"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, Bülow, 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-scène 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, cumbrous, 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 embarrasses 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 Hellenic 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 passages of similar merit used to pass 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 "Walküre" 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 Brünnhilde, 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 rêverie,—and it was least good in the "Götterdämmerung" 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 "Götterdämmerung." 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 "Erzählung" (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 "Götterdämmerung,"—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," "Walküre," 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.