Operas Every Child Should Know Part 49

"I would give no less for Ada," Radames declared sadly. "I shall not try to save myself. I shall say nothing in my own defense. I wish to die."

At the mention of Ada, Amneris was enraged.

"I'll hear no more of her!" she cried.

"Ah, you have killed her----"

"No! Her father is slain, but she lives. She has vanished--no one knows where!"

"Then may the G.o.ds guide her safe to her home and country, and keep her from knowing how I die."

"If you will swear to see her no more, Radames, I will save thee."

"If I were to live I should find her. I will not swear."

"Then you shall die. If you will not hear me, I shall avenge myself,"

she answered bitterly, motioning to the guards to take him away.

Radames was taken below to the subterranean hall which was to be his grave and judgment hall alike, while Amneris was left alone, both grief-stricken and revengeful. Her jealousy was certain to bring fearful retribution upon her. As more white-robed priests pa.s.sed below, looking spectral and ominous, she hid her face in her hands.

"It was I who brought him to this fate," she murmured, and then listened in anguish to the chorus of the priests which sounded dismally from below.

Then a voice called from the crypt, three times:

"Radames, Radames, Radames," and it was his summons to judgment.

"Oh, who can save him now?" Amneris murmured, horrified at what was taking place.

"Defend thyself!" she heard voices from below command. There was no answer.

"Radames, Radames, Radames," the High Priest called again in a fearful voice, and again the Princess shuddered.

"Thou hast deserted the encampment the very day before the combat!--defend thyself." She listened, but still no answer.

"Radames, Radames, Radames," again the High Priest called, and for the third and last time. Still no answer.

"Oh, have mercy on him," Amneris then cried, her love becoming greater than her desire for revenge. Then listening again, she heard the judge say:

"Radames, thy fate is decided. It is to be the fate of a traitor. You shall be buried alive beneath the altar of the G.o.d of War, whom thou hast derided and betrayed."

"Oh, horror," Amneris shrieked.

"We have spoken," the priests replied, and then ascended.

"Ye priests of Isis, ye are tigers! demons!" and the Princess a.s.sailed them bitterly as they came into the hall. She was now mad with grief.

Truly loving Radames, she cursed the priests and even the G.o.ds. Then the scene changed, revealing the interior of Vulcan's Temple and the crypt beneath the altar. There were spectral statues, and great marble columns which seemed to vanish in the gloom, and all was gloomy as the grave. Stairs led from the temple above into the vault, and Radames sat down upon the steps as the priests let down again the ma.s.sive stone that covered the opening beneath the altar. Radames watched the closing of the opening, the descent of the great stone into place.

"I can bear my fate, since Ada may never know. She could not survive such horror," he said, under his breath. The vault, the ghostly cold about him, the rows upon rows of senseless marble, supported by the expressionless stone faces of the G.o.ds, these things overwhelmed the great warrior. Then, from the gloom, he saw a white figure emerge. Is it a phantom? At first he thought it some fearful vision. But as he peered through the twilight he recognized--Ada. Perhaps it was her ghost come to comfort him, he thought, and raised himself to stare at the figure.

"Ada!"

"I am here to die with thee," she answered, and Radames clasped her in his arms. He had thought her safe, unacquainted with his fate, but she was there to share it.

"My heart foreboded thy fearful sentence," she said. "I hid here till the stone shut down upon thee, and now I am beside thee till the end."

Radames beat wildly upon the stone above. He called for help. He tried with his great strength to raise the deadly stone with his shoulders, only to sink down, exhausted and horrified. He could not save her. The chorus sung by priests began above; Ada was already dying. At least she would not live slowly to starve. And while Amneris appeared above in black garments, dying of grief for Radames, and threw herself upon the stone, Radames held the dying Ada in his arms and waited for death.

"Peace," Amneris moaned while lying prostrate above on the altar stone.

"Peace," and while the women were dying and Radames losing his senses below, the priests of Isis chanted, "Peace," the light faded out, and the tragedy ended.

WAGNER

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, on the 22d of May, 1813. His father was Chief of Police and his mother was Johanna Rosina Bertz.

His brothers and sisters were distinguished singers or actors; thus love of dramatic art was common to all the family. His father died and his mother married an actor, Ludwig Geyer. The stepfather became very fond of young Richard and intended to make a painter of him, but upon hearing him play some of his sister's piano pieces Geyer wondered if it were possible that he had the gift of music!

Wagner was a poor scholar during his school days, the only thing he especially enjoyed being literature, mainly Shakespeare, Sophocles, and aeschylus; and about the time the dramatic philosophies of these men filled his attention, he wrote a great drama in which there were forty-two characters, every one of whom was killed or died in the course of the play, so that he was compelled to finish his performance with the spectres of his original characters. Later he wished to put music to that remarkable drama, and he did so, much to the distraction of his family. It was actually performed. He thus described his composition:

This was the culmination of my absurdities. What I did, above all things wrong, was a roll _fortissimo_ upon the kettle-drums, which returned regularly every four bars throughout the composition. The surprise which the public experienced changed first to unconcealed ill-humour, and then into laughter, which greatly mortified me.

It was under Theodor Weinlig's teaching that he finally developed a fixed purpose of composition and something like regular study.

When he first wished to marry, he could not for lack of money to provide a home for his wife. In time this difficulty was overcome, and later he started to London with his wife and his dog, which was named Robber. The terrors of that voyage impressed him so much that he was inspired with the idea for "The Flying Dutchman," one of his great operas. He was told the legend of "The Flying Dutchman" by the sailors; but long before he was able to write that splendid opera he was compelled to write music for the variety stage in order to feed his wife and himself. He wrote articles for musical periodicals, and did a great deal of what is known as "hack" work before his great genius found opportunity. One manager liked the dramatic idea of "The Flying Dutchman" so well that he was willing to buy it if Wagner would let him get _some one who knew how to write music_, to set it.

After the production of "Rienzi" in Dresden, his difficulties were never again so serious, and soon he became _Hofkapellmeister_ (musical director at court), which gave him an income, leaving him free to write operas as he chose.

When "Rienzi" was produced, a great musician said: "This is a man of genius; but he has already _done more than he can_! Listen to me, and give up dramatic composition!" But he continued to "do more than he could."

When he wrote "Tannhauser" he was reduced almost to despair, for n.o.body liked it. Schumann said of it: "It is the empty and unpleasing music of an amateur." But Spohr wrote: "The opera contains certain new and fine things, which at first I did not like, but to which I became accustomed on repeated hearings."

At last, this composer, whose inspirations had come entirely from historical subjects, found his mythological beginnings in the Scandinavian Eddas; and in a poem of the "Nibelung" he found the germ of "Siegfried."

As _Kapellmeister_ of the court, Wagner did too many indiscreet things: allied himself with revolutionists and the like; and, before he knew it, he found himself an exile. Liszt was his friend, and when, on a visit to Weimar, politics made his presence hazardous, Liszt got him a pa.s.sport which took him out of the country. He did not return for twelve years.

During his exile, which was pa.s.sed mostly in Zurich, he had Karl Ritter and Hans von Bulow for pupils, and it was there that he did all of his most wonderful work. There he composed the "Nibelung Ring." He wrote the last of it first, and the first of it ("Das Rheingold") last. This was because his central idea, as it developed, seemed to need explanation, and successive operas upon the same dramatic and mythological theme became necessary.

Wagner's mythology is not the mythology of the Eddas. It is distinctly his own, he having adapted a great and rugged folklore to his dramatic purposes, regardless of its original construction.

In the Ring, the G.o.ddess Fricka is a disagreeable G.o.ddess of domesticity, and the story is told of a first reading of the opera series, which involved an anecdote of Fricka and his hostess:

He went to the house of a friend, Wille, to read the poem after it was finished, and Madame Wille happened to be called from the room, while he was reading, to look after her little sick child. When she returned, Wagner had been so annoyed by the interruption that he thereafter named Madame Wille, Fricka.

During a sleepless night in Italy he formed the plan for the music of "Das Rheingold," but not wishing to write on Italian soil, he got up and hastened to Zurich.