The Court Theatre was drawing the town with its Triple Bill in the spring of 1892, and Punch did not spare his praise of the "Pantomime Rehearsal" which, with Ellaline Terriss, Decima Moore, Weedon Grossmith and Brandon Thomas in the leading parts, is pronounced to be "about the very funniest thing to be seen in any London theatre." Gilbert's brilliant Hamlet burlesque, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, was for a while included in the bill, and Punch describes it as "an excellent piece of genuine fun." It is all that and more. Gilbert never wrote anything wittier than the passage in which Ophelia discusses the various theories of the Prince's "mentality" and synthesizes them in the conclusion:—
Hamlet is idiotically sane,
With lucid intervals of lunacy.
These were stirring years in the realm of music. To take only some of the outstanding events, there was the Wagner Festival at the Albert Hall in 1877, conducted by the composer, which led in due time to something like a revolution in the repertory of grand opera in London; there was the coming of Hans Richter, whose orchestral concerts lent a fresh impetus to the cult of symphonic music already fostered by Manns and Hallé; there were the visits of Rubinstein and Liszt in 1886; the superb performance of Verdi's Otello in 1887 by the Scala Company, with Tamagno and Maurel in the cast; the advent of the de Reszkes and Melba in 1889 and of Paderewski in 1890. Last and assuredly not least, when the test of pleasure and popularity is applied, there was the long and fruitful collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan which began with Thespis, or the Gods grown Old, in 1871, and continued till nearly the close of the period under review.
Punch the Anti-Wagnerite
All these events and many others came under Punch's notice, but it must be confessed that his shortcomings as a critic are nowhere so conspicuous as in the domain of music. It is true that in 1875 he expressed a guarded admiration for Lohengrin: he found it good in parts, like the curate's egg. "Though not melodious, it is certainly most musically interesting and abundantly poetical." But the report of his Bayreuth correspondent in 1876 is admittedly a bogus document, compiled from German phrase-books in London, and tells us nothing about the music, for the writer never went to Bayreuth. The Albert Hall Festival is treated much in the same spirit of entirely irresponsible burlesque. Punch is determined at all costs to represent the Festival as a carnival of "Wagnerian waggeries." When it was over he admitted that many who went to scoff remained to praise. "The Rhinegold is a masterpiece," but he, is careful to add "this is not a discovery of mine," and goes on to express his deliberate opinion that the Tetralogy must inevitably be vulgarized by representation on the stage. "Such a mise-en-scène as the Ring demands is impossible," and he turns with obvious relief to discuss Patti in Dinorah and the performance of Orphée aux Enfers at the Alhambra.
In 1882 Punch attended the performances of the Ring, and after four nights "deliberately" said, "Never again with you, Wotan, Siegfried & Co." He found nothing new in the idea of leading motives: it was as old as the oldest pantomime. A few weeks later Punch heard Tristan done at Drury Lane and was bored to extinction:—
Had it been by a young English composer, or an elderly English composer of the Hanwellian School, it would not have been tolerated for half an hour after its commencement. For ourselves, if of two penances we had to choose one, either to sit out a long, dull sermon in a stuffy church on an August afternoon, or to hear one Act of Tristan and Isolda, we should unhesitatingly select the former, where, at all events, there would be the certainty of a tranquil repose, from which no cruel drum, bassoon, or violoncello, but only the snoring of our own nose, could rouse us. That there are occasional snatches of melody is undeniable, but a snatch here and there is not the grasp of a master hand to hold an audience. Judicious selections will always be welcome; but that, taken as a whole, it is the embodiment of stupendous boredom, might be the verdict of all English opera-goers who delight in the Operas of Rossini, Mozart, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Verdi, Balfe, Wallace, Bizet, and we are not afraid to add, even in these days of æsthetic mysticism, art-vagueness, and higher cultchaw—Bellini.
Punch then proceeds to "guy" the libretto and stage directions and continues:—
This sort of music can never, in our lifetime at least, thank goodness, become popular with the British public. It may, as Dr. Johnson said of the violoncello performance, be wonderful, but we only wish it were impossible. Wagner's lyrical-dramatic music requires no operatic vocalists at all. Let there be a first-rate orchestra, a book of the plot in hands of the audience, and tableaux vivants or dissolving views to illustrate it—as illustration is still necessary for the illiterate. To ourselves, speaking as mere laics in the matter, with a fondness for tune, harmony, and good dramatic situations, it seems that singing and acting are thrown away on such vocal music and such tedious and unsavoury libretti. Richard Wagner's Operas will be remembered when the Barbiere and a few more trifles are forgotten, but not till then.