MARCH (Pomposo. Decrescendo…..sempre p pp ppp)

Then we have the fatal curiosity of Fatima and her sister Anne. We must extenuate here, nor aught set down in malice, remembering that Wagner knew only the women of his own day, before the sex was uplifted and purified by the vote, and he naturally depicted them with the man-engendered vices that were then a part of their unhappy heritage. This "_Neugierde_Motiv_" (Curiosity Motive) is made up of agitated, sharply accentuated sixteenth notes played with incredible vivacity and culminating in a terrifying orchestral crash where entrance is made into the hidden chamber, with its famous tableau so eloquent of the polygamous instinct of man; an instinct only kept in subjection by the most stringent laws and the most militant domestic discipline.

ANTI-FEMINIST ARIA

"But Fatima said, 'To the keyhole let's creep,
"There can be no harm just in one little peep!
"We are women—besides, there are none to behold us!
"If he wished us to leave it, he shouldn't have told us!'"

It is these inexcusable lines which have caused the Feminist party to boycott (and perhaps rightly) any opera-house in which this drama is given, urging that they contain an insult which can be wiped out only with blood or ballots. I sympathize with this feeling, yet, as I said before, there are extenuating circumstances. Wagner was born a hundred years ago. In his time the hand of woman, though white, was flabby and inert from years of darning, patching, stirring the pot, buttoning and unbuttoning, feeding and spanking man's perennial progeny. He had no conception how that frail hand would be steadied and strengthened by dropping the ballot into the box; how curiosity, vanity, parasitic coquetry, lack of logic, overweening interest in millinery and inability to balance a check-book—how these weaknesses would vanish under the inspiring influences of municipal politics; therefore I feel disposed to forgive him, and to attribute to him, not absolute and deliberate insult, so much as a kind of patronizing persiflage. In this case, however, feminists will say that the great Wagner undoubtedly and regrettably overreached himself.

Here is just a hint of the theme; a paltry, parasitic, mid-Victorian motive.

CURIOSITY ARIA

Curiosity conquer'd, the Key was applied,
And with thunder most awful the door opened wide.

Now comes the much discussed "Chorus of Headless Wives," which is a distinct prophecy of Debussy. You have noted in late musical criticisms allusions to the "ghosts of themes" used in "Pelleas and Melisande,"— "Sound-wraiths wandering in air." Here we have the same thing and employed with exquisite appropriateness. The ladies hanging in the secret chamber are mere bodies, their heads being decidedly off stage. When the door is opened the wives begin to sing _a_la'_ Debussy, the ghostly effect being secured by the fact that it is not, of course, the _present_bodies_, but the _absent_heads_ that are supposed to be singing. The melodic wraiths float from the key of G flat—I use "key" in the old-fashioned sense, for the word, like the thing itself, is fast disappearing—through one and four sharps back to two and three flats, employing all signatures but that of C major. Six sets of severed vocal organs meandering in space would hardly use the natural key!

Then we have the opening of the mysterious door; the unexpected return of Bluebeard; the hysterics of the ill-fated sisters, with plenty of shrieking and swooning motives; and then the celebrated "Hammelfleisch" or "Mutton" motive, where Sister Anne, from her post in the high tower, observes for a long time nothing but sheep.