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 institution 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.
"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 principal 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 space 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 passes through the chambers of consciousness like the fumes of an anæsthetic, 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 lustre 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, passing in Klingsor's garden, seems to represent the pleasures of sin as imagined by the most innocent of mediæval 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 spaced out at four different levels—the orchestra below the stage, the knights seated at the love-feast or manœuvring 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 Titurel. The conductor was Dr. Muck, of Berlin, whose tempi seem to have been considered too slow by some of the habitués, though his interpretation was admitted to be in all other respects above reproach.
"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. Gods, goddesses, giants, dwarfs, and water nymphs make up the dramatis personæ, 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 God, 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 principal 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 manœuvre 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 naïvely 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.