abject. Stage prettiness was never more out of place than in the Covent Garden presentation of the scene. The setting was best in the final scene, where the G.o.ds march over the rainbow bridge into Valhalla. In the rainbow there was a curious predominance of "greenery-yallery" tints to the exclusion of the primary colours, but it took its place well enough in a fairly effective stage picture with a prehistoric building on the heights to the left. Here the only point of inferiority to the Bayreuth presentation was in the meteorological background. After the magnificent orchestrated thunderstorm the sky is supposed to clear and the G.o.ds to enter their new abode amid the glow of a most radiant sunset. But the secrets of atmospheric effect and cloud pageantry seem to remain for the present exclusively in the hands of Bayreuth and Munich, and these things, though they belong to the framework rather than the essential drama, seem to have loomed large in Wagner's imagination when he conceived the "Ring," and so to have a certain importance.

II.

In strong contrast with the embarra.s.sment and falling back on the mere picturesque of the "Rhinegold" presentation was the rendering of "Die Walkure" on Wednesday. A dramatic interpretation of Wagner at all comparable to the musical interpretation which we derive from the Liszt-Bulow-Richter tradition is not for the present, or for some time to come, to be expected. But, making allowance for the difference in standard between the musical and scenic arts, which is simply a phenomenon of our time, one may well be thankful for such a rendering of the music's proper scenic background and framework as was given at Covent Garden on all but the first of the four evenings in the production of the present year. In the opening act of "Die Walkure" the setting was adequate, and a strikingly well-balanced performance was given by Mr. Van Dyck (Siegmund), Mr. Klopfer (Hunding), and Mme. Bolska (Sieglinda). At the end of the only scene in which the three figure together Sieglinda, dismissed by her husband, stands at the door of the bedroom; Siegmund, who has told his story, sits on the further side of the stage, the central place being occupied by the beetle-browed Hunding. It is a moment big with fate in Wagner's peculiar manner.

Nothing certain is known or decided, but glances full of inquiry and rapturous or sinister surmise pa.s.s between the three, whose variously coloured kinds of suspense the music interprets. Here the _ensemble_ was truly admirable, the stress and peculiar atmosphere of that moment big with fate being successfully caught. Throughout the act Mr. Van Dyck's suppleness and resource were finely exemplified, the sombre figure of Mr. Klopfer's Hunding contrasting effectively, while Mme. Bolska did much by intelligent acting and good singing to compensate for a certain lack of personal adaptation to the part.

The majestic Wotan of Mr. Van Rooy was much in evidence throughout the rest of the drama. A rare loftiness of conception stamps nearly all that Mr. Van Rooy does. On the other hand, he is somewhat wanting in suppleness, here and there, sacrificing the _ensemble_ to some extent to his own rigorous and ultra-heroic impersonation. This is particularly noticeable in softer scenes, such as the leave-taking with Brynhild.

Only in scenes where Wotan is wrathful or oppressed by the "too vast orb of his fate" does Mr. Van Rooy succeed completely. His finest moment is in the muster of the Valkyries, where those terrible warrior maidens hold converse in music as wild and tumultuous as goes up from some great parliament of birds, till Wotan stamps with his foot, and the whole covey of them rush for their horses and go wheeling and galloping away into the clouds.

To the Brynhild of Miss Ternina it is not easy to do justice. No doubt a specialist in voice-training might have some objection to raise against the manner in which this or that note was produced, and as to her impersonation in the earlier scenes, where Brynhild brandishes her spear and sings "Ho-yo-to-ho," the doubt might be raised whether it is rugged enough. But on the whole this artist seems to present a case of almost providential adaptation to the task of impersonating Wagner's greatest heroine. From whatever point of view her impersonation be regarded, it seems better than one could reasonably expect. A most richly endowed and harmonious personality is the basis of it. Fully matching Mr. Van Rooy in breadth and dignity of conception, she greatly surpa.s.ses her distinguished colleague in tact and cleverness, whether the matter in hand be the management of draperies, the humouring of a horse, or any such secondary matter upon which the proper development of a stage picture may depend. Vocally, too, Miss Ternina is fully equal to the tremendous task, and her Brynhild is thus a truly wonderful revelation of Wagner's art at its best. For Brynhild is beyond all question Wagner's finest individual creation. In a series of matchless scenes he shows us the development of the warrior-maid into a perfect woman, every phase of that development being touched with a kind of demonic power that makes it impossible for anyone altogether to miss the point. In the second act of "Walkure" Brynhild comes forth on to the crags in her shining armour, with helm and shield and corselet of steel. In the leave-taking with her obdurate father, who, against his better judgment, has given way to the counsels of Fricka--that Mrs. Grundy of Valhalla,--the insignia of her Valkyriehood begin to fall off, in antic.i.p.ation of the humanising process that is to be completed when Siegfried, in the ensuing drama, removes the steel corselet for the bridal feast. Before our eyes, therefore, and step by step Brynhild is transformed, making the heroic life visible and rhythmic for us at every moment. She is the vessel into which Wagner has poured the very finest vintage of his genius. No blackguardly characteristics of the _Uebermensch_, such as develop so very freely in the Siegfried of "Gotterdammerung," are allowed to deform the figure and melody of the superb heroine, who to the end glows with intense and untainted life.

Adequately to render such a conception--adequately both for our eyes and ears--is no small achievement, and it is Miss Ternina's achievement which well deserves to be reckoned, along with Dr. Richter's orchestral interpretation, among the glories of the present production.

III.

"Siegfried is a revelation of sensuous life in its natural and joyous fulness. No historical dress obscures his form, nor are his movements obstructed by any force external to himself. The error and confusion arising from the wild play of pa.s.sion rage around him and involve him in destruction. But till that destruction is compa.s.sed nothing in Siegfried's environment can arrest his own impulse. Not even in presence of death does he allow himself to be swayed by any other influence than the restless stream of life flowing within himself. Fear, envy, and vindictiveness are alike alien to his nature, and so, too, is any desire for love arising from reflection. His every movement is determined by the direct flow of vital force swelling the veins and muscles of his body to rapturous fulfilment of their functions."

Such, according to his creator, is that central hero of the "Nibelung"

dramas whom critics still for the most part hopelessly misunderstand, though the best of the actors who have to represent him seem long ago to have mastered his secret. It is a familiar fact that the cultivated instinct of a good actor will often go right where all current criticism goes wrong, and no figure of the world's drama, ancient or modern, exhibits the point in a more remarkable manner than Siegfried. To any actor, indeed, with the necessary personal and vocal endowment the part may well make a strong appeal. It is devoid of all subtlety, simply requiring him to know his words and his notes and not to allow the native hue of his resolution to be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. Mr. Kraus, the Siegfried of the Covent Garden performances, did well in most essential respects.

But much more remarkable than any particular impersonation was the catching of the proper tone and atmosphere in nearly every important scene of the three main dramas. The glowing forge in the depths of the primeval forest at the opening of "Siegfried," the play of the sunlight through the moving branches that so terrifies the dwarf accustomed to a subterranean environment, the highly realistic smith's work--all these accessories in the picture of the G.o.dlike youth were well done, and the peculiar early morning exhilaration of that first act was quite successfully realised. So, too, were the fairy-tale terrors of the dragon's cave and the leafy splendours of the glade in which Siegfried holds converse with the birds. Where there is room for improvement in the Covent Garden staging of these dramas is, above all, in the meteorological background of "Rhinegold" and "Gotterdammerung"; secondly, in the "Ride of the Valkyries," which has not hitherto been done in a sufficiently spirited manner anywhere but in Paris; thirdly, in the final scene of conflagration and ruin. At present the final scene is much too elaborately done. All that smashing and falling of timber is a mistake. A chaotic design painted on a sheet of canvas can be let down at the right moment with better effect to the eyes of the spectators, in addition to the immense advantage of producing no noise or dust, costing little, and being completely under control.[1] The present method of rendering the scene is too costly, too noisy, and too dangerous. The Valhalla building should be recognisably the same as in the final scene of "Rhinegold."

[1] This suggestion was adopted in the performances at Covent Garden in 1905.--ED.

Never have the musical splendours of the "Ring" been revealed to British audiences as in the past three weeks. The windy and cloudy eloquence of the "Walkure" music and the heroic pathos of Brynhild's leave-taking have long been pretty thoroughly appreciated, but not so the songs of the forge in "Siegfried," where Wagner throws an almost fabulous kind of energy into the picture of the typical young man singing at his work, summing up all that is finest in that enthusiasm of labour which is perhaps the best part of our inheritance from the nineteenth century.

These songs were, in the recent production, allowed to develop without cuts or distortion. The brawny rhythm, the iron clangour, the fizz and tumult of the instrumentation--all these things came out as never before at a performance in this country. So, too, with the long love duet of Siegfried and Brynhild and the ravishing trio of the Rhine Maidens in the last act of "Gotterdammerung." But, apart from such dazzling moments, the performances were in their completeness and sustained excellence an extraordinary revelation of the composer's power in the use of musical symbolism. Just before the rise of the curtain on the first act of "Siegfried" one hears that whine or snarl of the Nibelung dwarf, entering on the minor ninth along with the hammering theme. It sounds merely comical and trivial. But just as a personal fault, first observed as something funny, may in the experience of life or study of history be found developing into a source of appalling mischief, so, as these dramas progress, do we find the symbol of Nibelung hatred developing from a comical snarl into those monstrous and mult.i.tudinous yells that rend the welkin and dismay the soul amid the gathering horror of the "Gotterdammerung" tragedy. Persons who are in the habit of chattering about the _Leitmotiv_ as though it were a nostrum might with advantage take note of a few such points. The symbols of Nibelung hatred are not more effective nor anywise better done than the other symbols in the "Ring," but they are shorter and more peculiarly orchestrated, and so easier to follow.

As to Dr. Richter's interpretation of these gigantic scores perhaps enough has been said. The modern executive musician can approach no greater task than that in the performance of which the foundation of Dr.

Richter's reputation was laid when the work was heard for the first time twenty-seven years ago in the composer's presence, and we have been fortunate in hearing his authoritative rendering once more. If Wotan had understood his business anything like as well as Dr. Richter, Valhalla would never have come to grief.

[Sidenote: =The Bayreuth Festival.=

_July 23, 1904._]

Apart from the Wagner Theatre and the undertakings connected therewith, Bayreuth is a decayed "Residenzstadt," with an "Old Castle" of the fifteenth century, a "New Castle" of the eighteenth, and other not very carefully preserved relics of the Court which Franconian Margraves long kept here. Of country residences and "pleasaunces" too, designed in the over-fantastic manner of the South German potentate, there is more than one in the neighbourhood, and no doubt such things help to create an atmosphere that is favourable to artistic enjoyment. The smoke of modern industrial enterprise is not unknown here, but in the fulfilment of the part of its destiny which is connected with Wagnerian drama Bayreuth is aided by the leafy dells and dingles and the stately avenues of the Hofgarten, if not by the fantastic waterworks of the "Eremitage."

The Festival, which stands as a concrete symbol of Wagner's artistic mission, is just now at the zenith of its prosperity. It is twenty-eight years since the theatre was opened and twenty-one since Wagner's death, and the only thing which Bayreuth now fears is American piracy. One kind of calumny after another has been silenced, and in years past the inst.i.tution seems to have done nothing but gain in solidity and dignity.

It has formed an international public with a somewhat higher average of intelligence than is to be found anywhere else; and if there are certain weak and wrong-headed elements in the internal organisation, they are not so bad as to ruin the combined result of the brilliant and exceptional talent with which nearly every department--musical, dramatic, scenic, architectural, mechanical, and administrative--is worked. One might make a long list of the points in which the Wagner Theatre is somewhat better than any other of the kind. For example, the situation and approaches are more agreeable, the exits and entrances are more convenient, the ventilation is much more satisfactory, the acoustic is much finer, the distractions during the performance are fewer in consequence of specially good arrangements, structural and other, and by reason of the early start and long intervals the audience is less fatigued; the stage machinery works better, and the discipline behind the scenes is more thorough. The orchestra, besides being more advantageously placed, is larger, and has a higher average of executive ability. Apart, therefore, from the special Wagnerian enthusiasm, there is much to attract persons who take any kind of interest in musical drama, and as a matter of fact the audience commonly includes dozens of well-known musicians from different parts of the world whose own tendencies are anything but Wagnerian.

[Sidenote: ="Parsifal."=

_July 24, 1904._]

On the second day of this festival "Parsifal" was given for the 122nd time in Bayreuth, where, since the original production in 1882, it has formed the princ.i.p.al feature of every festival except that of 1896. Any attempt to describe impressions of the performance has to be preceded by a shaking of oneself free from that hypnotic influence which Wagner's art in its latest phase exercises. The curtain falls on the first act, the lights are turned up, and one emerges quickly into the light of day to find oneself once more in the midst of a chattering but well-behaved international crowd that wanders about the open sandy s.p.a.ce girdled with plantations on either side of the theatre. It is not quite the same experience as a child's on awakening from an importunate dream, because the feeling that it was not one's own dream but another's is peculiarly strong, together with a sense of utter astonishment that it should be possible for the consciousness of an adult person to be ravished away into the dream-world of another. Then comes further reflection and the inevitable question how it is done. Is it primarily by means of the music, which pa.s.ses through the chambers of consciousness like the fumes of an anaesthetic, or does the peculiar potency lie in the dramatic symbols, for the elaboration of which the subtlest essences of a hundred arts seem to have been brought together? All the objections to "Parsifal" would seem to resolve themselves ultimately into distrust of something that is so dreamlike, and dreamlike in a manner so inexpressibly soft and luxurious. It is all rhythmic with the slow, musically ordered movements of the Grail's knights, who are so holy as to feel sin like a bodily pain; it is solemn with hieratic pageantry, and rich with the l.u.s.tre of costly stuffs and the glitter of ecclesiastical embroideries and jewels. In the first and last acts it has the atmosphere of a Christian sanctuary, and the second act, pa.s.sing in Klingsor's garden, seems to represent the pleasures of sin as imagined by the most innocent of mediaeval monks. All this the orthodox moralist regards with some distrust as tending to create a distaste for hard work and cold water. But let him remember the mischief done by the Puritans in the seventeenth century, and be careful how he lays about him with the iconoclastic hammer. Whatever else "Parsifal" may be, it is certainly the most marvellous theatrical show in the world, and, as the ultimate achievement of a man who for a lifetime had been considerably in advance of any other person in knowledge of theatrical art, it deserves to be treated with a measure of respect.

What Bayreuth accomplishes at a "Parsifal" performance, in the smooth and harmonious working of infinitely complex scenic resources, is without parallel, and the almost miraculous stage management was last week at its best. The slow transformations of the first and last acts were carried out in faultless correspondence with the musical suggestions. The sudden collapse of Klingsor's garden into ruin and desolation was also perfectly done, and in all the elaborate evolutions of the knights' retainers and scholars there was never the semblance of a false move. A specially admirable feature was the fine co-ordination of the dangerously complicated musical scheme in the latter part of the first act, where the conductor has to keep together a body of singers and players who are s.p.a.ced out at four different levels--the orchestra below the stage, the knights seated at the love-feast or manoeuvring about on the stage, the older scholars on the first gallery of the dome, and the younger scholars at the top. All the multifarious choir-singing of boys and men was beautifully done; the only mistakes were made by Amfortas and t.i.turel. The conductor was Dr. Muck, of Berlin, whose _tempi_ seem to have been considered too slow by some of the _habitues_, though his interpretation was admitted to be in all other respects above reproach.

[Sidenote: ="The Ring."=

_July 28, 1904._]

This year's festival includes two complete presentations of the "Ring"

tetralogy, of which the first began on Monday. It seems to be generally admitted here that the performance of the Prologue ("Rheingold") given on that day was the best that has yet been achieved. Dr. Richter was at the helm for the first time this year, and the generalship that has been one great factor in Bayreuth's reputation ever since the opening of the Wagner Theatre in 1876 soon became perceptible in the plastic force of the orchestral rendering and the consummate knowledge with which everything was disposed in such a manner as to give each performer the best possible chance of doing justice to himself and his part. Moreover, "Rheingold" is, of all the Wagnerian dramas, the one best adapted to display the art of Bayreuth advantageously. The staging is of the most extraordinary kind. All the action takes place up in the clouds, down in the waters, or where the forges resound in the fiery caverns of Nibelheim, and not one of the characters is a plain human being. G.o.ds, G.o.ddesses, giants, dwarfs, and water nymphs make up the _dramatis personae_, and the whole drama is more completely outside the range of ordinary operatic art than any other musical and dramatic work. It is therefore natural that Bayreuth, which alone among theatres devoted to musical drama is not hampered by the operatic traditions, should establish pre-eminence in the staging and dramatic presentation of "Rheingold." There is no part for a prima donna or leading tenor, and everything depends on a kind of extraordinary character-acting created by Wagner, along with those richly animated figures from Norse mythology which so effectively represent the natural forces and psychic impulses of his greatest and most characteristic poem. The most important person is Loge, the tricksy Fire G.o.d, who is far from sure that he did wisely in joining the firm of Wotan and Company.

In the great revival of the "Ring" here in 1896 the impersonation of Loge by the late Vogel of Munich was a brilliant feature. Vogel was at the time recognised as the best Loge, and his mantle has now fallen on Dr. Otto Briesemeister, who, with a much less effective costume than his predecessor's, dances very cleverly through his long and important part.

But among the stage performers it was Mr. Hans Breuer, the representative of the dwarf Mime, to whom the princ.i.p.al honours of Monday's performance fell. Already in 1896 Mr. Breuer was the Bayreuth Mime, and he seems to have been steadily improving his presentation ever since. It is now beyond all expression brilliant. Mime (or Mimmy, as the name has been well Anglicised) is perhaps the best invented of Wagner's purely grotesque figures--better individualised than his master, the sinister Alberich, representing gold as a world-power, for whom Mimmy is compelled to do smith's work. From beginning to end the part presents unfamiliar problems to the actor, for never before was the attempt made to give a musical vehicle to such whining and cringing and snarling. But those problems have all now been solved by Mr. Breuer in a manner suggesting finality. He has penetrated to the very marrow of the composer's conception, and he gives us a figure that glows with imaginative power at every moment. Almost equally good in its very different way is the mighty elemental brutality of Mr. Johannes Elmblad's Fafner--another case of an actor completely identified with the particular part,--and the second giant (Mr. Hans Keller) fairly matched his colleague and Messrs. Breuer and Briesemeister in expressive pantomimic interpretation of the music. The enchanting "Rhine Daughter"

trio of the first and last scenes was beautifully rendered, the swimming manoeuvre of the former scene being done probably better than ever before. Besides doing justice to the drama as an allegorical picture of life in the light of certain nineteenth-century ideas, the performance was a specially good revelation of its amusing and navely entertaining qualities. Regarding the show simply as an enacted fairy-tale, one could not but call it a mighty good one, and that aspect of the matter was almost certainly never before brought out so well.

[Sidenote: ="The Ring."=

_July 30, 1904._]

Too much ridicule has been expended on those who, in the days when the works of Wagner were new to the world, declared them impossible of performance. After witnessing one complete series of the dramas forming the programme of this year's festival I am profoundly impressed by the newness of the art that has been worked out, mainly in this place, under stress of Wagner's peculiar requirements. The stage manager and the singing actor, no less than the orchestral player and the conductor, have been compelled to acquire a new technique. It is even possible to state approximately the order in which the special kinds of technique required by Wagner were developed. Of course the instrumental came first, for without it there could have been no attempt to bring the new art before the world. Here the most important influence, in addition to the composer's own, was that of Liszt, Bulow, and Richter--the original stalwarts of the Wagnerian school. Next arose a new race of dramatic singers, of whom Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Niemann, and Materna were early examples; and the key to the enigma of the music was found. But Wagner's art is complex. Including, as it does, all the elements of the tragedy, which Aristotle describes as having music for one of its parts, together with modern scenic presentation, it is indeed somewhat more complex than any other known art, and that is why it has taken so long to master the technique of it. To the civilised world of no more than twenty-five years ago it was still inconceivable that both the drama and the music in one work could be important. A play with a little incidental music was a familiar thing, and so was an opera with a conventional dramatic framework having as its only purpose the advantageous display of musical embroideries. But a dramatic work with music as an integral part lay outside the range of all that was then believed to be possible, and long after the new race of dramatic singers had arisen the peculiar problems of _mise-en-scene_ and stage management which Wagnerian drama presents were left quite unsolved. However, no such battle had to be fought over the stage presentation as had been fought over the music. There was the Bayreuth theatre, with plenty of time and, latterly, plenty of money to work out the scenic and mechanical problems; and very slowly they were worked out. The improvement since 1896, when I last saw the "Ring" here, is enormous, and from the mighty trilogy as now presented that old sense of awkward, c.u.mbrous, and unmanageable material has to a great extent disappeared--not, indeed, to the same extent in all the four parts (prologue and three-fold drama). The change and improvement is most startling in "Rheingold," which, with all its mythological and thaumaturgical paraphernalia, used to be thought peculiarly clumsy and full of bad quarters of an hour, despite the genius that scintillated here and there. Now that the staging has been perfected, it no longer embarra.s.ses the performers or distracts the spectator's attention, and one has unimpeded enjoyment of the story, with all its rich imaginative play and its Aristophanic quality, as it is interpreted by a group of actors and actresses who have thoroughly mastered their peculiar business. "Rheingold" one now perceives to be a comedy big with tragedy.

Notwithstanding the undertow of forces making for monstrous mischief, it is as thoroughpaced an Aristophanic comedy as anything having Norse instead of h.e.l.lenic characters and imagery could be. The scene in which the different uses of gold are explained by Loge, with exquisitely humorous interpolated comments by Fricka (the Mrs. Grundy of Valhalla) and others, is worth the attention of any philosopher; and yet that and other pa.s.sages of similar merit used to pa.s.s unnoticed. Together with the mention in my former message of Messrs. Briesemeister's, Breuer's, and Elmblad's achievements as Loge, Mimmy, and Fafner respectively, there should have been some reference to the Fricka of Mme. Reuss-Belce, who was simply perfect in the scene where that dignified lady sidles up to Loge to inquire whether the gold cannot also be used to make nice ornaments for ladies.

In regard to "Walkure" and "Siegfried," which have long been in the repertory of London, Paris, and other capitals, the superiority of Bayreuth is very much less certain--that is to say, of Bayreuth as represented by this year's performances. There was serious weakness in two out of the three great protagonists, Wotan and Brunnhilde, and for that weakness no degree of skill in the presentation of the finely fantastic and ever-shifting backgrounds could compensate, nor even the superb orchestral interpretation. The Siegfried of Mr. Ernst Kraus was, however, on the whole a very striking performance, as it was at Covent Garden in 1903. It was best in Acts i. and ii. of "Siegfried"--the forging of the sword and the slaying of the dragon, preceded and followed by the wonderful forest _reverie_,--and it was least good in the "Gotterdammerung" scene, where the hero tells the story of his youth to his hunting companions. Here a certain lack of resource in purely lyrical expression was a serious defect. But on the whole Mr. Kraus would seem to be the best Siegfried of the present day--best, at any rate, of those who can be induced to enact the part without mutilation.

No excellence in the staging and general interpretation could obviate or appreciably soften the unsatisfactoriness of "Gotterdammerung." The final drama of the "Ring" series remains a terrible monster among the dramatic works of mankind, with a dreary first and second act, in which little seems to occur besides the heaping up of gloomy storm-clouds. The fierce animation of the retainers' muster in the Hall of the Gibichungs produced on Thursday the utmost effect of which it is capable; but the atmosphere of these scenes in which the tragedy of the curse resting on the Ring is worked out remained, as before, almost intolerable; and, despite the ravishing Rhine-daughter music in the third act, the romantic beauty of the "Erzahlung" (story of Siegfried's youth), and the monumental grandeur of the funeral scenes, the last day of the trilogy left one with the old sense of oppression. As most persons are aware, the whole "Ring" drama began in the composer's mind with "Siegfried's Death"--that part which is now called "Gotterdammerung,"--and the other three parts were written to lead up to it. Nevertheless the original nucleus remains the monstrous product of a disordered imagination, while the three parts, conceived as something secondary, form a series of masterpieces. Books, we know, have their fates, and the fate of this one is not the least curious. The experience of this year, while tending to show that the supposed defects of "Rheingold," "Walkure," and "Siegfried" almost entirely vanish in a rendering that is harmonious on all sides, leaves one with a greatly increased sense of the final drama's inherent unsatisfactoriness.

CHAPTER VI.