"The curious thing about it," said Richter, "is that this system which my mother has found, does away with all fatigue. One is able to use the voice indefinitely in this way."
And Richter, to prove the truth of his assertion, sang us the entire third scene from the Rheingold.
When we had taken leave of our hosts, and were established in our railway carriage, we made our very best endeavours to sing from the palate, and the result was a scandalous cacophony.
XXII
In governmental circles, the intrigues continued around the incidents occasioned by the Rheingold, and the journalists who took their cue from there, did not cease to expend their servile ink in writing calumnious articles.
Finally Wagner was constrained to break the silence he had wished to keep, by publishing a short article in the Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg. He asserted once again in this article that he had never offered any opposition to the execution of his work. "I should certainly be very glad," he wrote, "if they would give up the idea of playing it under such deplorable conditions; but if they have decided to do so, I am entirely resigned and I have no intention of hindering the representations."
The news from Tribschen informed me that the Master was in good health, but the persistence of this animosity toward him had made even his strength of mind waver for a moment. Cosima had surprised him, one day, alone in his room, seated on a low chair and sobbing. But serenity and cheerfulness soon came back, he applied himself again regularly to the work which he had given up during those days of trouble, and then all went well.
At the theatre, Kindermann—"the singing gun"—as Villiers called him, because of his thundering voice—who interpreted the rôle of one of the giants, studied also that of Wotan, abandoned by Betz.
They had sent to Darmstadt in all haste, for the very skilful decorator, Brandt, and had requested him to patch up the scenery a little if possible, but he fled away more quickly than he came, declaring that he could not do anything with such horrors, that all would have to be remade.